#hellgoing

Of course, the bulk of these monoliths remains underwater. Hence the old 'tip of the iceberg' saying. To mean: This is just the beginning. You think this is something? This is nothing.

His daughter was wrestling with him when she was little, angry that he could so effortlessly break out of her grip. She wanted him to pretend that she was stronger than he was, and he of course had obliged, bemused but also a little horrified. The blithe way women took the gentleness of men for granted. The kindness of strangers... My dear, he wanted to say to his daughter sometimes, if a two-hundred-pound man wants to drag you into an alley, he will drag you into an alley. It won't matter how well you do in school or how assertive you are with telemarketers. It won't matter how many times you correct an old man for calling a woman a 'girl.' You're still going into that alley. It is an ugly thing to think, and to say, but there you go.

Jane shakes her head. She's embarrassed, ashamed, though she's always instructing herself never to feel this, about anything.

There was ten years between them. He hadn't exited the womb with a cellphone in hand the way she had. Texting was like breathing for Sam, or blinking her eyes, whereas for her brother it was exactly like poking away at infinitesimal buttons on a tiny little machine. It was like trying to thread a series of needles just to tell a person something.