How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Wendy could use a getaway. She could be anyone she wanted in California. Nobody would have to know anything. Not even that she came from New York, or what happened to her mother. She wouldn't have to go through every day with people giving her their sympathetic looks. (12.11)
What really seals the deal for Wendy is the idea that no one will have to know about her mother when she moves to California. She's sick and tired of kids at school talking about her like she's some kind of tragic case.
Quote #8
My mother doesn't like to tell her friends her son is just a carpenter, he said. I have a feeling she tells them I'm an architect. To me, the only shame in building houses is if you do it badly. (28.31)
Garrett isn't ashamed of who he is and what he does for a living, but his mother acts like it's something to hide. She wants her son to be more educated and do something fancier for a living even though that's not who he is inside.
Quote #9
The big surprise was this black woman that used to take care of your dad when he was little. She came all the way from Boston with her son and got there right in the middle of the service. It turned out your grandmother paid for the son's whole college education and now he teaches at some private school in New Hampshire. The man's mother got pretty emotional about your grandmother evidently. Called her the most generous woman she ever met.
Your father never even knew, Carolyn said.(29.22-23)
All this time Garrett has considered his mother a hard, unfeeling woman. But when he goes to her funeral, he finally sees a different side of her through the generosity that she showed to her employees. She did do some good deeds after all.