What the Dead Know

Reading was not a fallback position for her but an ideal state of being.

There are, of course, an infinite number of places where one is not, yet only one place where one actually is.

But you were a goody-goody, you said.' 'Even goody-goodies think about such things. In fact, I would say that's what defines us. We're always thinking about the things we don't dare do, figuring out where the lines are drawn, so we can go right up to the edge of things, then plead innocence on the ground of a technicality.

Relationships are chess for women," he said. "They can see the whole board, plan way ahead. They're the queens, after all. We're the kings, limited to one square in any direction, on defense for the whole fucking game.

Children can be happy when their parents are miserable. But a parent is never happier than her unhappiest child.

Lately she’d been listening to books on tapes, fat womanly novels as she thought of them. Maeve Binchy, Gail Godwin, Marian Keyes. Pat Conroy—

It turned out that the United States was a desperately lonely place, where everyone had been worrying that a single missed phone call might change one’s destiny.

Kay came to realize that she preferred her books to other people’s company. Reading was not a fallback position for her but an ideal state of being.

Man, teachers and cops and their part-time jobs. We do the heavy lifting for society, and we still need OT gigs. Nothing ever changes, does it?” Willoughby

This was the second job she had lost in the last eight months, and for the same reasons. Not a people person. Not a self-starter. Showed no initiative. She wanted to argue that minimum-wage jobs such as this shouldn’t require initiative. She knew how to live inside an hour, how to weather the slow passing of time. She could endure boredom better than anyone she knew. Wasn’t that enough? Apparently not.

Her classmates were gossiping their way into adolescence, literally and figuratively.

Talking about the characters in a book she had enjoyed felt like gossiping about friends.

Who looks at a woman’s elbows, you sick fuck?” “I’m just saying it’s the one place that a woman can’t hide her age. My wife told me. She lemons hers sometimes. Cuts a lemon in half, hollows it out, fills it with olive oil and kosher salt and sits at her vanity, arms up like a little bunny.” Lenhardt demonstrated the pose. “I tell you, Kevin, it’s like going to bed with a fucking tossed salad.

He gave her his best smile. He loved women who brought him food. Even when they were plain and unattractive, like this dumpy, pockmarked girl, he loved them.

Relationships are chess for women,” he said. “They can see the whole board, plan way ahead. They’re the queens, after all. We’re the kings, limited to one square in any direction, on defense for the whole fucking