Heft: A Novel by Liz Moore

She loves to watch reruns of the late-night comedy program Mad TV & she often describes or reenacts sketches from that show with great vigor, laughing at her own recollection of it, ending each retelling with, It was so funny.   759

“And is he a good person?” I asked. She rolled her eyes. The girl does not hold back what she is feeling, you see.   864

I will tell her Mom, Mom.   907

I cry immediately. There’s no deciding not to.   918

When I was a baby she held me and kept me alive. This I tell myself at times to stop me from hitting her squarely in the jaw.   929

She has bad skin and what looks like a rash on her face. Almost always she has this.   936 ...   

All of my life she’s worn terrible clothes that no one has worn since the 80s and she has never let herself be helped in this department, believe me I have tried. And she has two tattoos on her, a honeybee on her arm and a fucking electric guitar, an electric guitar with a long and snakelike cord that goes down her back and comes over her shoulder. She wears a bathing suit—she used to wear a bathing suit—without a back to show it off. She loves her tattoos. She’s proud of them.   938

It is just as I had imagined it, green and goodsmelling: a dark wooden desk against one wall   3485  ...  Yesterday’s shirt hanging over one post of her canopied bed.    The heat in this house makes a low comforting hum, a rush of air.   3486

It is in how she moves & in her general greenness, her dearness.   3602

All the girls he tells me about were four years younger and full of ideas when I knew them. Denise Torres wore a bright green jacket every day in the winter and her laugh started with a K.   3935

I have been trying to imagine what my mother was like when she was young. She would have been small. She would have been quiet unless she was nervous. If she was nervous she would have talked too much. 3937    ...

She would have had crushes on teachers and senior boys who did not know her. All the girls I know from Yonkers, all the girls who will never leave, she was like them.  3941

aggrieved & unbeautiful   3999

And so I began to hope. I did not hesitate to.   4008

Note: p83 Kel: I cry immediately. There is no deciding not to.   (location 918, above)

I tried to picture him and couldn’t, so I pictured someone backlit by the sun.   4320

I wish I could be obscured by something when he first sees me, hiding behind a plant or a sofa. I wish I could be shadowed by something larger than I am.   4398

kindle.amazon.com/your_highlights

this has the highlights I made yesterday ... up until last night or was it this morning when I turned wireless off by turning airplane mode on
Last annotated on March 24, 2013 

= today Sunday so I guess I turned off wireless (airplane mode) today - late last night, or after noon today)

highlighted more today, but maybe these earlier ones most important to me?  incl fr search for 'green' (bcs lkg to see who was Dr. Greene, he was Charlene's boss, a vice principal at Pell HS, she was his secretary for 5 1/2 yrs)

added two more notes~ as cross references ~ noting call-backs to prvs passages: 

*tipped up the little red flag  

---nearly the same sentence when Arthur puts out his confessional letter to Charlene ~ 'I opened the front door & put the letter in the mailbox & tipped up the little red flag.'  (the happy little red flag? yes) and near end when sends reply to Kel's note  '...& put it in the mailbox & tipped up the little red flag.'  

 and  

*the purple down coat to her ankles ~ p28  then ~p280 fabric of purple down coat stuck in its own zipper. I helped her.  hands on her hands    fabric without tearing     then p320ish re never intimate, that was the closest.  would have liked to help her with her coat ~forever 




The first time we met for coffee, the fabric of her purple down coat got stuck in the teeth of its own zipper. I helped her.  I moved her hands away from it with my own & I pulled the fabric loose without a tear. Thank you she said.     4012

We were never intimate. Occasionally we held hands. Occasionally she took my arm. Occasionally. Nothing more. The closest to Charlene I ever felt was the very first time we met outside of school—the one time I helped her with her coat.   If I could have helped her with her coat for hours, for the rest of her life, I would have.     4260

Note: ~p28 wearing a purple down coat that came to her ankles 
~p320 The first time we met for coffee, the fabric of her purple down coat got caught in its own zipper. I helped her. I moved her hands away from it with my own and I pulled the fabric loose without a tear.