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Stephanie Dupal Biography

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“Then there's nothing left but the long quiet. Far in the distance, haze rises from the desert and dances ghostly against the sun. Even when things are hazy and out of reach, we find comfort in the stories we tell each other to keep our hearts beating. There is beauty in that, at least.”

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“We will give the rest of them names--Turkey Feathers, Lonesome Pine, Old Sagebrush Mustache--western names as hardy as desert bones, blanched crisp as the napkins and paper placemats on which I'll take notes. You'll tug your ear or scratch your nose, which we understand as signals. The diner patrons won't notice. They never do. And we'll go on speaking to each other in code.”

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“He cradles the egg like treasure and shows me the catalog of the Viking bearded seal figurines. Before this series, Kinder launched the Russian bears, the Canadian caribou, the French poodles—I remember a mime, a pastry chef, and a can-can dancer with a jaunty red beret—the Majorcan hedgehogs, and the Egyptian camels, painted to resemble the gods of hieroglyphs. Ridiculous trinkets forming an international circus of moronic animals.”

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“On the street, cars hurtled toward their destinations in a symphony of sound. Trees lined the pavement in a powerful show of survival: here they stood in this urban landscape, long-limbed and capable. And green, so green, sunlight pierced through their leaves and marked the concrete with dappled grays. I made my way home to my family, one among a million travelers crossing the city’s great canvas in quick strokes. Everywhere there were colors by the thousands—tint upon tint, shade after shade—of everything the spectrum of beauty satisfied. Everywhere, there were signs of the renewal and restoration of life.”

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“Her boy—this child she raised on her own, in whom she placed her purest faith, to whom she read on countless evenings books he loved, which she found dull, for whom she baked special birthday cakes in the shapes of superheroes, and with whom she whooped and hollered around the backyard while pointing cowboy sticks against darkening skies—was no longer her ally. Bang, bang.”

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“In Gretons-sur-Mer, the villagers, through the auspicious care of the Bouletiers, returned to their human form. Sometimes they wondered, looking at their reflection on the surface of water or on the rounded shine of a pewter pitcher, if a part of them had remained beastly, if the whiskers atop their lips had been there before. They wondered, stroking the spot, and mused on their transformation, to that time of war when the fabric of life was briefly woven with magic.”

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“There are little things nobody warns you about when you’re waiting your turn to die: how you’ll miss a heavy homemade quilt, stitched just right, covering two bodies; how you’ll wait for evening light to fall on the painted walls of a shared bedroom; how you’ll hear the song of finches and a woman’s voice cluster in your head long after they’re gone; how you’ll remember the taste of Southern honest-to-God good cooking shared between two bowls and two plates and two sets of spoons, forks, and knives; how you’ll forget the way the air smells when there’s nothing but love pouring out your lungs because there’s no one left to breathe in all that love.”

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