Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Together, Apart
    Together, Apart
    Together, Apart
    Ebook59 pages52 minutes

    Together, Apart

    By Ben Hoffman

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    In the stories that make up Together, Apart, the heroes aren' t very heroic. They are flawed. Failures. They are people figuring out how to grieve when their losses should feel more like relief: a teenage boy who loses the egg he was supposed to care for like a child, a mother whose son can' t find happiness in a strange book. But this collection is not just about failure— it' s about resilience. Ben Hoffman writes with unwavering compassion, from the many ex-wives of a recently deceased father to the brothers who listen to their parents fighting in a hotel, hoping instead to hear some sound, some sign of love. Put your ear to any of these stories and you' ll hear it.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBull City Press
    Release dateNov 5, 2018
    ISBN9781949344035
    Together, Apart

    Related to Together, Apart

    Related ebooks

    Short Stories For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Stay and Fight

      Jul 9, 2019

      Stay and Fight
      16 min read

    • Article

      Esquire Fiction

      Aug 17, 2023

      Esquire Fiction
      14 min read

    • Article

      A Real Cat-astrophe

      Mar 21, 2024

      A Real Cat-astrophe
      4 min read

    • Article

      Not My Cat

      Aug 21, 2023

      The rise and fall of fur, sunlight rippling across his perfectly groomed coat – it’s enchanting, hard to look away. For 30 minutes, she’s watched the cat sleeping on three blankets, folded and piled on top of one another. She’s cold, but can’t bring

      6 min read

    • Article

      Open Short Story Winner Tight Situation

      Apr 4, 2024

      When Carol first wakes up, she thinks it must have been a dream. The ringing phone had been distant, muffled as if the landline device had been buried in a bag of something soft like cotton wool - the packing material stuffed so tightly into its bag

      6 min read

    • Article

      Empty NEST

      Oct 2, 2024

      Empty NEST
      6 min read

    • Article

      Haunted House Whodunnit

      Sep 20, 2023

      Haunted House Whodunnit
      2 min read

    • Article

      Hangin’ With The Grandkids

      Jul 22, 2024

      Hangin’ With The Grandkids
      2 min read

    • Article

      My First Pet

      Feb 2, 2020

      My First Pet
      9 min read

    • Article

      Happy birthday, Darling

      Dec 30, 2020

      DARLING, our English pointer, turns 127 (in dog years) this week. I am proud to report that she can still manage a definite, if slightly shaky, point. Moreover, my response, as I don’t shoot, still annoys her. She will stand, one paw raised, nose dir

      2 min read

    • Article

      Cricket League

      Sep 1, 2022

      First prize 10 and under Tang Li, age 9 Palmetto Bay, FL My name is Anisa. I was in Hawaii on vacation. I enjoyed sipping refreshing drinks, overlooking the turquoise ocean, and dancing with others, before I overheard that the priceless Fire Ring wa

      10 min read

    • Article

      Beyond Rose Street

      Nov 10, 2021

      “Don’t tell anyone what happened to Tyler.” I stop running just long enough to turn, hoping for more instructions, but Leyton is already sprinting up his porch steps and through his front door. “Should we—” He slams the door behind him. Even from whe

      20 min read

    • Article

      Can’t Take It With You

      Apr 10, 2022

      Can’t Take It With You
      8 min read

    • Article

      A Gift from above

      Jun 6, 2024

      Big fat raindrops sploshed into the water around me and I looked up to the sky in delight. It was 1955 and, aged 5, I loved nothing better than venturing out to the bomb craters in the paddock by our home in Manchester, left behind after the war. The

      4 min read

    • Article

      About A Dog

      Oct 19, 2022

      About A Dog
      2 min read

    • Article

      Ongoingness

      Apr 21, 2022

      Ongoingness
      8 min read

    • Article

      Nine Lives

      Jan 19, 2023

      Nine Lives
      3 min read

    • Article

      A Diviner’s Abecedarian

      Dec 2, 2019

      Before, salt was only for seasoning, so we didn’t think anything of it. It slept in porcelain shakers at our dinner tables, and we shook it over our plates without fear. We didn’t heed the superstitions of spilt salt, or salt tossed over a shoulder.

