What I really appreciated about this piece is it’s a love story that is also about the caring/loving yet emotionally injured nature of the protagonist. There is, in the story, platonic love, maternal love, and romantic love. What I found effective about this piece is how the interior thought that states the current situation and explains the past is interwoven with the dialogue. This technique helps give what is said greater weight and allows the reader to gain a deeper understanding of the characters and how they interact with each other and how their pasts paint how they talk and interact with each other.
The dialogue is incredibly raw and dark and not so pretty, but that does not negate the tender side of the protagonist and her mature love for her husband and her former lover/friend. We know she is an avid gardener by her concern for her tomatoes and by the writer’s use of precise language concerning the crops themselves. Her love of gardening is also used to show her feelings about the loss of her home.
Though the story deals with suicide, it also deals with the aftermath of attempted suicide and suicidal ideation, including the effects one might not think about.
I also thought the title was effective because some of the tension comes from her fear of Robert falling. Falling and the fear associated with it also illustrate the precarious states the characters are in both mentally and physically.
The lines I liked were “Drugs. I have no use for them, not the illegal stuff Jonas and the kids used to cook up in my house without my knowing, not the drugs doctors might prescribe a woman like me, if i was fool enough to present my deteriorating form to one of them.” It’s sad but it also does a duel job of showing the passage of time and showing us what kind of person she is. She seems like such a caring person that she sometimes sacrifices her own sanity and well-being to take care of others who can’t take care of themselves. There is a romantic relationship in this story, but it is wildly co-dependent and in some regards lonely. They are lonely within themselves.