… was in the process of becoming a troll—at least in part literally. She spent a solid chunk of most evenings voraciously scrubbing away at her foot-soles with sharp implements of abrasion. This followed the course of family propensity in rending of flesh—her mother had preceded her, picking at chapped and peeling lip skin until it bled and the Aryan dermatologist threatened unseemly grafts. Thereafter her mother maintained a ready supply of oral lubricants stashed liberally in strategic locations throughout the house—telephone table, kitchen odds and ends drawer, and, in the one place that to Sylvie signified the woman’s ultimate departure from acceptability and perhaps even awareness of any such boundaries, the front guest lavatory.
