The Past

Throughout the short story, the author uses Alma and Debi's drifts into the past as a primary source of narrative tension and propulsion. As Alma walks along Pine Street with her daughter, she sees old familiar sights that trigger her mental shifts into recollection. For example, when she and Pammy pass "the Manfrey place," Alma remembers the year it was struck by lightning, the same year Paul, Sr. was working as an unsuccessful door-to-door salesman (2). These initial memories then inspire Alma's lengthy meditations on her happy days with Paul, and the ways in which their marriage crumbled. "In the early days she and Paul, Sr., had done it every which way...But then the children came. And they were bad" (3). Thinking about the pleasant portions of her life, makes Alma remember when they soured, and who was to blame. Rather than helping her to reconcile...