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But from there on Howard Givings heard only a welcome, thunderous sea of silence. He had turned off his hearings aid.

That’s how we got committed to this enormous delusion - because that’s what it is, an enormous, obscene delusion - this idea that people have to resign from real life and ‘settle down’ when they have families - It’s the great sentimental lie of the suburbs, and I’ve been making you subscribe to it all this time. I’ve been making you live by it! My God I’ve even gone as far as to work up this completely, soap-opera picture of my self – and I guess this is what really brought it home to me – this picture of myself as the girl who could have been The Actress if she hadn’t gotten married too young.

All the business about Helen Giving’s son on top of everything else, and the way we all grabbed at it like dogs after meat; I remember looking at you and thinking ‘God, if only he’d stop talking.’ Because everything you said was based on this great premise of ours that we’re somehow very special and superior to the whole thing, and I wanted to say ‘But we’re not! Look at us! We’re just like the people you’re talking about! We are the people you’re talking about!’

And Frank would develop the theme. “The point is it wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t so typical. It isn’t only the Donaldsons – it’s the Cramers too, and the whaddyacallits the Wingates, and a million others. It’s all the idiots I ride with on the train every day. It’s a disease. Nobody thinks or feels or cares anymore; Nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little God damn mediocrity."

“I mean, it’s bad enough having to live among all these damn little suburbian types – and I’m including the Campells in that, let’s be honest - it’s bad enough having to live among all these people, without letting ourselves get hurt by every little half-assed – what’d you say?”