Wednesday, August 14, 2013

the last book I ever read (Mary Coin by Marisa Silver, excerpt eight)



from Marisa Silver's Mary Coin:

The three of them spend days sifting and organizing. The work is exhausting and unexpectedly emotional. Angela and Beatriz are practical about getting rid of useless fripperies like the plates with the unnerving big-eyed children Walker’s mother collected, while at the same time they are mindful that items that strike Walker as valueless will be of interest to someone else. They seem to hold in their minds the exact layout of any number of their relatives’ homes and know that a certain chair will fit perfectly in a cousin’s kitchen or that a brother-in-law who is a fool for a game of dominoes will find a great use for an old folding card table. Beatriz reveals herself to be the quiet keeper of Dodge lore and she makes sure that Walker holds on to a certain hooked rug his mother made when she was pregnant with him, even though they all agree that the pattern of amoebic blobs is hideous. Beatriz demands that the set of iced-tea tumblers go to Walker’s brother, whose young children will surely be delighted by the built-in glass straws just as Walker and his siblings were, and as George was before that. Each of the three is occasionally caught off guard by sorrow. When this happens, the other two pause in their zeal to toss and save until the moment passes.



No comments:

Post a Comment