Madeline m’s Reviews > Last Things > Status Update

After she left, Alec picked up a carving knife and held it to my ribs. "I know a way to cut someone in half so there's no blood. Want to see?"
"Okay," I said.
We headed outside, but Aunt Fe saw the knife and took it away.
"Motherfucking mother," Alec said when we got to the backyard. "Now I can't do my trick."

“All summer, it never rained. My mother piled smooth stones in the backyard and called it a garden. Alec and I turned over the stones one by one, but there was never anything beneath them. My mother said that stones were last things and would be around long after people were gone. Other last things were oceans, metal, and crows.”

1/2 “My mother sat down at the kitchen table and read the note aloud. In it, Mrs. Carr regretted to inform her that I was an incorrigible thief.

“We went to the woods to pick out our Christmas tree.
My father didn't believe in Christmas, but still we celebrated it. It was like not believing in God but still you prayed. My mother said it was a shame to cut down a tree, so instead we chose one in the forest and tied a ribbon around it so we could find it again.
On Christmas morning, we got dressed in our warmest clothes and went to see our tree.”

“We opened our presents all at once because it was too cold to take turns. My mother gave my father a telescope, an old map of Africa, and a woodworking set.
My father gave her a bathrobe, an electric tooth-brush, and a collapsible iron.”

“I had never been to church because my father had vowed to raise me a heathen. A heathen was a godless thing, my mother explained. In some parts of America, it was against the law to be one. On Sundays, I watched from the woods as the Christians drove by. The women had on dresses and the men wore dark suits. Sometimes I threw rocks at their cars and waited to see what God would do. Nothing much, it turned out.”

“Grooming was important to Mary because she believed her portrait would one day appear on a dollar bill. The summer before, she had sent away in the mail for a kit to start her own country. Marydom, it was going to be called. It wasn't ready yet because there was a lot of paperwork to do, she said.”

Edgar was quiet. He found a candle and lit it. He turned his back to me and started to read. The book he was reading was called Being and Nothingness.
The only question he'd answered all night long was which was better. (Nothingness.)