On "Construction Zone," by Harvey Sutlive (2692 words) ****

What a wonderful anecdote on married life and kids and the desire to have them. Sutlive does well in this story what is very easy to do badly--he tells the story from two perspectives, the husband's and the wife's. Part of how he does this so smoothly is by using a third-person narrative, but it's easy to see where the perspectives shift. And watching those perspectives shift is fascinating. These are characters wrestling with life-changing events, but as in life those life-changing events are put into the everyday. They're as likely to worry about who's going to drive as about what a new child would mean for them. In fact, in some ways, they'd rather dwell on the former than think about the latter--it's too hard to think about. Read the story here at Off Course.