Sublime

Sister Mary Scullion is no martyr. She’s a cheerful soul who’s having a wonderful time living out the existence that best suits her nature and most brings her to life. It just so happens that she takes care of a lot of other people in the process—but everyone can sense her genuine enjoyment behind the mission, which is ultimately why her presence i

Marian offered her volunteer services as a surrogate grandma.

soundproofed cellar, she said, which used to be for things like piano practising. But now the R cellar was where Aunt Vidala did the Corrections. Corrections were a kind of punishment, for straying beyond the rules.

In Savannah, she recommended that members of the writing workshop eat at the Grey Market, where she worked part-time. It is a New York bodega-inspired offshoot of the Grey, Mashama Bailey’s fine-dining Savannah restaurant. Bailey, a Black woman who moved between Georgia and New York throughout her childhood, learned to cook first from the women in

the spring of her heroine’s errors, and of many of ours. That spring is a philanthropy, and even a generosity, secretly founded on gentility.

Like many girls her age, Maggie is laid out before the world, unafraid, unpopulated. Men come to insert themselves, they turn a girl into a city.

She had a stash of such aprons, each with a seasonal theme—pumpkins, snowflakes—and at least five crisp, striped shirtwaist dresses.