Tilt

“On opening night, my mom takes me out to dinner at the restaurant on the top floor of Big Pink and we order oysters. ‘This is just the beginning,’ I tell her. If I had stayed in New York, I wouldn’t even have graduated yet. ‘Oh, honey, I have no doubt in my mind,’ she says. And, Bean, I can still see her face exactly as it was in the candlelight of that fancy restaurant. But it’s not the beginning; it’s the end. It’s just coming towards me in slow motion, so I can’t make out the shape of it.”

Pattee employs dramatic irony and temporal dissonance as Annie’s past self declares, “This is just the beginning,” while her present narration reveals the painful truth that “it’s the end.” The metaphor of an ending “coming towards [her] in slow motion” creates a visual image of inexorable fate that Annie cannot yet recognize. The sensory detail of her mother’s face “in the candlelight” creates a memory imbued with warmth that contrasts with the harsh reality that follows.

“We’re going to die. You, Bean. Little eyelashes and fingernails. Tiny unfurled soul. All of my alternate lives, spinning out away from me like Frisbees. A playwright in Brooklyn with well-watered house plants on my windowsill. Me and your father at a party in LA, standing by a pool that is lit up by purple and pink lights. Ice cubes clinking in our glasses. Someone is laughing at a joke I made. In my backyard, on my knees, gardening in the sun. You’re right next to me, little hands in the dirt. I could have been anything. Gone anywhere.”

Annie’s stream-of-consciousness narration mirrors her psychological unraveling during the earthquake crisis. The simile of alternate lives “spinning out away from [her] like Frisbees” creates a kinetic image of possibilities that are now forever out of reach. Each imagined vignette is rich in sensory details (“ice cubes clinking,” “hands in the dirt”), making these imagined lives tangible to both Annie and the readers.

“They say the first time you meet the person you fall in love with, you can already see the thing that will break you up, if you know where to look. So, there’s that. But I wasn’t looking, Bean. Until the last night of the show.”

This aphoristic statement serves as foreshadowing for the eventual strain in Annie and Dom’s relationship. The short declarative “So, there’s that” creates a moment of resigned acknowledgment that punctuates the fatalistic observation. Annie’s admission that “[she] wasn’t looking” reflects both her belated awareness of relationship warning signs and her present regret.

“‘Heavenly father, we stand before you asking for your mercy. I place this woman and her unborn child in your hands. Please give her strength in this hour of need.’ His voice gets louder and louder. My eyes on the ground, I watch a trickle of oil make its way past his boots towards a crack in the road. I’ve seen your face, you know. White and grimacing on the ultrasound monitor at the clinic. Hollow eye sockets, hollow jawbone. Look at those cheeks, the ultrasound tech said, but I didn’t—I just glanced upward quickly and then looked away.”

The juxtaposition of the truck driver’s religious invocation with Annie’s detached observation of oil trickling into a crack creates a stark contrast between faith and Annie’s emotional distance. Her stark description of the ultrasound—with its “[h]ollow eye sockets, hollow jawbone”—is deliberately unsettling, reflecting Annie’s ambivalence toward motherhood. She confesses that she “glanced upward quickly and then looked away,” reflecting her broader pattern of avoiding emotional connection, which unites both scenarios in this passage.

 “‘We should get married.’

‘That is the least romantic thing I’ve heard in my life,’ Dom said when I brought it up later that night. The two of us on the couch, eating vegan ramen, watching Game of Thrones.

‘Is it, though?’ I say. ‘Or is it actually the most romantic thing?’

‘It’s not.’

‘But what would be more romantic?’

‘Literally anything. A sunset.’”

This exchange reveals how economic necessity shapes major life decisions for Annie and Dom, demonstrating the crushing weight of dreams deferred as they confront practical realities. Annie reframes an insurance-motivated marriage as romantic through witty exchanges that showcase her pragmatism against Dom’s idealism. Through this conversation, Pattee employs verbal irony as Annie dismantles traditional romantic gestures while paradoxically creating genuine emotional intimacy between the characters.

“I pick up the water bottle. She doesn’t need water anymore. She doesn’t need anything anymore. My aliveness is beaming out of me, every pore shining with the fact that I’m alive. I’m so fucking alive I’m shaking. We’re alive, you and me, we’re alive, and that’s why I’m running now, running down the trail with my Birkenstocks flopping and my great misshapen belly straining to stay upright, running as fast as I can and I don’t look back, not even once. When I’m out of sight of the golf course, and Becky, and the bicycles, I stop running. And I drink the entire bottle.”

