Status Updates From Actrița

Elegantly, deftly written death scene

250 [letter to Holly, biographer of mother from start of book]
At the moment, you blame your parents for things that go wrong. If you are lucky, you will find an intimate partner to blame instead. My husband blames me and I blame him and this arrangement has kept us both happy for a very long time.

Talking about me? “At forty-seven years of age …”

I am not allowed to ask how she is. Or what is next up. It is only proper, when you are with your mother, to talk about yourself, or about an agreed version of yourself, a person for whom you can both be pleased.

book summary —
If she was more prone to difficulty offstage, onstage she grew, I thought, extraordinary in these last years. Katherine O'Dell weathered very beautifully. The fictions got somehow thinner, the actress behind them more acutely, painfully there. It was an elaborate, slow peeling of the self, hard to watch.

In bed with husband, older, present-day —

My guilt turns just as quickly to gratitude - and this too a little fake (oh Darling!) - I roll towards you, and find the puzzle of your body moving towards mine, forearm, belly, a question that is so easily answered. My goodness, yes.

“Sure, ‘this only butter.”