Image List

1. "When I lay in bed next to Lecia's solid,sleeping form, that picture of Grandma's pale arm with the ants would rear up behind my closed eyes."(103)
2. "They held each other while they cried, or fell to their knees, or screamed up at the sky. But you could tell by the moans an bellows those grown men let out that their grief had nowhere to go."(104)
3."The truth--that death came in a big blind swipe--was gradually taking from in my head, picking up force and gaining motion like its own kind of storm."(105)
4."I can still see Daddy coming down the beach toward us. He had his black swim trunks on, and black basketball Keds. He'd put on a red Lone Star baseball cap and was slipping into his blue work shirt while he came toward us. He had the easy glide of men who labor for an hourly wage, a walk that wastes no effort and refuses to rush. His barrel chest and legs were pale. There was a blodd colored scar up one shin...On the same leg, just above the knee, there was a knot of ironblue shrapnel bulging under the skin left over from the war."(109-110)
5. "I'd never seen a shark up close before, and what struck me was how chinless it was, its mouth drawn low down where its neck should have been. This gave it a deep, snaggle-toothed frown and kept it from looking very smart. plus his body was one big muscle..The shark meanwhile was thrashing from side to side in the air." (111-112)
6. "The tentacles stayed wrapped around Lecia's leg, which had started to swell up. Up near her hip joint the tentacles came together where the bubblehead had been. They fanned out down her leg all the way to the ankle." (115)
7." Mother and I are flying underwater like light green phantoms. It reminds me of the Matisse painting that she razored out of one of her art books and taped over the bathtub. In it the woman dance nude in a circle. And we are like those huge women, fluid and pale, Mother and I. Ahead of us in the green water, I can see Lecia's pale white feet like the neon tailfin of a mermaid slipping away just out of reach"(117)
8."Nor can I figure what exactly led to Mother's near-fatal attack of Nervous. Maybe drinking caused Mother to go crazy, or maybe the craziness was just sort of standing in line to happen and the drinking actually staved it off a while. All i know is that first Mother was drinking, then she and Daddy were fighting worse than ever, and finally they were hauling her away in leather fourpoint restraints." (125)