This passage marks Annie’s transformation and develops the theme of Crisis as Liberation From Social Performance, revealing her primal survival instinct. The repetition of “alive” creates rhythmic intensity that mirrors Annie’s physiological response to choosing self-preservation. The moment dramatizes the collapse of moral boundaries at times of crisis, as Annie’s survival depends on her action of stealing water from a dead woman.

“‘There’s a joke that engineers tell: brick buildings are future patios,’ the geologist says. ‘Brick can’t withstand sideways shaking. And when the walls come down, the roof will follow. That’s why we say, earthquakes don’t kill people—bad buildings kill people.’ He pauses, looks around for emphasis. ‘When the earthquake hits, a thousand schools will collapse.’”

The geologist’s warnings create dramatic irony, as readers already know the earthquake will happen, juxtaposing human knowledge against human inaction. The metaphor “brick buildings are future patios” employs dark humor to underscore the severity of the impending disaster while foreshadowing the specific dangers that Annie will encounter. This passage establishes the novel’s scientific context regarding Portland’s seismic vulnerability and foreshadows the collapse of systems that characters mistakenly believe are permanent.

“She shakes her head. ‘He took the day off. He asked me to cover his shift.’

‘He got his shift back,’ I say. Stomach sinking. ‘He told me last night—he texted you and got his shift back.’

‘No,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘He told me he got offered some big part and he had to go to the first day of rehearsals.’

‘He said he wasn’t going, he said he was coming to work,’ I say again, even though there is no point, even though we both understand, of course, what is happening. And we stare at each other, in that endless slow gaze of two women who are both surprised and not surprised at all to learn a man has lied.”

The staccato dialogue structure mirrors Annie’s mental fragmentation as she processes Dom’s betrayal. The moment of recognition between Annie and Gretchen creates momentary solidarity through their shared understanding of unreliability in men. This revelation forms a narrative turning point that forces Annie to make a critical choice between safety and pursuing Dom, revealing how love compels irrational decisions amid catastrophe.

“The line appears, faint, the streak that warplanes leave behind in the sky. When I see it, I throw the test away from me as if it’s burning my hand. The plastic stick lands in the sink, and I peer at it, checking and checking again.

There you are.”

Annie uses contrasting imagery—comparing the pregnancy test line to warplanes—suggesting both wonder and potential danger in this life-changing moment. The physical action of throwing away the test dramatizes Annie’s ambivalence about motherhood amid financial instability. The final, declarative sentence, “There you are,” marks a pivotal narrative shift as Annie addresses Bean directly, establishing the second-person perspective that frames her disaster narrative as an intimate communication with her unborn child.

“You, little pinto Bean, I hope you will never be in this position. This position of capsized opportunity, the stench of potential, fermented. This position is exclusively saved for children who were told to follow their dreams, who were told they had that special something.”

Annie’s vivid metaphors of “capsized opportunity” and “fermented” potential create a sensory impression of dreams that have rotted rather than flourished. By directly addressing her unborn child, she reveals her fear that Bean might inherit the same pattern of unfulfilled ambition. This bitter reflection connects to the theme of the crushing weight of dreams deferred, showing how Annie’s generation was raised with expectations of extraordinary achievement that economic reality has since crushed.

“The things on my mind aren’t fit for a fetus to hear. The things on my mind are how much my lower back hurts, and how we don’t even have the money to have a baby, much less feed a baby, much less house a baby. And when people said it was expensive to have a baby, I thought they were just talking about clothes and bottles and cribs and stuff. I didn’t think they literally meant the birth was expensive.”

Annie’s internal monologue reveals the gap between societal expectations of maternal bliss and her actual experience of anxiety and financial precarity. She lists all that she lacks, mirroring her mounting sense of panic that emphasizes the escalating nature of her concerns. The passage demonstrates Annie’s unfiltered honesty about motherhood as she faces the practical realities that contradict the romanticized notion of parenthood.

“‘You gotta be fierce to be a mom, you know.’ Her limp is less pronounced and we’re moving faster now. ‘But don’t try to do it on your own.’”

Taylor’s statement presents motherhood not as nurturing tenderness but as a form of warrior strength, challenging conventional maternal stereotypes and building the theme of Motherhood as a Force that Transcends Individual Identity. The juxtaposition between her physically weakened state and her assertion of maternal fierceness demonstrates how motherhood transforms vulnerability into power. Her warning against solitude hints at her past struggles and establishes motherhood as a collective rather than solitary experience, reinforcing the novel’s presentation of maternal bonds that transcend social boundaries during crisis.

