Edward St. Aubyn: Mother’s Milk

 

Her profound inability to listen to anyone else was unhappily married to a hysterical concern about what other people thought of her.

 

[Illustration: De Chirico, Ulysses' Return, 1968]

 

 

Mary could hardly believe that Patrick and Robert were in one thinly carpeted motel room and she and Thomas were in another, with plastic wraps on the plastic glasses, and Sanitized For Your Protection sashes on the plastic loo seats, and a machine down the corridor whose shuddering ejaculations of ice reminded her unwillingly of the state of her marriage.

 

[Illustration: De Chirico, Battle on a Bridge, 1969]