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“Friends,” by Grace Paley | The New Yorker

newyorker.com · 4,587 words · saved by 1 readers

Fiction, from 1979: “I don’t think it’s right to complain about the character of the dying or start hustling all their motives into the spotlight like that.”

Save this story Save this story Photograph by Ernst Haas / Getty To put us at our ease, to quiet our hearts as she lay dying, our dear friend Selena said, Life, after all, has not been an unrelieved horror—you know, I did have many wonderful years with her. She pointed to a child who leaned out of a portrait on the wall—long brown hair, white pinafore, head and shoulders forward. Eagerness, said Susan. Ann closed her eyes. On the same wall three little girls were photographed in a schoolyard. They were in furious discussion; they were holding hands. Right in the middle of the coffee table, fra

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