How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Our conversations are largely about nothing, and frequently restrained. (3.79)
At the dinner table and even in their bedroom, Slocum and his wife usually just hash out the same things: Derek, the kids, work, their routine unhappiness, and their dissatisfaction with each other—but never in any depth. How exciting.
Quote #5
So I am silent with Martha, and I am silent with my wife, out of the same coarse mixture of sympathy and self-interest, about her drinking and flirting and dirty words, as I was silent also with my mother when she had the first of her brain strokes, and am silent also with everyone else I know in whom I begin to perceive the first signs of irreversible physical decay and approaching infirmity and death. (3.85)
Slocum doesn't say anything to anybody about anything bad if he feels it's already too late to help. For instance, he said nothing to his mother about her brain stroke, and he says nothing to his wife about how he truly feels.
Quote #6
"Let's try not to fight tonight. Let's see if we can't get through just one meal without anybody yelling and screaming and getting angry. That shouldn't be too hard, should it?" (3.94)
Slocum's wife comes to expect dinner arguments as the norm, and she pleads with the family not to heat things up tonight. She is, unfortunately, not successful in her request. It's another failure of communication on top of all the others.