The Artful Trade

The Nearness I grew up just the other side of the tracks, by the railroad, near but always outside the good part of Brooklyn. In those days, my mother would read and reread the travel section in the Sunday paper. About places that were warmer and sweeter. Places promising each week that they were near, or at least within reach. But seeing just how far away those places really were, she would put the paper out with the garbage. As useless as old chicken bones. My father spent his days trying to get near the things he wanted for his family. A better job, enough of the never-enough kind of money, a house big enough to hold his dreams for himself, his wife and young son. Things that were somehow always just beyond his reach. On Mondays when he took out the trash, he would see my mother’s thrown-away hopes for some kind of better Elsewhere. So he would walk the few blocks to the local produce and buy her some day-old roses from the remainder bin. The kind that smell sweet for only a