CROSSING THE LINE

Get a glimpse into author Jhumpa Lahiri's first ever short story collection with this nugget about a couple finding community, and breaking a boundary

Roman Stories In 'The Boundary', one family vacations in the Roman countryside, though we see their lives through the eyes of the caretaker's daughter, who nurses a wound from her family's immigrant past. Shop Now

We fell back into our old routines, though for months I was adrift. I abandoned the short story— with those pages, I realized, I’d been luring myself onto a precipice. What had happened between L and me made for a dull premise, it never would have worked. Yet for a moment, on that island, my embellished version of events had fused with reality: it had driven me to wound and demean my wife, in a way that she, with her discreet behavior, had never done to me in our long years of marriage.

I’d already decided, before Christmas, that I wouldn’t be going to P’s party that winter. On the off chance that L and her family were in town, I had my excuse prepared. But then, just before Christmas, P got sick again. Her decline was rapid, until the same good doctor who’d saved her life said there was nothing left to do.