"There was a certain thing I did not get from my mother. There is a lack, a gap, a void. "How's that?" But in it's place, she has given me somethi… - Alison Bechdel

The maples had sheltered the west side of our house for over a hundred years, and left, as fallen trees do, a void so absolute you couldn't possibly have imagined it beforehand.

It’s true that he didn’t kill himself until I was nearly twenty. But his absence resonated retroactively, echoing back through all the time I knew him. Maybe it was the converse of the way amputees feel pain in a missing limb. He really was there all those years, a flesh-and-blood presence smelling of sawdust and sweat and designer cologne. But I ached as if he were already gone.

Samia: I'm all the trouble you need. Do you know why I invited you here?
Ginger: For the Brussels sprouts tartare?
Samia: For the long, discreet tablecloths.