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Quote by Lucia Berlin

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A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

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Lucia Berlin

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“When I think of him now, I see him in a way I couldn’t as a child. I see what a big brain he had. But I’ve lost the awe I had for him then. I held him simultaneously in awe and contempt when I was a girl. It was confusing and made me conflicted, just like he was. My awe has since turned to sympathy, even empathy sometimes, as I navigate the world as an adult and try to find my place in it. He always seemed to be trying to find his place in it. Even having lost the weird veneration that clashed with my disdain and hurt, I grieve for him. I grieve for what he, and we, could’ve been.”

“A memory unearthed itself: the way his wife had looked in the weeks following the news, the way she looked at things but never really saw them. The way she always seemed to be staring at something he couldn’t make out. The broken-down pits of her eyes, high on painkillers, opiates, staring at the wall, silent tears streaking drug-slacked cheeks. Maybe that had finished them off even before the divorce papers. Neither of them could live with what happened and neither wanted to watch the other one die so slowly.”