Os eventos do dia não ligaram o caranguejo rachado. E, no entanto, é precisamente o caranguejo fictício que me faz ver a tarde de novo, um filme em casa corre com muita frequência, o pai com presentes, a criança chorando, um exercício de amor e culpa da família. Ou é isso que era para mim. Da mesma forma, talvez nunca tenha feito neve naquele agosto em Vermont; Talvez nunca houvesse rajadas ao vento noturno, e talvez ninguém mais sentisse o chão endurecendo e o verão já mortos, enquanto fingimos se deliciar nela, mas era assim que me sentia, e poderia muito bem ter nevado, poderia ter nevado neve.

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(The day's events did not turn on cracked crab. And yet it is precisely that fictitious crab that makes me see the afternoon all over again, a home movie run all too often, the father bearing gifts, the child weeping, an exercise in family love and guilt. Or that is what it was to me. Similarly, perhaps it never did snow that August in Vermont; perhaps there never were flurries in the night wind, and maybe no one else felt the ground hardening and summer already dead even as we pretended to bask in it, but that was how it felt to me, and it might as well have snowed, could have snowed, did snow.)