The Husband

Excerpt

So my daughter has become a son. She (or I suppose “he”?), is telling me this (again?), on the phone while I’m tucking in a white dress shirt and zipping up my fly before work. I’m late, and Gladys has probably already finished cleaning our first patient, who will be reclining there with the paper chain around his neck, flecks of gritty polish on his lips and cheeks, awaiting a final check up and futile suggestion from me that we snap a few X-rays before he goes.

“I miss Mom, too,” she says on a cell phone, walking somewhere.

“We aren’t talking about her,” I say. “I miss my daughter.”

“You can miss us both,” she says. “But only one of us actually died.”

T Cooper

T Cooper’s most recent book is a graphic novel entitled The Beaufort Diaries, the inspiring story of a polar bear who escapes extinction by going Hollywood. Cooper is also the author of two regular old novels, Lipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes and Some of the Parts, as well as co-editor of an anthology of short stories entitled A Fictional History of the United States with Huge Chunks Missing. Cooper’s fiction and nonfiction writing has appeared in a variety of publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Believer, and many others. He lives in New York with his family.