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“Why is it called a grandfather clock and not a grandmother clock?” her eldest granddaughter, Poppy, asked once. “Because only a man would find the need to announce it every time he performed his job as required,” Louise replied.
“She’s three, Mother. Perhaps we can wait to indoctrinate her against the patriarchy for a few years?”
And even in the grips of her waning shock and rising fear, she couldn’t help but recognize the amusing irony: that now, when she could barely walk—she was going to have to run.
But she quickly discovered the universal problem with sexting that no one ever discussed—there were not enough hands. How were you supposed to hold the phone and tap out the play-by-play narration of what you’re doing and actually do what you’re dirty-narrating? That was why she’d dropped the doing part a few sexting sessions ago. Grant didn’t seem to be any the wiser.
She’d learned long ago not to fight it, to make space for it, the way one might for a new tchotchke on the shelf, a souvenir from a trip you didn’t want to forget. That was all grief was, really, Louise had determined—remembering.
“What? You know you have to take a plane to get there, yes? You hate flying.” “Well, I hate Metamucil, too, but it gets the job done.”
W section of her plastic pill case,
I appreciate the pill box letting us know what day it is
“Nothing in life goes according to plan. Nothing. And the sooner you accept that, the better off you’ll be.”
She was so young. She had no idea how long life was. People always said life was short, but it wasn’t. Not really. You could cram so many different lives into one. Be so many different people.
“You’re going to . . . you know.” “Have carnal relations? Certainly. If the man is willing. I’ve found most of them are.” “Please don’t say ‘carnal relations.’ ” “OK. Sex, then.” “Please don’t say that, either.” “Oh, I know you think it’s only for lithe twenty-year-olds. I did, too, when I was your age. But if I recall, it wasn’t all that good. I do hope boys have gotten better at it.”
“Hush,” came the old woman’s sharp reply. “I’m trying to think of something else you’re good at.”
A fox may grow gray, but never good.
“Don’t cut bangs, though.” “Why not?” Tanner wondered if that was some amateur criminal move—maybe the first thing police looked for in a change of appearance was a new fringe. “You’d look terrible with bangs. You don’t have the right-shaped face.” “Oh.”
They were doing just fine on their own (they were not) and didn’t need some man to save them (gender aside, they absolutely did).
“Sometimes it just feels like we still spend so much time trying to teach the house not to catch on fire, instead of teaching the arsonist not to light it.”
“You do know it’s safer to fly in a plane than it is to ride in a car, don’t you?” Tanner said. Mrs. Wilt opened one of her eyes and found Tanner with it, leaving the other one squeezed shut. “You do know guns can’t load themselves in glove compartments, don’t you?”
She tried to swallow again, but her throat was dry. “I sometimes feel like you’re the only person in this whole world who . . . understands me.” Mrs. Wilt squeezed her hand once more and sighed. “Oh, Tanner. I just understand what it’s like to be a woman.”
But Tanner, of course, like most daughters, would make many more choices throughout her life that Candace would likely not agree with, causing a fair amount of stress and anxiety, which her mother would then naturally reabsorb and view as her own shortcoming somehow.
“That’s the way to go,” she said. “In your sleep, when you don’t even know what’s happening.” And then she added, in a quieter voice, “I just don’t want to be alone when it happens.”
“Don’t let them put me in the ground without my lipstick.”
In life, there were two kinds of friends: friends who would wish you well on your journey to battle, and friends who would jump in the trenches with you.
To them, she was a mother, and once a mother, you’re never quite a fully formed person in the eyes of your children.
sell it on the black market and buy a yacht to sail around the world taking lovers in every port (Louise found this option brought her the most joy to imagine),
