Read Blues for Beginners: Stories and Obsessions for Free Online

That
was me being stupid.”
    He’s not buying this, not after last
night.
    “You can lie to me, but you can’t lie to
yourself,” he says. “We made love last night.”
    That tear-stained face under his. Her
stillness.
    “I felt guilty for leading you on,” she says
in the boyfriend dead of cancer voice. “And afterwards I felt
crummy. You weren’t worth the risk.”
    You knew I was fragile, he wants to say, but
words stick in his throat. There are no safe houses left in this
hard new city; no earth angels. The fundamentals no longer
apply.
    “I want you out of here,” she says, a simple
order.
     

 
Blues for Advanced
Beginners
    “Woke up this morning
    and went back to sleep…”
    Epstein-Barre Blues byMemphis Earlene Gray
    .
    You have an inalienable right to sing the blues if
you were born under a bad sign. Capricorn is a bad sign to be born
under. Jesus was one. So was Nixon.
    The right to sing the blues may be earned if you:
    a. suffer
    b. lose
    c. pay some dues
    It’s not the blues when your loss is tax
deductible.
    Some examples of dues:
    a. working for the man
    b. hating your day job
    c. losing your man.
    Some forms of suffering that will never be blues
worthy:

    a. anorexia nervosa
    b. low LSATs
    It’s the blues if you:
    a. wish you never been born
    b. feel like a motherless child
    If your mother is dead and you miss her it’s
Country.
    .
    Good times to have the blues are:
    a. Christmas
    b. Mother’s Day
    c. every night when the sun goes down
    You can’t sing the blues in Chinese.
    .
    Mouth full of toothache
    Head full of network news
    Gonna go downtown
    Buy some alligator shoes
    Silverpoint Blues,
Attributed to Blind Drunk Johnson
    .
    Blues women never sing Send in the Clowns.
    Blues women pack heat and eat meat.
    Just because you shot that two timing man doesn’t
automatically make you a blues woman, but it’s a good start.
    So is buying him an Armani suit, or paying his child-
support.
    .
    Blues sports are:
    a. drinking
    b. gambling
    c. running around
    Blues men are not team players.
    You can’t sing the blues in Gore-Tex
    The following drugs don’t belong in the blues:
    a. Ecstasy
    b. Speed
    c. Multi-vitamins
    Blues women don’t wear Chanel. Other fashion
no-nos:
    a. running shoes
    b. lace
    c. botox
    .
    Blues men don’t get born again.
    There is no word in French for hellhound.
    You can’t sing the blues in French, not even if
you’re blind.
     

 
The Sphinx of
Margate
    “A virtuous woman; her price is beyond
rubies,” says the Rabbi, but I can’t get my mind off that pale
yellow stain on her living room rug, which is a lousy way to
remember Aunt Shirley, who raised three sons and kept a kosher
household full of polished mahogany furniture. A bright woman
married to a dull man. Priced beyond rubies. Uncle Joe was lucky to
marry Shirl, my mother always said, which meant too bad she
couldn’t have married someone bright and tall, like she was,
instead of just tall.
    Uncle Joe was not much of a catch, but Aunt
Shirley turned him into a good provider. She wore mink in the
winter and none of her jewelry was fake. Maybe she shouldn’t have
corrected his grammar in public, but without her nudging, he would
have been somebody’s loyal employee and a buyer of second hand
Buicks, not a prosperous businessman with a new Cadillac every
other year.
    She was my mother’s big sister; the one who
came first and set standards none of us could live up to. Everyone
in Aunt Shirley’s family could read Hebrew. Passover Seders at Aunt
Shirley’s, you read the entire Haggadah, from beginning to end,
first the Hebrew and then the English translation, so it took all
night. She was strict with her boys, her three dark-eyed, musical
sons, but you could sense sweetness in her; the heavy sweetness of
fruit stewed in Sabbath wine. She wore steel blue sheath dresses
with matching jackets that looked like armour to Synagogue and the
Symphony, but she had a weakness for small, silly velvet hats
trimmed in