American Chordata: Magazine of New Writing Issue One, Spring 2015 | Page 76

58 • FI CTION

“She’s going, too.”
“I see.”
“It’s her father’s fishing camp for Christ’s sake and somebody’s
got to cook!”
So that’s who Honey is: the wife of my father’s cardiologist.
How exactly Gwen Hildebrandt made her entrance—with a blouse,
a remark, a gutted fish—I will never know.
My father still goes to work and he hasn’t moved into an apartment, but he’s forgotten all about the cartoon he drew on the Christmas box we mailed to his brother. Mother was the tall lady in the
skirt and high heels with wavy gray hair; he was the bald man in
trousers in the top hat and bow tie; Kate was the girl in the