122
" When we got back to Manhattan, Maeve took me to a men’s store and bought me extra underwear, a new shirt, and a pair of pajamas, then she got me a toothbrush at the drugstore next door. That night we went to the Paris Theater and saw Mon Oncle. Maeve said she was in love with Jacques Tati. I was nervous about seeing a movie with subtitles but it turned out that nobody really said anything. After it was finished, we stopped for ice cream then went back to Barnard. Boys of every stripe were expressly forbidden to go past the dorm lobby, but Maeve just explained the situation to the girl at the desk, another friend of hers, and took me upstairs. Leslie, her roommate, had gone home for Easter break and so I slept in her bed. The room was so small we could have easily reached across the empty space and touched fingers. "
― Ann Patchett , The Dutch House
133
" Home is so sad,” Maeve said. “It stays as it was left, shaped to the comfort of the last to go as if to win them back. Instead, bereft of anyone to please, it withers so, having no heart to put aside the theft.” Once she was certain Maeve had stopped, Celeste picked up the line in a softer voice. “And turn again to what it started as, a joyous shot at how things ought to be, long fallen wide. You can see how it was: look at the pictures and the cutlery. The music in the piano stool. That vase.” “Larkin,” the two cried out together. "
― Ann Patchett , The Dutch House