      14 min read

    • Article

      Seedlings

      May 6, 2021

      Seedlings
      9 min read

    • Article

      Ann Beattie

      Sep 15, 2017

      I’d started to visit Olivia more often because it was obvious she was lonely. The ALS lady who’d been moved to Hopkins had been Aunt Olivia’s closest friend, leaving aside Merton Hillstead, who actually went home. Even the friendly paperboy who somet

      23 min read

    • Article

      The Hound and the Hidden Homework

      Feb 1, 2019

      The Hound and the Hidden Homework
      4 min read

    • Article

      Finding Joan (again)

      Aug 8, 2024

      Finding Joan (again)
      7 min read

    • Article

      Without A Trace

      Sep 8, 2022

      Without A Trace
      6 min read

    • Article

      Without A Trace

      Sep 8, 2022

      Without A Trace
      6 min read

    • Article

      Child’s play

      Dec 21, 2021

      Child’s play
      5 min read

    • Article

      New Term BLUES

      Sep 2, 2020

      New Term BLUES
      3 min read

    • Article

      Good Bones

      Mar 19, 2020

      Good Bones
      18 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Together, Apart

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Together, Apart - Ben Hoffman

      TOGETHER,

      APART

      Together, Apart

      Copyright © 2014, 2018 by Ben Hoffman

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the copyright holders, except in the case of brief excerpts or quotes embedded in reviews, critical essays, or promotional materials where full credit is given to the copyright holders.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Hoffman, Ben.

      Together, Apart: stories / by Ben Hoffman

      p. cm.

      ISBN-13: 978-1-949344-03-5

      Acknowledgements:

      The Great Deschmutzing originally appeared in REAL: Regarding Arts & Letters (2012).

      Next Time They Will Wow Them With The Shiny Stuff originally appeared in Treehouse (2013).

      Your Baby’s Mother originally appeared in River Styx (2013).

      One For The Road originally appeared in Revolution House (2013).

      Three And A Half Paths To Happiness originally appeared in Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose (2013).

      Design and Production:

      Cover Art © 2014 by Nathan Pierce

      Originally published by Origami Zoo Press

      Published by

      BULL CITY PRESS

      1217 Odyssey Drive

      Durham, NC 27713

      www.BullCityPress.com

      TOGETHER,

      APART

      stories by

      Ben Hoffman

      BULL CITY PRESS

      DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      The Great Deschmutzing

      Next Time They Will Wow Them With The Shiny Stuff

      Your Baby’s Mother

      One For The Road

      You Can Get Wet In Cooperstown

      Three And A Half Paths To Happiness

      The Great Deschmutzing

      The first thing I want you to know is that none of us miss you. In life, Dad, you specialized in delusion (your own, mostly, but others’ too), so I want to nip in the bud any notions of loss. You might have guessed I would feel this way, but what about the girls, do they miss their granddad? Not Marvel, not a chance—you know she has long been tapped into all that cruelty coursing through the Sternberg bloodline from you to me to her. But little Ellie would surprise you, even Ellie doesn’t miss you. What seems like sadness is only that she has now for the first time seen death and is properly terrified. After your funeral, after we extricate ourselves from all your exes, Ellie starts crying in the car on the way to clean your junk out of the storage place, her head against the window, and Marvel rolls her eyes and teases, Baby. I slap Marvel and tell Ellie that I am scared of death too, that it never goes away, but that at least this time it didn’t get anyone we really care about. Next time, I tell her, we won’t be so lucky.

      Roy isn’t in the car to stop me. Here is your I-told-you-so moment: Roy left me. The day you died—before we knew—I come out of the bathroom, and Roy is on the stool at the counter with a bulging book bag. I wonder: did he pack that while I was in the bathroom?

      I’m going to leave, he tells me. Not for long. A few days is all.

      Do you want to talk about it? I ask.

      No, he says.

      Marvel walks through the room with her iPod in. She has turned part of her hair green.

      Why do you never want to talk? I ask.

      Questions like that are why I’m leaving.

      The girls will need dinner—Ellie, anyway; Marvel has caught not-eating from the other tenth grade girls—and I go get the chicken from the fridge and put it on the counter so it’s one less thing I’ll have to do later, after he leaves.

      Listen, Roy says. He puts his hand out to touch me, but he isn’t sure what to do, and he can’t take it back, so it hangs there between us. It’s like the X-Box game Ellie and I play, the one you hate.

      The one where you can hit someone after the play is over, and the ambulance comes on the field and carts them off while your player dances over them?

      Yes, says Roy. That one. You start out doing great, touchdowns, all that. And then, before you know it, you’re losing, you’re about to lose, and real quick before the game ends, you hit the reset button. Then you play it again, make sure you win.

      Ellie looks up from some book. She is seven, and she

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1