More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
And no matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.
What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind? She has learned to step between the thorny weeds, but there are some cuts that cannot be avoided—a memory, a photograph, a name.
March is such a fickle month. It is the seam between winter and spring—though seam suggests an even hem, and March is more like a rough line of stitches sewn by an unsteady hand, swinging wildly between January gusts and June greens. You don’t know what you’ll find, until you step outside.
“The old gods may be great, but they are neither kind nor merciful. They are fickle, unsteady as moonlight on water, or shadows in a storm. If you insist on calling them, take heed: be careful what you ask for, be willing to pay the price.” She leans over Adeline, casting her in shadow. “And no matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.”
No, Adeline has decided she would rather be a tree, like Estele. If she must grow roots, she would rather be left to flourish wild instead of pruned, would rather stand alone, allowed to grow beneath the open sky. Better that than firewood, cut down just to burn in someone else’s hearth.
Stories are a way to preserve one’s self. To be remembered. And to forget.
Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.
Her eyes are still shut tight, and perhaps that is why she doesn’t notice that the sun has slipped behind the village at her back, that dusk has given way to dark. Adeline keeps praying, and doesn’t notice at all.
A secret kept. A record made. The first mark she left upon the world, long before she knew the truth, that ideas are so much wilder than memories, that they long and look for ways of taking root.
The darkness has granted her freedom from death, perhaps, but not from this. Not from suffering.
Being forgotten, she thinks, is a bit like going mad. You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real. After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered? It’s like that Zen koan, the one about the tree falling in the woods. If no one heard it, did it happen? If a person cannot leave a mark, do they exist?
“All things have names,” she says. “Names have purpose. Names have power.” She tips her glass his way. “You know that, or else you wouldn’t have stolen mine.”
He studies her, squinting at her as if she’s a book, not a person; something to be read. She stares back at him like he’s a ghost. A miracle. An impossible thing.
“Small places make for small lives. And some people are fine with that. They like knowing where to put their feet. But if you only walk in other people’s steps, you cannot make your own way. You cannot leave a mark.”
Henry leaves, the front door swinging shut behind him, but for once, the sound doesn’t make her stomach drop. It’s just a door. Not a period. An ellipsis. A to-be-continued.
His heart has a draft. It lets in light. It lets in storms. It lets in everything.
You hate olives and people who talk during movies. You love milkshakes and people who can laugh until they cry. You think it’s a crime to turn ahead to the end of a book. When you’re angry you get quiet, and when you’re sad you get loud, and you hum when you’re happy.” “And?” “And I haven’t heard you hum in years.” Her hands fall away. “But I’ve seen you eat a shit ton of olives.”
“I call her the ghost in the frame.”
This full circle is about to blow my mind
“I can’t hold a pen. I can’t tell a story. I can’t wield a weapon, or make someone remember. But art,” she says with a quieter smile, “art is about ideas. And ideas are wilder than memories. They’re like weeds, always finding their way up.”
And Henry wonders how she can see, but of course, she can’t. That’s the point.
This is honestly so heartbreaking
“You can’t make people love you, Hen. If it’s not a choice, it isn’t real.”
He has asked the wrong god for the wrong thing, and now he is enough because he is nothing. He is perfect, because he isn’t there.
And she is laughing, tears streaming down her cheeks, and he wants to wipe them away, but his hands are her hands, and she is drawing.
How does a ceiling bring you closer to heaven? If God is so large, why build walls to hold Him in?
“Perhaps that’s why you cursed me as you did. So you would have some company. So someone would remember you.”
But there is no trace of yellow in his eyes. In fact, they are a new and lurid shade of green. It will take years for her to learn the meaning of that color, to understand it as amusement.
The only way Addie knows how to keep going is to keep going forward. They are Orpheus, she is Eurydice, and every time they turn back, she is ruined.
“Because time is cruel to all, and crueler still to artists. Because vision weakens, and voices wither, and talent fades.” He leans close, twists a lock of her hair around one finger. “Because happiness is brief, and history is lasting, and in the end,” he says, “everyone wants to be remembered.”
What is the point in planting seeds? Why tend them? Why help them grow? Everything crumbles in the end. Everything dies.
“I love you too,” she says. She wants it to be true.
I’m gonna throw up
Her grip tightens around his, and his tightens back, and they hold on until it hurts, as if any minute someone might try to pull them apart, as if the other might slip free, and disappear.
Bro this is so heartbreaking
“Want?” he sneers. “Want is for children. If this were want, I would be rid of you by now. I would have forgotten you centuries ago,” he says, a bitter loathing in his voice. “This is need. And need is painful but patient. Do you hear me, Adeline? I need you. As you need me. I love you, as you love me.”
And this, he decides, is what a good-bye should be. Not a period, but an ellipsis, a statement trailing off, until someone is there to pick it up. It is a door left open. It is drifting off to sleep.
That time always ends a second before you’re ready. That life is the minutes you want minus one.
All works currently on display at the Modern Museum of Art exhibit In Search of the Real Addie LaRue curated by Beatrice Caldwell, PhD, Columbia.
why does this make me bawl omg 😭
