Enervating, to be in her presence like this. Despite all his resolve to stay pleasant and attentive, today of all days, something has nevertheless turned a tap on inside him and his energy is draining away. Later he'll feel the same guilt as ever, but right now, sitting with a coffee listening to his mother complaining about the fake whipped cream on her scones, he feels all that evaporating.
Here, Kennedy sets the stage for the mother-son drama of "Ashes." In this sentence, in the opening paragraph, Kennedy lays out the main and persistent tension of the story, which is Chris's effort to keep his emotions bottled up and concealed from his mother, which is, ironically, a major contributing factor to his disdain for her: this very need for secrecy.
What would it have cost him to give his father that, instead of a shrug, just for the small mean pleasure of feeling his father turn away, defeated? He scoops up another handful and spills it into the water. A drift of grey and white particles swirls on the surface and disperses. He can't believe this is all that's left, this dust and grit, pounded down from something as hard and unyielding as bone.
This quote, near the conclusion of the story, captures Chris in the act of spreading his father's ashes in the mythologized lake. Here, Chris explores the regret he feels for not making more of an effort with his father.
The other cleaners have got their pace down to an art, and it is the pace of the patients themselves, shuffling along the hospital corridors with their drips and tangled tubing; the slow, measured perambulation of those with an endless, unvarying stretch in front of them.
In this quote from the beginning of "Laminex and Mirrors," the narrator draws a parallel between how the cleaning staff moves and how the patients move; the description of their movement is capped with the sense that their slow ambling will never end, that they're stalled in a monotonous loop. This "unvarying stretch" is later reframed at the end of the story, and demonstrates the change in the protagonist over the course of her job at the hospital.
Mr. Moreton feels it, I know he does, because I hear him start humming "It's a Long Way to Tipperary," which dissolves in a hoot of laughter then a coughing fit, and I reach down and grab his frail hand till it's over. Then we push on, both of us smothering laughter, and this moment is the one I remember most clearly from the year I turned eighteen: the two of us content, just for this perfect moment, to believe we can go on humming, and that this path before us will stretch on forever.
This gorgeous, momentous ending to "Laminex and Mirrors" demonstrates the protagonist's growth over the course of working at the hospital. Whereas at the beginning, the "unvarying stretch" before patients and cleaning staff is a decidedly negative quality of life as she sees it at the hospital, here, "the path before [them] ... stretch[ing] on forever" is a life-affirming moment, and in fact turns out to be the most important moment of her eighteenth year.
It was a side to her I was seeing for the first time, this professional, acquired distance. At our house, in our script, Claire was the slapdash one, laughing at me when I patiently restacked the dishwasher more neatly or tucked the sheets in properly. She was as messy as the kids, and that's saying something.
This quote from "Like a House on Fire" establishes the domestic dynamic in Claire and the narrator's home. The narrator's use of the word "script" emphasizes this idea of domestic "roles" people play. This quote also establishes their opposing approaches to tidiness, which is a major source of tension between them as the narrator's condition fails to rectify.
Listening to the two of us, you'd never believe that we used to get on like a house on fire, that even after we had the kids, occasionally we'd stay up late, just talking. But now that I think of it, a house on fire is a perfect description for what seems to be happening now: these flickering small resentments licking their way up into the wall cavities; this faint, acrid smell of smoke.
Here is a key quote of the collection—the "title drop," and an inversion of an idiom that seems to be central to the engines of all the stories here, but most certainly this one. Kennedy takes issue with this expression, "they got on like a house on fire" (i.e. to get on exceedingly well) and here, the narrator explicates the expression and demonstrates how its intended meaning is a bit nonsensical, but if it were applied to the opposite sentiment, then it would make more sense.
I look at her, feeling that small heat build between us. Our breaths fuelling it, close to the ground. This is how you do it, I think, stick by careful stick over the ashes, oxygen and fuel, a controlled burn. I open my mouth to tell her sorry.
Here is a later instance of Kennedy pushing into this idiom, "like a house on fire," and demonstrating how in a realistic domestic situation, the best one can hope for is not "a house on fire," but a small, controlled flame that nurtures and warms.
But his voice is like someone you're hanging up on, going small and high-pitched and distant as you put the phone down. It doesn't matter anyway. She's got everything this baby needs, now. And he's twisting his head, searching for her. He knows it too. She puts her hand to the side of his face and looks finally into his eyes—blue, like hers—and his say it's you, and hers say yeah, it's me. Then her hand goes to her shirt, hurrying to get those buttons undone and out of the way.
This is the climactic moment of "Five-Dollar Family," as the photographer snaps the second portrait and little Jason opens his eyes to the world, Michelle's let-down reflex kicks in and she's able to feed him. It's a moment of maternal connection imbued by Kennedy with mystery and magic.
"I thought we were going good," he had answered, hearing the whine in his voice, hating it, "and now you're telling me you're moving out."
She'd rolled her eyes like he was the thickest kid in the class. "Not me, Ray," she'd said. "You. You're the one moving out."
This moment in "Sleepers" perfectly demonstrates Ray's obliviousness. He's remembering the moment Sharon broke up with him and his misunderstanding regarding who was staying in the house and who was moving out.
And as he turned, squinting in their sudden high-beam, his chest squeezing, all that false warmth descending into his boots, he knew that they wouldn't bother with their siren, because they could see that it was just him. Just Ray. They knew he'd turn around like this, and take what was coming to him. Because they need an example, he thought wearily as he peeled off his gloves, the realisation flaring like a little chunk of burning rock, a tiny meteor.
The conclusion of "Sleepers" connects Ray's condition to the condition of the town itself, at the mercy of corporate developers. Ray's chest pains, referenced throughout the story, are triggered by the police cruiser—it's not certain whether or not he's having a heart attack, but it's clear that this conclusion is a culmination of his anxieties throughout the story, including heart trouble, loss of agency, and being belittled as "just Ray."
