“Ruby: How nice for you all. How is the wonderfully helpful Ursula?Rosie: Wonderfully helpful. Yesterday she told me I had problems discussingmy feelings.Ruby: And?Rosie: And I told her that made me feel angry and that she could go fuckherself.Ruby: Well expressed.Rosie: Thank you. I don’t see where there was a problem, I successfullyexplained how I felt and she clearly understood what I meant. Noproblems . . .”

“She told me she’d never forget me as long as she lived, and I got offended, because what, as soon as she dies I’m forgotten? Gee, thanks. I see how much I mean to her.”

“She told me she loved me. Most men wouldn’t know how to respond, but I did. What else could I say but, “Thanks, Grandma!”

“One day when I was fourteen, I told Charlie that I hated Mother. “Don’t hate her, Jo,” he told me. “Feel sorry for her. She’s not near as smart as you. She wasn’t born with your compass, so she wanders around, bumping into all sorts of walls. That’s sad.” I understood what he meant, and it made me see Mother differently. But wasn’t there some sort of rule that said parents had to be smarter than their kids? It didn’t seem fair.”

“I have to fix this,” I told him, as clearly and calmly as I could. “If you want to help me, then help me. Don’t shield me, don’t protect me, don’t bury me alive. Help me .”

“Well, it’s not as though he cannot help it, you see. The…saving of things. I suspect it’s Captain Flint’s way of telling the world, ‘This is how it’s done.’”She wondered if it was also Flint’s way of showing the world, “This is how you could have saved me when I was a boy.”