Her left foot on the footstool, because of her arthritis. Or knitting scarves, for the angels on the front lines
She doesn’t bother with the cross and star pattern used by many of the other wives, its not a challenge.
She doesn’t speak to me, unless she can avoid it I am a reproach to her; and a necessity
She wanted me to feel that I could not come into the house unless she said so. There is push and shove, these days over such toeholds.
Her blue waist, thickened, her left hand on the ivory head of her cane, the large diamonds on the ring finger.
Try to think of it from their point of view, she [Aunt Lydia] said, her hands clasped and wrung together, her nervous pleading smile. It isnt easy for them.
She had a cigarette, and she put it between her lips and gripped it between her lips.
She was then a woman who might bend the rules. But what did I have, to trade?
You can sit down. I dont make a practice of it, just this time.
I’ve read your file. As far as I’m concerned, this is like a business transaction.
I wanted her to turn into an older sister, a motherly figure, someone who would understand and protect me
Serena Joy didn’t do this herself, she made speeches instead, but she presented this failure of hers as a sacrifice she was making
How furious she must be, now that she’s been taken at her word.
I wonder how she manages to get herself noticed. I think it must be hard
Possibly she’ll put a hand on my shoulder, to steady herself, as if I’m a piece of furniture
She’d have to redirect her energies into something convincingly domestic, she had the intention of passing them off as ancestors
It’s the scent of prepubescent girls, of gifts young children used to give their mothers, for Mother’s Day
Even at her age she feels the urge to wreathe herself in flowers…you can’t use them anymore, you’re withered. They’re the genital organs of plants.
She leans back, inhales deeply. I on the contrary move forward
She likes to keep him waiting
she is in control of the process and thus the product
some blitzkrieg, some kamikaze, committed on the swelling genetalia of the flowers
I felt I was an intruder in a territory that ought to be hers
She said I was poaching on a another woman’s ground
I am leashed, it looks like, manacled; cobwebbed, that’s closer.