Natalie Gelderblom
The Dream House
TIMES CHANGING/APARTHEID
“but he was never offered for her to hold, and Patricia never thought to ask for it”
“After all this time you still want to be a mother. And me, I must still be something like your
child. But that relationship- it can have no place in the future of this country”
“He has a shameful secret: even today he is accustomed to the freedom he's been given to drive
around the country and go wherever he likes”
Feels “he is an intruder in his own land, condemned to arriving at places where he doesn't quite
belong”
That was what Looksmart “understood that day: For Patricia, Grace was in another category:
like that cry of hers they heard, she was slightly less than human. And this small fact, it was
enough to undo every other fact between himself and Patricia. It undid every single one of
Patricia’s acts of kindness, if acts of kindness they ever were. It was on this one small fact that
he would build his hate.”
Do you know there was a time when I would have had you whipped?
“It seemed there would be much more to bring than anyone had imagined. The problem with
what to do with the past would have to carry on into the future”
TRUTH and MEMORY
“She is always looking for the joke, Patricia, the thing to laugh at to, the thing to steer her gaze
away from the unbearable present”
“He remembers … how she liked to live with her head buried in the sand … while the rest of the
country was in flames”
The whole fishing incident
“She knows that he is doing exactly what she is doing: making up sentences as he goes along,
bridging whatever gaps he encounters as he encounters them”
Roses over water first thing both remember clearly
Confirms Looksmart was there “sometimes a small amount of truth is enough to satisfy a
person’s appetite”
The word “truth seems to surprise Beauty. Perhaps such a thing has never been asked of her
before.” Confirms Richard let dog on Grace
“Afraid of too much truth spilling out”
, Natalie Gelderblom
LOOKSMART AND PATRICIA
She had cleverness in her blood
“He never anticipated this moment of standing before her like a stranger” “he is used to her
delight at seeing him. Her world was always put on hold wherever he came into the room.”
“She wishes she knew the words to bring him back”
Teasing was their mode of affection “at the time their world seemed to permit little else: it didn't
even allow them to touch”
But there “is no affection in this echo of their old style. Today everything between them seems
to bristle with innuendo and hurt”
“If I remember myself correctly, I would have wanted to eat that fish”
“But you were such a gentle child, always wanting to please”
“Don’t you mean always wanting to please you?”
“When he went it was like all the colour had faded from the world’
“Still smarting from Looksmart ingratitude”
“The fear is still far off, what she experiences in its place is a kind of vacant sadness: that she
and the boy with the fishing rod should have come to this”
“What are you saying? That the past is unimportant?” remembers how he was easily offended
he often was
“Suggests to me that there are no consequences to people's actions, and I find that idea …
repugnant”
Perhaps the deaths of Racheal and Grace have levelled the land between them and established
clearer perspectives”
“Look of terrible contempt” @photographs
“After a while I came to think of you as another dead child”
“I didn’t want to think of you as taking from me and giving nothing back...it went against my
idea of you”
“It was Looksmart she liked to marvel at, he visionary not the vision”
“A secret pleasure and an act of defiance” “not so much against Richard but in the opposite
direction from him, towards everything Richard was not”
The Dream House
TIMES CHANGING/APARTHEID
“but he was never offered for her to hold, and Patricia never thought to ask for it”
“After all this time you still want to be a mother. And me, I must still be something like your
child. But that relationship- it can have no place in the future of this country”
“He has a shameful secret: even today he is accustomed to the freedom he's been given to drive
around the country and go wherever he likes”
Feels “he is an intruder in his own land, condemned to arriving at places where he doesn't quite
belong”
That was what Looksmart “understood that day: For Patricia, Grace was in another category:
like that cry of hers they heard, she was slightly less than human. And this small fact, it was
enough to undo every other fact between himself and Patricia. It undid every single one of
Patricia’s acts of kindness, if acts of kindness they ever were. It was on this one small fact that
he would build his hate.”
Do you know there was a time when I would have had you whipped?
“It seemed there would be much more to bring than anyone had imagined. The problem with
what to do with the past would have to carry on into the future”
TRUTH and MEMORY
“She is always looking for the joke, Patricia, the thing to laugh at to, the thing to steer her gaze
away from the unbearable present”
“He remembers … how she liked to live with her head buried in the sand … while the rest of the
country was in flames”
The whole fishing incident
“She knows that he is doing exactly what she is doing: making up sentences as he goes along,
bridging whatever gaps he encounters as he encounters them”
Roses over water first thing both remember clearly
Confirms Looksmart was there “sometimes a small amount of truth is enough to satisfy a
person’s appetite”
The word “truth seems to surprise Beauty. Perhaps such a thing has never been asked of her
before.” Confirms Richard let dog on Grace
“Afraid of too much truth spilling out”
, Natalie Gelderblom
LOOKSMART AND PATRICIA
She had cleverness in her blood
“He never anticipated this moment of standing before her like a stranger” “he is used to her
delight at seeing him. Her world was always put on hold wherever he came into the room.”
“She wishes she knew the words to bring him back”
Teasing was their mode of affection “at the time their world seemed to permit little else: it didn't
even allow them to touch”
But there “is no affection in this echo of their old style. Today everything between them seems
to bristle with innuendo and hurt”
“If I remember myself correctly, I would have wanted to eat that fish”
“But you were such a gentle child, always wanting to please”
“Don’t you mean always wanting to please you?”
“When he went it was like all the colour had faded from the world’
“Still smarting from Looksmart ingratitude”
“The fear is still far off, what she experiences in its place is a kind of vacant sadness: that she
and the boy with the fishing rod should have come to this”
“What are you saying? That the past is unimportant?” remembers how he was easily offended
he often was
“Suggests to me that there are no consequences to people's actions, and I find that idea …
repugnant”
Perhaps the deaths of Racheal and Grace have levelled the land between them and established
clearer perspectives”
“Look of terrible contempt” @photographs
“After a while I came to think of you as another dead child”
“I didn’t want to think of you as taking from me and giving nothing back...it went against my
idea of you”
“It was Looksmart she liked to marvel at, he visionary not the vision”
“A secret pleasure and an act of defiance” “not so much against Richard but in the opposite
direction from him, towards everything Richard was not”
