Transgressions and Other Stories
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
screen flickering in what we liked to call the wreck room. By the time you’ve entered the house and hefted the bags onto the kitchen table in the dark and turned on the switch so that the fluorescent fixture suddenly lights up everything like a flashbulb: the worn linoleum, the scarred table, the cabinets with their doors warped by the seeping cold; by the time the
younger kids have heard you and rushed out to savage the grocery bags, hunting treats; by the time you’ve made it to the TV and shaken your daughter Miranda and your son Alec out of
their glassy-eyed daze to demand, “Where’s your mother?”— by then, your footsteps in the snow are already gone.
Where is she, our mother? We shrug our shoulders, though we too have checked it out as soon as we walked into the house. She’s probably upstairs, asleep in her own bed with the curtains drawn. Yet even though that’s the likeliest place to find her, our hearts have thudded in our small chests as we approached the house. Knowing that our father wasn’t
home yet, we’ve entered cautiously, listening to the quality of the silence, our antennae out for any unexpected sounds. And separately, without speaking to each other, we’ve each
gone upstairs and tapped faintly on our mother’s bedroom door and then opened the door with exquisite care to see her fl ung across the bed like a discarded dress, or maybe halfcovered
by a blanket, still wearing her robe from morning, the pungent, sweet-sour smell of her breath infusing the room like something toxic.
So we know and yet are not sure that’s where she is. She may have moved, may be somewhere else—hopefully not up in the attic, frantically dredging old cartons for family
pictures or baby clothes long since outworn; hopefully not in one of our rooms, snatching books off the shelves or sweeping makeup off the dresser, not in Jamie’s or Caitlin’s room, flinging their toys out the window one by one as she rages about the mess; or, our fondest hope, not running out into the snow to...
Formats
Book Details
Recognition Programs
About the Book
All human beings struggle to live with our own missteps and transgressions and those of others. In this compelling collection, stories with the depth and resonance of novellas offer a window into the challenging lives of contemporary men and women. From Alec and Mira, children of an unreliable mother, to Naomi and Graham, suburbanites who enter the wilderness of an affair—and finally to Trevor, a psychiatrist who is himself a “wounded healer”—Orbach presents a kaleidoscope of hopes, desires, longings and regrets of people as diverse as they are familiar—people whose quandaries, whether ordinary or extreme, resonate with our own. When Laura, a young widow, responds “just for now” to a man who is blind, she is drawn in by his compassionate voice. Matthew, trying to wall himself off from the dangers of deep emotion, finds his underlying fears exposed. Sharon, lunching with an ex-lover, commits a small but telling gesture of revenge. Jess, trying to remake her life, struggles to survive the cost to her children and herself. And Martin, involved in a tragic accident, tries in vain to avoid acknowledging the cost of his own shortcomings. These are men and women seeking love, possibility, compassion—and most of all the self-forgiveness needed to embrace the future.
About the Author
Hilary Orbach is a graduate of the University of Chicago and has held a Fiction Fellowship at Stanford University. She has published work in Seventeen, Redbook, The Chicago Review, The Nebraska Review (First Prize in Fiction, 2003), Crucible, and The Atlanta Review. She is a psychotherapist and lives in New York City.