When you're the Woman Upstairs, nobody thinks of you first. Nobody calls you before anyone else, or sends you the first postcard. Once your mother dies, nobody loves you best of all. It's a small thing, you might think; and maybe it depends upon your temperament; maybe for some people it's a small thing. But for me, in that cul-de-sac outside Aunt Baby's, with my father and aunt done dissecting death and shuffling off to bed behind the crimson farmhouse door, preparing for morning mass as blameless as lambs and as lifeless as the slaughtered-I felt forsaken by hope. I felt I'd been seen, and seen clearly, and discarded, dropped back into the undiscriminated pile like a shell upon the shore.
( Claire Messud )
[ The Woman Upstairs ]
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