Donna the Slacker

“But surely, if you trust God, you can believe the bad moments pass, and the good memories are worth enough.”
― Helen Hooven Santmyer, ...And Ladies of the Club

“It’s been a decade or more since I set eyes on Daryll, and it’s immediately clear that the intervening years have been less than kind to him. He’s prematurely stooped, with a ruddy complexion and a nest of black hair that’s going thin at the crown. His once-proud nose has been broken at least once, its bulbous tip stained with a frantic network of purple veins that run through his skin like rivers. But then he’s three inches taller than me, and at least six inches bulkier all round, so in some ways he’s actually rather impressive, a sort of angry bulldozer on legs.”
― Andy Marr, A Matter of Life and Death

“Well,’ my mother says the next day as I arrive by her bedside with a fresh pot of tea. ‘What should we do?’

I look at her, puzzled. ‘Do?’ Until now, I thought we’d spend our time together doing very little, or nothing at all, and that I’d be miserable, although I’d hide it and deny it. I imagined, in other words, that we’d see one another, as we always have, across a divide.

‘The rain seems to be holding off for now,’ my mother continues, glancing out of her window. ‘Perhaps we could take a walk in the garden?’

‘You think you can walk?’

‘No. But there’s a wheelchair on the back porch. Do you feel fit enough to push me around?’

‘Well,’ I say, brightly. ‘That would certainly make a nice change.’

My mother snaps her head around and glowers at me. Confused, I replay the final lines of conversation in my head, then panic. ‘No, no,’ I say, backtracking. ‘I meant a nice change from being holed up in the bedroom.’

My mother continues to regard me with her penetrating stare. ‘Of course, you did,’ she says, drily.”
― Andy Marr, A Matter of Life and Death

“Daryll gives me the once over, as though it would be a waste of eyesight to look at me twice. ‘Who’s this?’ he asks Emma.

‘It’s Tom,’ I say, standing up from my chair. ‘Tom Halliday. We were at school together back in –’

‘I know who you are,’ Daryll says, leaving me to wonder why he bothered asking in the first place.”
― Andy Marr, A Matter of Life and Death