Many thanks to those of you who directed me to Angelfire or sent me the text directly (and letting me know that it is being assigned in more schools than I thought). I had no idea.

This is a short-short that has been published in three anthologies, "Word of Mouth 2, (Crossing Press); "In Celebration of the Muse," (Quarry West——Ah! A tie in to earthquakes!); and "Sudden Fiction Continued," (Norton).

It is being used in English and Writing classes at three universities and one online writing site: Texas Tech, UC Berkeley, The Academy of the Arts (in San Francisco), and Writers' Block.

Two of them didn't even get it right. (Grr.) Being the anal type that I am, I feel incumbent to post the story as it should be, although I suspect the formatting may be off.

At Texas Tech, both this story, and my novel, "Rocket City," are on the curriculum, a happy event, even though this was one of the schools that butchered it.

Still, at least I'm in good company: Margaret Atwood, Willa Cather, Sandra Cisneros, Louise Erdrich, Fannie Flagg, Jane Hamilton, Erica Jong, Barbara Kingsolver, Maxine Hong Kingston, Carson McCullers, Jay McInerney, Toni Morrison, Dorothy Parker, Katherine Anne Porter, Mona Simpson, Jane Smiley, Amy Tan, and Alice Walker.

Now, that *does* changes everything. :-)

I will not complain, *except* to the schools that got several things wrong. Hence I feel the need to post it here so the (many!) members of this list who did look it up for me can read my words and not the mistakes of some freshman teacher's aide just learning to type. It is blessedly brief:

******

THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING by Cathryn Alpert

I
This feeling that something is deeply wrong. Not basically, as some people might say, but deeply, as in to the core. Blood and bone. As in this is the stuff we're made of and there's no getting away.

II
Brush one hundred times before you go to bed. Rise at eight and scrape corn flakes off the counter. Put your makeup on in a different order and the day may hold surprises.

III
"Be thankful for what you've got," he says, spreading mustard on his bun. He means two eyes, of course, 'cause he lost one in Vietnam. He means two of everything that's supposed to come in twos, like heartbeats, and footsteps, and yes, even people.
And I want to tell him it's different than that. But how do you say this to a man who has stared down shrapnel?

IV
When he lost his eye, he lost his depth perception. He'd reach for a beer and grab thin air. He once cracked his forehead on a doorway. "It comes back," he told me. "It takes a while, but the brain relearns to see things in perspective."

V
Each morning I make a list of things to do. At night, whatever is left I transfer to another list that I keep in a drawer by my bedside. This other list is ten pages long. At the top it says, "Box baby clothes." I have them all in boxes, but they aren't the right boxes for storing clothes you want to save for your grandchildren.

VI
You can tell which one isn't real by the way it sits in its socket, staring blankly into the world like the eye of a gaffed mackerel. I like to look at it, this ball of sightless glass. When the light is right, I can see myself in its reflection.

VII
I lie in bed after midnight and count stars through our open window. They arc slowly across a cloudless sky. Last night there were fifty seven.

VIII
Years ago he wore a patch but gave it up when he saw the women it attracted. "Earth mothers," he told me. Women who wiped soup from his beard and clipped the dead skin from around his toenails. In bed, they rode him like a stick pony.
He chose me, he said, because I seemed indifferent.

IX
Some mornings, after the kids have gone to school, I sit in bed and watch the steam rise from my coffee. It has purpose, steam. It knows what to do.

X
He bites hard into his burger. Hunches close to the table. Looks up at me with half an eye. And I want to tell him I know I am loved. And that that changes everything. And it would be such an easy lie.

********

Sorry, Canie, for eating up so much bandwidth.

Cathryn