Sally Grace’s Reviews > Three Women > Status Update

“He pulled away when she pitched forward and then there were days when he felt her evanescing, another chance at youth was petering out and so he wrote, I am falling in love with you. And what he meant was, I am in love with who I am now, again, so please don't leave, because this fresh me will die if your crush on me dies.”

“Sloane knew that one couldn't easily travel back in time to replay a memory. The gate that guards the reality of one's childhood is high and existentially heavy, & merely opening it takes more energy than one expects. There are tricks to it, too: You have to select the correct season of the correct year. You cannot go bumbling about in some generalized way & hope to uncover the reason you are afraid of wolves.”

“The past yawns at her, stretching itself, like a cat.”

“Like any young girl who has a crush on someone older, she doesn't know what she wants to happen. She doesn't know if she wants sex or no sex or to undress in her room while he watches from the sidewalk.
Mostly she just wants a small suggestion of excitement. An anonymous bouquet left on a doorstep.”

“How are you doing? he asks. He's sitting at his desk and she's standing…Maggie is one of these billions. How can God possibly keep track of her and all her loved ones? So that here in this room with her teacher, she feels he's been deputized, by God, to care just a little bit more than he needs to.”

“Maggie's mother is kind, plugged in. She is present and loving but felled by circumstance. The worst thing in the world is not being able to make a problem go away for one's child. And at the end of the day some mothers cannot pay to bring somebody home early.”

“Some people, Maggie thinks, live their lives as if they are sure they're going to get another one. One more chance to be cool and popular or smart and rich and have a lot of sex. They act as though it's okay to hang back on this one, and merely watch it like a movie. Maggie is devoutly Catholic and doesn't believe in multiple lives. She's intent on making the most of this one.”

“Some-times, Sloane saw, there could be an imbalance in a relationship between two women, when one also likes to sleep with men and the other doesn't. Sometimes the one who doesn't can feel that the other woman is a betrayer. She might worry that the other woman wants more…the idea of a man, the idea of someone who is larger, the idea of being ecstatically subjugated by masculine energy.”

“She felt like a small, red god. Unique in that she could not be sorted. Benevolent and cruel at once. Beautiful and tawdry. Rich and poor, religious and godless. She was a balance of contradictions, like all subversive girls with rich, cool daddies and crisp, scarved mothers. She was nowhere she was wanted and yet she was everywhere she was desired.”