From Still No Word from You, which was published last month by Catapult.

On the black-and-white TV in the kitchen, my mother and I watched Richard Nixon’s helicopter slowly rise. My mother stood at the sink doing dishes. At one point, she stopped scrubbing but left her hands in the dishwater. The kitchen of the house on Hazel Avenue. The house no longer exists. It is less about her expression than that her hands remained in the water but were no longer scrubbing the dishes. Something to do with the stillness, her hands suddenly motionless in the soapy water.…