This is the writer's voice, new fiction from the New Yorker. I'm Deborah Treisman,

fiction at the New Yorker. On this episode of the writer's voice,

we'll hear Sarah Swanion Bynum

read her story, bedtime story,

from the April 27th 2020 issue of the magazine.

Bynum is the author of two novels, Madeline is Sleeping, and Miss Hemple Chronicles.

Her story collection, Likes, will be published in September.

Now here's Sarah Swanion-Bynum.

Bedtime story.

One long winter night, Ezra Washington's wife walks in on him telling their younger child

stories from his rollerblading days. The room is as dark as a coal mine and his voice floats sonorously from somewhere

in the vicinity of the trundle bed. He is remembering a time long before the child was born,

a time when he was a poor graduate student living in New York City

with nothing but his own body and mind for entertainment.

Saturdays were spent in the narrow park that runs alongside

the Hudson River, blading up and down the path very fast as if his happiness depended on it.

She was coming straight at me, he says.

To the right of me was the river,

and to the left a pack of bicyclists.

She was coming around the bend with a look of panic in her eyes.

From the doorway his wife wonders silently if he is speaking about her, the younger self who on the

three or four occasions on which she'd joined him may have

...