4
" Sour MilkYou can't make itturn sweetagain. Onceit was an innocent colorlike the flowers of wild strawberries,and its texture was simplewould pass through a clean cheesecloth,its taste was fresh.And nowwith nothing more guilty that the passage of timeto chide it with,the same substancehas turned sour and lumpy.The sour milkmakes interesting & delicious doughs,can be carried to a further state of bacterial actionto create new foods,can in its own rightbe considered complicated and more interesting in textureto one who studies it closely,like a map of the world.Butto most of us:it is spoiled.Sour.We throw it out,down the drain-not in the backyard-careful not to spill anybecause the smell is strong.A good cook would be shocked with the waste.But we do not live in a world of good cooks.I am the milk.Time passes.You cannot make it turn sweetagain.I sit guiltily on the refrigerator shelftrembling with hope for a cookwho dreams of waffles,biscuits, dumplingsand other delicious breadsfearing the modern housewifewho will lift me off the shelf and with one deft twistof a wrist...you know the rest.You are the milk.When it is your turnremember,there is nothing more than the passage of timewe can chide you with. "
5
" She merely wiped the floor with paper towels and said nothing, brushing her free hand against my shoulder blade—my shoulder blade!—as she carried the soaked paper to the trash can, never holding me fast, refraining not out of lack of humanity but out of fear of being drawn into a request for further tenderness, a request that could only bring her face-to-face with some central revulsion, a revulsion of her husband or herself or both, a revulsion that had come from nowhere, or from her, or perhaps from something I’d done or failed to do, who knew, she didn’t want to know, it was too great a disappointment, far better to get on with the chores, with the baby, with the work, far better to leave me to my own devices, as they say, to leave me to resign myself to certain motifs, to leave me to disappear guiltily into a hole of my own digging. When the time came to stop her from leaving, I did not know what to think or wish for, her husband who was now an abandoner, a hole-dweller, a leaver who had left her to fend for herself, as she said, who’d failed to provide her with the support and intimacy she needed, she complained, who was lacking some fundamental wherewithal, who no longer wanted her, who beneath his scrupulous marital motions was angry, whose sentiments had decayed into a mere sense of responsibility, a husband who, when she shouted, “I don’t need to be provided for! I’m a lawyer! I make two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year! I need to be loved!” had silently picked up the baby and smelled the baby’s sweet hair, and had taken the baby for a crawl in the hotel corridor, and afterward washed the baby’s filthy hands and soft filthy knees, and thought about what his wife had said, and saw the truth in her words and an opening, and decided to make another attempt at kindness, and at nine o’clock, with the baby finally drowsy in his cot, came with a full heart back to his wife to find her asleep, as usual, and beyond waking.
In short, I fought off the impulse to tell Rachel to go fuck herself. "
― Joseph O'Neill , Netherland
6
" She swallowed, watching as the servants and Harry and Bert trooped out of the room. Lad, apparently not the brightest dog in the world, sat down next to Mickey O’Connor and leaned against his leg.
Mr. O’Connor looked at the dog, looked at the damp spot growing on his breeches where the dog was leaning, and sighed. “I find me life is not as quiet as it used to be afore ye came to me palace, Mrs. Hollingbrook.”
Silence lifted her chin. “You’re a pirate, Mr. O’Connor. I cannot believe your life was ever very quiet.”
He gave her an ironic look. “Aye, amazin’, isn’t it? Yet since yer arrival me servants no longer obey me and I return home to find me kitchen flooded.” He crossed to a cupboard and took down a china teapot, a tin of tea, and a teacup. “And me dog smells like a whorehouse.”
Silence glanced guiltily at Lad. “The only soap we could find was rose scented. "
― Elizabeth Hoyt , Scandalous Desires (Maiden Lane, #3)