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403 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2015
Sighs, the rhythms of our heartbeats, contractions of childbirth, orgasms, all flow into time just as the pendulum clocks placed next to one another son beat in unison. Fireflies in a tree flash on and off as one .The sun comes up and it foes down. The moon waxes and wanes and usually the morning paper hits the porch at six thirty-five.
Time stops when someone dies.
Cars drive by. Rich people in cars never look at people on the street, at all. Poor ones always do . . . in fact it sometimes seems they’re just driving around, looking at people on the street. I’ve done that. Poor people wait a lot. Welfare, unemployment lines, laundromats, phone booths, emergency rooms, jails, etc.
I don’t mind telling people awful things if I can make them funny.
"What else have I missed? How many times in my life have I been, so to speak, on the back porch, not the front porch? What would have been said to me that I failed to hear? What love might there have been that I didn’t feel?”
"After a long time the cranes did come. Hundreds, just as the sky turned blue-gray. They had landed in slow motion on brittle legs. Washing, preening on the bank. Everything was suddenly black and white and gray, a movie after the credits, churning.
As the cranes drank upstream the silver water beneath them was shot into dozens of thin streamers. Then very quickly the birds left, in whiteness, with the sound of shuffling cards."
"Women’s voices always rise two octaves when they talk to cleaning women or cats."
"The only reason I have lived so long is that I let go of my past. Shut the door on grief on regret on remorse. If I let them in, just one self-indulgent crack, whap, the door will fling open gales of pain ripping through my heart blinding my eyes with shame breaking cups and bottles knocking down jars shattering windows stumbling bloody on spilled sugar and broken glass terrified gagging until with a final shudder and sob I shut the heavy door. Pick up the pieces one more time."
"Que outras coisas perdi? Quantas vezes na minha vida terei estado sentada no alpendre das traseiras, não no da frente? O que teria sido dito que não consegui ouvir? Que amor podia ter havido que eu não senti?
São perguntas vãs. O único motivo por que vivi tanto tempo foi ter largado o meu passado. Fechar a porta à dor, ao arrependimento, ao remorso. Se os deixar entrar, basta uma nesga autocomplacente, zás, a porta abre-se por inteiro e eis que entra uma torrente de dor que me rasga o coração e me cega os olhos de vergonha, parte chávenas e garrafas, derruba frascos e estilhaça janelas, faz-me tropeçar, ensanguentada, em açúcar entornado e em vidros partidos, sufocando de pavor até que, num último estremecimento e soluço, fecho a porta pesada. Apanho os cacos uma vez mais."
"Tudo o que de bom e mau aconteceu na minha vida foi previsível e inevitável, especialmente as escolhas e as acções que garantiram que agora estou totalmente sozinha."