Cody's father's tie
Cody's father does not have any weekend clothes as other fathers do. Instead, he wears his tie loose on the weekends, an image which is enhanced through a simile that compares the tie's crooked appearance to that of a drunkard: "…he didn't have his tie pulled up close to his collar. It hung loose and slightly crooked, like a drunkard's tie."
The sun's heat
The writer employs personification to bring out the sun, pouring heat onto Cody's shoulders. The imagery of the pouring heat is further made protuberant and prominent through a simile that compares it to pouring liquid: "It was nowhere near spring yet, but the air felt unseasonably warm, and a pale sun poured heat like a liquid over Cody's shoulders."
The imagery of the paired gloves
Cody expects that his mother's bureau would be aligned so perfectly, "clothes organized by type and color, whites grading into pastels and then to darks; comb and brush parallel; gloves paired and folded like a row of clenched fists." The simile enhances the imagery of the gloves and their paired arrangement.
The line on Cody's mother's forehead
As Cody talks to Lorena, he feels a pang and imagines her mother's presence at the register. The line running across her forehead is conveyed via a simile, enhancing its conception and imagery, like a strand of hair. The writer notes: "He pictured his mother at the register, with that anxious line like a strand of hair or a faint, fragile dressmaker's seam running across her forehead."
"…like the sound of a gnat."
The smoothness of Jenny and Ezra's mother's voice is made prominent through a simile in which it is compared to a gnat's sound. The comparison enhances the reader's comprehension of their mother's soft voice: "Their mother came to the foot of the stairs and called them. Her voice was thin, like the sound of a gnat."
