The Cliffs

by J. Courtney Sullivan

The Catholic god did not stick to them, but the Catholic guilt was another matter.

Sometimes the tragedies of a person’s life didn’t happen neatly, single file, one at a time, but all at once, so that it was impossible to know how you felt about any part of the whole.

The definition of a lifetime, as she saw it, was when the people most important to you wouldn’t recognize the ones who previously filled their roles.

Marilyn was ecstatic to learn that mother love was every bit as intense as the love she had known before, but more beautiful. Steadying. Love that didn’t unsettle her, but instead made her comfortable in her skin, and in the world.

You have to hand it to men, they’ve managed to convince us that the things that make women powerful are weaknesses. Motherhood is the most radical act in the world, and we’ve turned it into tapioca pudding. What’s more toothless, more invisible in this culture, than a mother?”

Human beings did so much damage to one another just by being alive. To the people they loved most, and to the ones they knew so little about that they could convince themselves they weren’t even people.