“I read an article about a boy who died choking on an olive. He was two. A birthday party. The faint jazz music, the martini glasses, the kids running through a forest of adult legs, the olive oily and gleaming on a coffee table or waiting covertly by the fringe of a rug. How do you leave the party at which your child has died? I guess you just leave. The door shuts behind you and then you’re standing on the front steps. A two-foot shadow beside you.”

Annie’s fixation on this tragic anecdote reveals her consuming fear of losing her child before she’s even given birth. The fragmented syntax mimics the disjointed thought patterns of anxiety, while vivid sensory details (“jazz music,” “olive oily and gleaming”) create a cinematic quality that makes the horror of loss immediate. The unanswerable question and the haunting image of the “two-foot shadow” demonstrate how Annie mentally rehearses worst-case scenarios as a form of protective preparation, revealing the darker psychological aspects of impending motherhood.

“‘Pain is a really negative word,’ she says, pointing at the whiteboard. ‘Even saying the word, pain, PAIN, can stress our nervous system out.’ She places a hand on her heart. ‘So when you tell yourself, I’m in pain, you’re gonna get anxious, your body is gonna get tense, and that’s the opposite of an ideal birthing space to be in. […] It’s important not to think of it as pain but as sensation.’”

The birth teacher’s linguistic sanitization of pain illustrates society’s tendency to reframe difficult realities with euphemistic language. The irony of replacing “pain” with “sensation” is semantic erasure that reveals an attempt to control women’s experiences through terminological manipulation. It replaces biological experiences with misplaced optimism. This passage satirizes the performative aspects of birthing culture that deny authentic experiences, connecting to the novel’s broader examination of how social expectations conflict with the raw, physical realities of childbirth.

“I spread my legs and lean down, letting my eyes focus only on the edge of the yellow rain poncho. The square edge, and the white threads that have come loose, and my hand comes into view and my fingers grab that yellow edge, and I lift it.

Oh, Bean.

I cannot say what I saw. But it was not her. It was not Gabby.”

The moment when Annie lifts the yellow poncho heightens suspense through accumulating visual details and delay. Each detail—the poncho’s “square edge,” the loose threads—slows the narrative and builds dread. Pattee’s fragmented syntax and the brief utterance “Oh, Bean” convey emotional intensity without directly describing the horror beneath. The unspeakable sight (“I cannot say what I saw”) demonstrates how language fails to capture the catastrophe of a child’s death. The delayed revelation of negative information—“it was not her”—mirrors the characters’ suspended emotional state between dread and relief.

“‘They need someone small,’ she says. Her eyes are dark and calm. If Taylor goes into that building, she is never coming out. This I know, don’t ask me how. I know I just know. ‘She’s still alive,’ she says. ‘I can feel it.’ […] I understand now; Taylor will never stop looking for Gabby. I will never stop looking for you, Bean.”

Taylor’s decision to enter the collapsed school reveals the self-sacrificing nature of maternal love. Pattee employs contrasting imagery: Taylor’s “dark and calm” eyes versus Annie’s certainty of doom. The parallel structure in the final sentences—“Taylor will never stop looking for Gabby. I will never stop looking for you, Bean”—creates a linguistic bond between the two women despite their imminent physical separation, embodying the theme of motherhood as a force that transcends individual identity.

“‘Let’s go,’ your father says when I get to him. ‘Not yet,’ I say. I don’t want to go back to the hotel room, where we will fall back into our roles of UNHAPPY MOTHER and WORRIED FATHER. Of people with credit card bills. Of star children who forgot to become stars.”

Annie’s reluctance to leave the beach reveals her dread of returning to the  social roles that she and Dom inhabit. Pattee uses capitalization to transform personal disappointment into universal archetypes, creating a visual representation of how society flattens complex individuals. The  metaphor of “star children who forgot to become stars” evokes the tragedy of deferred dreams that compress into regrets over time. This metaphor crystallizes the novel’s exploration of artistic ambition sacrificed to practical demands.

“‘You can’t help him,’ he says. ‘Old Town is flattened.’

I stare at him. Flattened. Twenty blocks of restaurants and parks and condo high-rises. The Chinese Garden. The theatre where your father is.

No, he is wrong, he has bad information, this can’t be true, because, see, it’s Dom I’m talking about, my Dom, your father, Dom, who loves hot dogs, Dom, who has big-time potential, who kissed the back of my neck this morning, and there is no world without him in it. You and I vanish into thin air.”

