“You shouldn’t brag,” Denise’s mother said out-of-the-blue while she was washing dishes.
“Where’s this coming from? I haven’t been bragging,” Denise mumbled.
“That’s probably true, but it’s easy to do. You may not even be aware of it.”
“Then you must brag also, Mom. It’s so easy to do.”
“Probably. Once, while I was in the hospital, a nurse pointed at me and said to another nurse, ‘Doesn’t she look just like Jackie 0?’ You know, Kennedy’s wife.”
Diane Payne lives in a small town in Arkansas with her teenaged daughter and endless critters. She teaches English at University of Arkansas-Monticello, where she's also faculty advisor of their literary magazine, The Foliate Oak (http:// www.foliateoak.uamont.edu). Diane is the author of the novel Burning Tulips.