After Her Quotes
"Buses ran from where we lived to San Francisco—the bridge marking the entrance to that other world, though we also knew people came there to jump."
"Our house, number 17, was the smallest on the street—two dark little bedrooms, a low-ceilinged living room, and a kitchen the previous owners had decorated with green Formica and matching avocado-green appliances."
"The problem between our parents, maybe, was that of all the women, our mother may have been the only one who appeared immune to our father’s romantic tactics."
"For the first five years of her life, Patty barely spoke, except to me."
"A person could have thought she was shy, but when we were in our room, Patty’s true nature revealed itself, a secret entrusted only to me."
"Our father had a gift for hair, inherited from his father, and he loved brushing ours."
"Patty and I adored our father, simple as that."
"Never let a man disrespect you, he said. You deserve a man who treats you like the queen of the world."
"The mountain opened up for us the picture of a bigger world than what we ever could have known in the safe confines of our tiny house and yard, and the fact that this other world had dead animals in it, and naked people, and predators, just made us want to discover more."
"My father didn’t stop paying attention when he went off duty either, if he ever went off duty, and I doubt he ever did."
"The notion of a life without TV had felt harsh, briefly, though in truth, we replaced it with better."
"We were a couple of wolf girls—but with fashionable jeans, though really what we wore were just Levi’s."
"The mountain was where my sister and I spent our days."
"It was the place we found out about everything, that mountain. Animal bones and deer scat. Birds, flowers, condoms. The bodies of dead animals, the bodies of men. Rocks and lizards. Sex and death."
"The term depression wasn’t much used then, but I think we both sensed, even early on, that our mother was fragile—that no space or energy existed to deal with more than she already had on her plate."
"Our father was working double time at that point—days on the job in San Francisco, nights at school—while our mother stayed home with Patty and me."
"But Patty’s greatest gift with a basketball was her shooting."
"It always felt like a big deal, getting a phone call from our father."
"Suppose we’d chosen that day to hike up to the ranger station, or venture into the eucalyptus grove on the mountain not far from our house for a game of Truth or Dare or spies, or to sled down the hillside on a piece of cardboard as we liked to this time of year when the grass got brown and dry enough to slide on."
"I saw things before they happened. Or after they happened, even if I wasn’t present at the time. I had powers."
"I’d observe a teenage girl, one aisle over at the mall where I was hanging out with my sister, and know there was a bottle of nail polish in the pocket of her jeans that she hadn’t paid for. Purple."
"My father never liked to hear about my visions."
"There had been minor tremors for days leading up to that quake."
"What you observe in Rachel is how perceptive she is."
"I wasn’t a fortune-teller. I was more like some CB operator, tuning the dial of his radio, picking up random frequencies."
"We wanted to be more than his precious little girls. We wanted to be his helpers and sidekicks, his secret weapon."
"In his career in the city, my father had handled many murders."
"People that knew me when I was young would never believe it, that I’d end up living in a town where you can’t buy a decent cannoli."
"This was the kind of moment our father lived for—what he did best."
"The crying I heard through the thin walls of our house, and our father’s low voice, saying little, denying nothing."
"The night our mother found the key in our father’s pocket and knew who it belonged to."
"You’ll be fine," I told her. "Mom should be home in a couple of hours."
"I’ll tell you one thing, It must have been driving those New York homicide guys crazy, having that animal at large."
"That’s the great thing about this city. That and a few million other things."
"Somewhere just beyond our house, no more than a mile away, a man had lurked in the brush, waiting for a girl not that much older than my sister and me—to have sex with her."
"You would have figured something out. You always do."
"I thought we’d stop by Margaret Ann’s on our way home."
"I was trying that hard to locate anything that might offer up some clue."
"If there was ever a moment for my father to be a hero, this was it."
"What’s more important than one of my girls when she needs me?" he said.
"Once we nail this killer, I’m taking a vacation. I’m taking you and your sister to Italy."
"Don’t ever do that again," he said to the man behind the camera. "Don’t ever, ever again think of showing one of my children’s faces on television."
"I continue to feel nothing but pride in the job being done by the men and women of the Marin Homicide Division," he said, his voice flat, almost mechanical.
"I could lie down," he told her. "But sleep’s a different matter."
"I’ve failed these women," my father said. "I failed everyone I love most in the world, Lillian," he said. "This includes you."
"You should get some sleep, Anthony," I heard our mother telling him.
"I can’t do anything until I hear the snap of the cuffs on this mutt," he said.
"It’s the people who want to take clothes off girls you should worry about," my sister said. "Not the ones who put them on."
"I think it would cheer him up," my sister said about our father.
"I was wondering what it does to a person’s state of mind, writing about all these terrible events? Do you ever think that maybe, someday, you’ll give your characters a happy ending? Let them go home and rest, maybe?"
"You don’t even know her. What are you afraid of? That you might like each other, and then we’d break up, and you’d feel bad about it? So let’s get married."
"And getting married means we’ll never split up, right?"
"Getting married to me means I’ll never leave. But I won’t anyway."
"He said he just wanted to live in a house with the two people he loved best in the world, both there at the same time."
"She wants me to be happy. I’m happiest when I’m with you."
"I won’t be anybody’s stepmother. Or the girlfriend her father shacks up with, when she wishes he was home with her mother and her."
"Eight-year-old girls are not my cup of tea. I remember what they’re like. I used to be one."
"It would be a good thing if your mother could get out a little. Meet someone. A normal guy. She deserves that."
"This woman extending her hand to me was apparently one of them."
"I was afraid that once I did, you might turn me away."
"It had taken Margaret Ann a long time to believe that with her it would be different, but finally he convinced her."
"Never get over it. Never speak to you again."
"I can still see her, bending over me in her going-out dress, with her titties hanging out. Tying my damn laces."
"Call me sentimental. It has to do with my mother."
"He told my mother he didn’t want us to see him like that."
"See, she had a father after all. The handsomest of them all."
"I have to go now. I’m giving a reading tonight."
"I hoped that I would never lay eyes on that woman again."
"I doubt anyone observing my performance on the stage at the Herbst Theater that night... would have guessed that anything particularly unusual or upsetting had taken place in my life a couple of hours earlier."
"He was armed and remains dangerous. Assuming he lives, he’ll be looking at charges of kidnapping and attempted murder."
"Kenneth Purdy did in fact suffer what was described as a massive coronary that night he took me across the Golden Gate Bridge at gunpoint, but he survived."
"I do not speak about the sound the ball made on the pavement, growing louder as my sister dribbled her way home, or the sound of her breathing in the bunk above me, the quiet comforting presence of her in the night."
"The silence that roars in my ears sometimes or the space my sister left that no one, however loved, can ever fill."
"I saw an old man’s face just outside our tent."