I feel like I swallowed a Magritte. Like on the inside, I’m made of clouds and floating eyes, green apples, and slowly rising men in bowler hats.
Will was making a speech, something about having been young and careless once, the sort of thing old-timers said when they issued a deathblow, as if they thought their sanctimonious ramblings disguised as empathy would be welcomed, but Evie was only half listening.
She hadn’t meant to get trapped in a conversation. That was the trouble with offering help to old people.
She knew what it was to wait for someone who would never come home. She knew that grief, like a scar, faded but never really went away.
With each shimmy, the bugle beads on their scandalously revealing costumes swung and shook. It was the sort of display Evie knew her mother would have found appalling – an example of the moral decay of the young generation. It was sexual and dangerous and thrilling, and Evie wanted more of it.
I’m from the health department. You’ve heard of Typhoid Mary? This fella’s got enough typhoid to start his own colony.
They see her differently now, as somebody. And isn’t that what everyone wants? To be seen?
Adina appealed to the sky. “We asked for rescue and you sent us incompetent rockstar pirates with a broken ship and perfect abs?” “Thank you, God,” Petra said.
The world expected girls to pluck and primp and put on heels. Meanwhile, boys dressed in rumpled T-shirts and baggy pants and misplace their combs, and yet you were suppose to fall at their feet? Unacceptable.
Might. Is there any opiate more powerful than that word?
For once, Evie didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t really thought of her uncle as very human. He was more like a textbook who occasionally remembered to put on a tie. But it was clear that he was, indeed, human, with a deep wound named Rotke.
I told myself it was the snow – she couldn’t possibly get to Philadelphia on the roads. I told myself a hundred lies. Children do that. It’s amazing the sorts of things you’ll make yourself believe.
Everything is randomly connected.
There is a dualism inherent in democracy – opposing forces pushing against each other, always. Culture clashes. Different belief systems. All coming together to create this country. But this balance takes a great deal of energy.
In them, she saw the sham of her life laid out like a book, the foolish belief that she, that anyone, could escape the consequences of this world, could flee from death. That was the deceit. The true serpent in the garden.
We’re still expected to color within the lines of accepted femininity, and women who step out of those lines are usually attacked, whether verbally or physically.
Careful there, Poet. I might start to believe you.
Beauty, grace, and charm my foot. It’s a school for sadists with good tea-serving skills.
I thought I was having an existential crisis, but it was nothing. Please don’t tailgate: body in trunk.
I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I’ve got to think.