The Paper Palace

by Miranda Cowley Heller

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. —Percy Bysshe Shelley, “To a Skylark”

I thought: now there is no turning back. No more regrets for what I haven’t done. Now only regrets for what I have done. I love him, I hate myself; I love myself, I hate him. This is the end of a long story.

The shit always builds up, and surviving it is the key, but this I will not learn for many years.

Clearly no one ever told her to hide her light under a bushel.”

I fucked her husband last night. And the thought makes me want to do it again.

He’s a teenager. He’s supposed to be rude to his mother. It’s all part of the separation process.”

There is no such thing as unforgivable between people who love each other. But even as I’m thinking it, I know it’s not really true.

“In my day, we simply divorced and remarried,” Mum said. “So much simpler. Refreshing, even. Like buying a new suit of clothes.”

Divorce is good for children.” She stood up and began clearing away a few lingering dinner forks. “Unhappy people are always more interesting.”

“Shhh . . .” he says. “Way, way out. Beyond the break. I’m staring at your husband right now.” He plunges his finger inside me,

Anna is being sent away to boarding school in New Hampshire for high school.

If it was just Peter in the water, would I swim out to save him?

“My ratty old black bathing suit makes you horny?” “My ratty old white wife does, actually.”

licks my breasts like a big sloppy dog.

“Her skin is translucent. It’s probably all that religion.”

That’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’”

Leo has disappeared and left no forwarding number, so he never learns that both of his sons have drowned.

Knowledge can be power, but it can also be poison.

“Just so we are clear,” he says, “I will never love anyone the way I love you.”

I love him too much to risk losing him.

The waiting begins early, I think. The lies begin early. But so do dreams and hopes and stories.

You didn’t deserve this. You did something terrible, I say, but I did something worse.

I have two choices. One I can’t have. One I don’t deserve to have.

Does letting go mean losing everything you have, or does it mean gaining everything you never had?

he claims she’s still a dynamo in the sack. Which I assume means she gives good blow jobs.” “Mum, that’s disgusting.” “I agree. It is very disturbing. She has such a small mouth.”

He has some perfect combination of kindness, mean-spirited wit, and I-don’t-give-a-fuck that makes her happy.

“Flip a coin, Eleanor. If the answer you get disappoints you, do the opposite.”

If both are right, then both are wrong.

I’d far rather die from diarrhea and dehydration than eat gray cardboard meat.”