Annabelle?” Ovivia says gently. “This is about you. But also... me. All of us. And... my little sisters. Every woman. Every person, but especially – every female person.
Something has happened to her and about her, and yet it is hard to grasp this fact. Her run is larger than her, and yet her daily life is mostly just her solitary steps, the rhythm of them, her daily aches, her loneliness, and the flashes of the nightmares that she experiences daily. It seems that she’s become a person with a message, but she’s unclear what the message is. Maybe because the message is still fighting its way through the grief and guilt to get to her.
Fragile things become undone at a frightening speed.
Here is what happens when your mother worries: You become secretly worried. Anxiety plays in your background like bad grocery store music. You pace and count stuff and wake at night, your heart beating too fast. You pretend to be brave, and do stuff to prove you’re not a scared person like she is.
Why does anyone do anything impossible? To be bigger than the big bastard.
I hunt around in my purse. There are no more caramels or fuzzy Altoids, but I find what might be a cough drop. I hold it out to Henry, and he gives me a scared look, like I’ve just pulled out a knife.
Against the sky, she is exquisitely elsewhere.
Who’s crazier, anyway: people who struggle honestly, or the people who act like they never do?
It’s a twisted version of Green Eggs and Ham: I could panic in a train! I could panic on a plane! I could panic on the stairs – I could panic anywhere!
Prunus persica: peach. While the fruit of this plant is juicy and sweet, the seed-like the seeds of cherries, apples, plums and apricots-is full of poison. Yes, that pit you throw out is a little woody ball packed with cyanide. The Seed Moral of this story? Be careful of what’s at the center-yours or anyone else’s.
Annabelle is rarely relaxed anymore, not even in her own house. So here, her panic is rising. It’s a tsunami of dread and obligation and the knowledge of bathroom use in small places.
If this is where we do female bonding, aren’t we supposed to put on an Aretha Franklin song?
The sky is only now turning morning pink. I have that leaving-early-on-a trip feeling, where you’re tired but excited and you get to see what’s going on in the hours when you’re usually still asleep.
A human heart is the size of two hands clasped together. Imagine your own hands joined, or your hand in someone else’s, because that is what hands are for, and what hearts are for: holding each other. This can be very, very hard to remember when hearts have been so broken.
Ass-kissing is the last resort of any anxious person who’s in over their head.
Her whole life is devouring her, slow second by slow second.
Nothing is more intimate than someone who knows your heart. Nothing is more dangerous than someone who knows your heart. Holding someone’s heart like that is power.
Maybe she’s meant to be alone. Unmarried. Deliciously free of people’s expectations. It sort of sounds like heaven, actually.
People like to have something to turn down, though. They want to be able to say no to some things, because it makes their yes more meaningful.
That night, after we turned out the light, the red digital numbers of the bedside clock stared me down. I tried to ignore it, but of all household objects, bedside clocks are the most insistent, more than beeping refrigerators and door alarms, more than kitchen timers and even blaring radios. It’s the strong silent types that get you.