the last book I ever read (David Plante's Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three, excerpt one)

from Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three (New York Review Books Classics) by David Plante:

“How can you like listening to me talk on and on?”

I said, “I used to listen to my mother—”

The corner of her upper lip rose and her face took on the hardness of an old whore who, her eyes red with having wept for so long, suddenly decides to be hard. “Your mother?” she snapped. “I don’t want to hear about your mother!”