Don’t block the middle.

Cato has to be able to get the car in.” And Cato, God help him, said, “Thanks, Selma,” warm as anything, and my mother said, “Of course, sweetheart,” and that — sweetheart, to him, this morning — was the moment something in me that had been bending for twenty years quietly finished breaking, and went cold, and went clear.

Chapter 6 — What They Thought They Knew

Here is what they saw, when they looked at me that morning, on the rare occasions they looked at all.

They saw a pregnant woman in a dead man’s T-shirt, puffy-eyed, thirty-four years old and with nothing to show for it, no career they could name, no money they could see, no husband anymore, no fight left.

They saw the daughter who had never quite worked out, the one you had to make allowances for, the one whose life was a series of vague government jobs and long unexplained absences and a marriage to a man who was pleasant enough but, let’s be honest, just a consultant.