Sublime

Protective colouration, she called her outfits. She looked like a dependable mother from a respectable neighbourhood such as ours. As she worked at the kitchen counter, she might have been demonstrating a jiffy recipe in Good Housekeeping magazine—something with tomato aspic, this being the mid-1950s, when tomato aspic was a food group.

CURRE

undulating

grok,”

sweet affections and austere diktats, hugs and kisses mixed with stony pronouncements: “It’s