conversations.from: human
conversations.value: a description for a book titled A Good Distance about Prize, Pushcart, Cleveland with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author, a Pushcart Prize nominee and winner of the Cleveland Arts Prize for Literature, is also the author of The Rehearsal and the New York Times Notable Book Some Things That Stay , which won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first three paragraphs for this book
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A Good Distance
  Reality is not so much something against which memories can be checked as something established by those memories themselves.
  The magazine slips off her lap as she stands up. That chair, over there. She's never seen it before. Her mouth goes dry and she can feel goose bumps rise on her arms. She goes to the kitchen for some water.
  Rose opens the freezer door to get ice, but it's empty except for a carton of strawberry ice cream. She hates strawberry ice cream. Now she's getting mad. Who the hell put strawberry ice cream in her freezer?
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: two more paragraphs. Start with the sentence 'But Jennifer does not just appear, and Rose has dinner with Peter, Betsy, and the absence of Jennifer'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: But Jennifer does not just appear, and Rose has dinner with Peter, Betsy, and the absence of Jennifer. Peter does his best to cheer her up by talking about a science project that involves building a volcano. Betsy quietly clears the table and does the dishes. Rose could enjoy this, the facade of a family; this would be something she could live with.
  She thinks of calling Simon, but she's afraid she will beg him to forgive her for what she said, and she won't do that. She will not beg, so she does not call.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last five paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Jazz's words have triggered a memory I had forgotten. The few times we came to Cleveland when I was a kid, my mother would take Peter, Betsy, and me to the museums. She would read the plaques to us in a reverent tone, and I thought the information fine and glorious, worthy of the shiny brass stands. I trusted those words.
  The Natural History Museum was my favorite. The dinosaurs stood before us, enormous, ugly, yet graceful. Behind them were drawings of the world millions of years ago, the dry, flat tundra, the spiky green ferns, the endless blue sky. I was so used to sets and backdrops that part of me believed these scenes were really a rehearsal, that given months of practice, the dinosaurs would put on their skins and the play would begin. A backward way of looking at the dinosaurs invaded me; I thought they were something yet to come, not something long dead. I never mentioned this to my mother, who would have patiently explained how silly it was. I did tell my father, who said he knew just what I meant.
  I don't remember our coaxing Jazz into the dinosaur room when she was little, but what I do remember about that day was the new plaque in front of a dinosaur that I had visited with my mother when I was little. It said the creature wasn't a brontosaurus at all. The paleontologists had made a mistake. They had mixed two dinosaurs together and made one that had never existed at all. It was part apatosaurus, part camarasaurus, and part plaster. They were going to dismantle it sometime in the near future. I thought they were brave to admit their mistake. Who would know?
  It's my turn to say something. I thought I had so much to say, but maybe I've said too much. Maybe the simple truth is all I need. "She hated strawberry ice cream," I say, speaking up because it has begun to rain. "I loved her. I'll miss her." I feel Todd's hand in mine, and it's warm despite the cold weather. I take Jazz's hand, and we three are the family I have, and I am so proud.
  As my mother is lowered into the ground, the rain turns into a gale, a hard rain blowing sideways, edging its way under the canopy; not a gentle rain but one that will knock branches from trees and tear shingles off well-kept homes. I imagine my father directing this scene, waving his large hands, shouting, "More wind! Get that lightning going! Thunder!" But my mother is no longer here. She sits somewhere, on a patchwork quilt in the sunlight, watching us, waiting for my father to finish the show.