Annie’s reaction demonstrates denial through repetitive, incantatory language that attempts to manifest Dom through verbal summoning. The single-word sentence “Flattened” creates momentary stillness amid the rushing panic, with its double meaning applying to both buildings and Annie’s hopes. Pattee employs a stream-of-consciousness technique with increasingly urgent rhythms as Annie catalogs Dom’s attributes. The final metaphorical “vanish into thin air” transforms physical destruction into existential erasure, revealing how Annie’s identity has become inseparable from her relationships.

“I have them, her birds. There are only three of them left. A blue jay and a house finch and a yellow one I don’t know the name of, with his face and beak all black. […] And I remember thinking, as I pulled them out, that every part of the bird, each wing, each painted feather, each talon, my mother’s hands had touched. It overwhelmed me so much, that thought, that I spontaneously pressed one of the birds—the house finch—to my face.”

Annie’s mother’s papier-mâché birds function as a multivalent symbol connecting artistic expression, maternal legacy, and memory preservation. Pattee’s precise identification of each bird species creates authenticity while emphasizing Annie’s incomplete inheritance of her mother’s knowledge since she cannot identify one of them. Her impulse to physically press the bird to her face conveys her desire to absorb her mother’s touch, and the intimate physical gesture transcends language’s inadequacy. This scene creates a cyclical narrative structure as Annie contemplates her mother’s artistic remnants while preparing for her own child, connecting the generations through artifacts that embody both creativity and impermanence.

“In the dark, I am not human anymore. I have my hackles up and my teeth bared. I’m looking straight ahead so I’ll see the moon reflecting off the eyes of anyone coming for me.”

Annie’s transformation from civilized person into primal survivor illustrates the theme of crisis as liberation from social performance. The animal imagery (“hackles,” “teeth bared”) demonstrates how disaster has stripped away social niceties and revealed her capacity for fierce, protective instinct. The reference to moonlight reflecting off potential predators’ eyes establishes a hunter-hunted dynamic that reinforces her newfound survival mindset. This passage marks Annie’s psychological adaptation to a world where social rules have collapsed; her feral identity replaces her previous anxious, polite persona.

“If I had a grapefruit, I’d bite into it, peel and all, let the juice run down my face. My tongue throbs just thinking about it. If I had a bottle of water, I would pour it into my mouth until I choked.”

Annie’s desperate thirst manifests through visceral imagery that engages multiple senses—the bitter taste of grapefruit peel, the sensation of juice on skin, and the physical response of her tongue. The repeated conditional structure (“If I had”) emphasizes both her deprivation and the growing gulf between basic needs and civilized consumption. Her willingness to choke herself with water reveals how disaster has reduced complex social beings to basic survival needs.

“At first, great bursts poured out of me, drenching him. And then later a small gush. Then a trickle, then simply a drop. A tiny drop of sympathy, which I would look at in my palm and then hand over to him. And then one day there was nothing left at all.”

The water metaphor creates a visceral depiction of Annie’s gradual emotional depletion within her relationship. Pattee uses diminishing measurements (“bursts,” “gush,” “trickle,” “drop”) to track the precise stages of Annie’s disillusionment with Dom’s acting pursuits. The image of sympathy as a tangible substance she can hold in her palm and physically transfer transforms an abstract emotion into something concrete that can be exhausted. This passage connects to the theme of the crushing weight of dreams deferred, revealing how supporting Dom’s ambitions has drained Annie’s emotional resources past the point of renewal.

“Listen to me, Bean. If I could, I would take every hour that I sat in that fucking polyester cubicle box, under those sick yellow lights, on that fucking black squeaky chair, staring at an Excel spreadsheet, and I would burn them up—all those hours—until they were just a glowing ember in the air, and then I would take your hand and we would watch the entirety of all those days, all that time, slither and writhe around us.”

The extended metaphor of burning wasted time transforms Annie’s mundane office existence into a visually striking image of immolation. The specificity of workplace details (“polyester cubicle box,” “sick yellow lights,” “black squeaky chair”) creates a sensory portrait of corporate confinement that contrasts with the catastrophe’s strange liberation. Annie’s violent desire to destroy her past connects to her newfound clarity about what matters, while the imagery of watching time “slither and writhe” suggests both fascination and revulsion with how she spent her pre-earthquake life. This passage demonstrates how disaster has crystallized Annie’s dissatisfaction with deferred dreams and social expectations.