Play Nice

by Rachel Harrison

She doesn’t think she’s pretty because Mom used to tell her she wasn’t, but I love looking at Leda’s face. It’s art.

Ouch

I’m grateful for it—the proof. The hard evidence. I wish I had more of it with Alexandra. There’s little to validate the memories of my mother. Despite what Dad and Leda and Daphne may think, I do have them—memories—but they’re hazy. Brief and confused, like waking from a vivid dream, one you can’t articulate anything that happened in, only that it happened, and it made you feel intensely. No stains from my mother. Only scars.

I wave him off. “I don’t get nervous.” “I do,” he says. “Did I lock the car?”

Me too tommy

But so often, being right means nothing but winning a round of a losing game. What an empty victory.

Even more shocking than the curse, an apology!

Laughing. Throaty, hideous, soul-chilling laughter. Evil. Someone, something, laughing at me as I cried.

“It’s nice out,” Leda says. “Let’s go for a walk.” I doubt she ate a pastry, but merely being in their presence is enough to set her mind to burning calories.

Does leda have an ED

Conveniently, she left this out of the book. Or maybe what’s written is faithful to her recollection, to how it played out in her mind. One person’s truth is another’s fiction.

There was a malevolent energy in the kitchen with us, but I’m pretty sure it’s the kind that exists in every house, in every family, in all of us on our worst nights. Mom surrendered to it, to her worst, and couldn’t take responsibility.

I’ve historically kept a pretty laissez-faire attitude about cheating. Monogamy is for suckers.

Um...

If we don’t remember something, how can we be sure it never happened?

There are few things on this earth that interest me less than Microsoft Excel.

Well i 1000000000% disagree

“Don’t be cute,” I tell him. “It’s a turn-off.”

Ugh pretening to hate romance is a turn off

Men are never selfish. They’re smart. Women are always selfish. You want to be single? Selfish. You’re a wife and mother and do anything other than dote on your husband and children? Selfish. I want you and your sisters to learn to take that word as a compliment. Anyone who says that to you is trying to discourage you from doing what you want. That’s how you know you’re doing something right.

“Some lessons can only be taught by regret.”

I think it’s just easier to call someone crazy than it is to admit that they could be right. Easier to call someone crazy than to confront the nuance of their circumstance, than to accept the callous cruelty that exists in the world we live in, the evil out there that revels in our suffering.