Mom has a thing for the letter E. She keeps a small notebook in the pockets of long, slinky polyester dresses she buys at Marshall Field’s. The flattened, stretchy black/brown/beige globular patterns look like cells under microscopes in biology lab. If dresses don’t have pockets, Mom sews them in. A dress with no pocket is extraneous and egocentric, she says. It might as well walk by itself, she says, like that nutbag that wrote the book with no E’s. What a waste of a life. Mom’s younger sister, Elizabeth, fell through the ice when she was five. Now, Mom hums Elvis tunes and sniffs forks and spoons before she uses them. She wants to have five kids, but we make up three. We all begin with the letter E. Ermine, Elva, and Esmerelda. She tells us at dinner that we are all slowly rotting. Dad doesn’t say much. He came with the package. His name is Emmett Edwards.

Bio: Meg Tuite