The July sun, naked and bold, cast a luscious haze on the pink and red crape myrtles that lined Bertrand Court. He drove to the end of the block, past Marcus and Robin’s house, where Isaac had dislocated his shoulder on the trampoline; past Tad and Nikki’s front lawn, where Danny had recently installed an “Under Contract” sign; and past Maggie and Eric’s driveway, where Amy and Leon were unbuckling Simon from his car seat. He turned out of the neighborhood and drove on, passing the pharmacy that filled his Lipitor prescription and the little Italian place where he picked up dinner when Becca didn’t feel like cooking. He rolled down the window, inviting the hot sunshine onto his freckled skin, and waved his arms in circles, ushering in every memory and dream, blessing the hell out of life.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to the editors of Lilith Magazine, the minnesota review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, PoliticsDaily.com, Electric Grace: Still More Fiction by Washington Area Women, Blackbird, The Pedestal Magazine, Drash, Potomac Review, River Oak Review, Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, Literary Mama, Shortbread Stories, and Bethesda Magazine, where earlier versions of these stories first appeared; to the editors of Shebooks for publishing “Sylvia’s Spoon” and “Shhh” as an ebook entitled We Named Them All; to the editors of the Pushcart Prize Anthology for the selection of “More So” as an honorable mention; to Pati Griffith for awarding “Harvard Man” the F. Scott Fitzgerald Prize; to Yona Zeldis McDonough for choosing “Sylvia’s Spoon” for the Lilith Magazine Fiction Award; and to Mark Farrington and David Everett for their belief and for nominating “Shhh” for inclusion in The Best New American Voices.
I am the luckiest writer on the planet to be a member of a dream team that includes Prospect Park Books and the tireless and smart Jill Marr of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. I owe a debt of gratitude to Patty O’Sullivan (and Jill again) for plucking my debut novel, Washing the Dead, from the slush pile and thus launching my publishing journey, and to Colleen Dunn Bates for her editing and marketing genius, grace, and infectious enthusiasm for all things literary.
I wrote Bertrand Court over a span of fifteen years, so it would be impossible for me to acknowledge every reader who has helped me shape this material and in turn my narrative voice. Most of them, however, belong to one or more of the following communities to which I am forever indebted: The Writer’s Center, the Johns Hopkins MA in Writing Program, the Glen Echo writing group, the George Washington University Creative Writing program, the DCJCC Writers Group, and the DC Women Writers. I’d also like to acknowledge my MacArthur Boulevard walking buddies and former Adas Israel Chavurah. Special thanks to Joy Johannessen for shining up my prose and helping me stitch these stories together.
With deepest gratitude, I’d like to acknowledge my mentors and muses: Faye Moskowitz, Bob Bausch, Margaret Meyers, Ed Perlman, Richard Peabody, Bill Loizeaux, and, specifically, Ray “Bertrand” Farkas, for teaching me how to eavesdrop properly and see life through the luscious haze of a pro-mist filter. I am grateful to my children, Gabriela and Gideon, for redefining my notion of love, which they do every single day; my parents, Lotta and Stuart Brafman, for providing encouragement and a quiet place to write; and my husband, Tom Helf, for his formidable PR efforts and, more importantly, for reading me on and off the page with honesty and great tenderness.
Michelle Brafman is the author of Washing the Dead. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in The Washington Post, Tablet, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Slate, Lilith Magazine, the minnesota review, and elsewhere. She teaches fiction writing at the Johns Hopkins University MA in Writing Program and lives in Glen Echo, Maryland, with her husband and two children.
Bertrand Court Page 20
