Alexandra:
A self conscious mother, Alexandra makes her living by constructing small and quaint figurines modeling her full figure that she is unable to appreciate. "Her figurines were...dubbed her "bubbies"--chunky female bodies four or five inches long, often faceless and without feet, coiled or bent in recumbent positions and heavier than expected when held in the hand."[pg 19]
She is also very paranoid about getting cancer and is very conscious of her age, although she rarely vocalizes her worries. "Her poor insides: she was sure one day she'd have an operation, and they'd open it all too late, just crawling with black cancer cells. Except they probably weren't black but a brighter red, and shiny, like cauliflower of a bloody sort."[pg 122]
Jane:
Jane is sharp-witted and seemingly the oldest of the three, and very comfortable with her age. She plays the cello, a talent which Van Horne capitalizes on to get on her good side. She is Somewhat shrewd and judgemental of people, but she is soft-hearted towards her friends. "'She [Felicia] is a ridiculous and vapid woman'...'She was full of hate, darling. It was the hatecoming out of her mouth that did her in, not a few harmless feathers and pins. She had lost touch with her womanhood...She needed to be beaten, Clyde was right about that, he just went at it too hard.'"
Sukie:
Naturally thin and lithe, Sukie has few thoughts on the improvement of her body. Full of nervous but benevolent energy, Sukie participates in a number of committees and organizations. "Her weight was not among Sukie's worries: all that nervous energy, it burned everything up."[pg 129]
Darryl Van Horne:
The mysterious pursuit of all three witches, Darryl Van Horne seems to hold the attraction of the three main characters despite their less than flattering descriptions of him. "...a bearish dark man with greasy curly hair half-hiding his ears and clumped at the back so that his head from the side looked like a beer mug with a monstrously thick handle."[pg 34]
"When he spoke, his voice resounded in a way that did not quite go with the movements of his jaw, and this impression of an artificial element somewhere in his speech apparatus was reinforced by the strange slipping, patched-together impression his features made and by the excess of spittle he produced when he talked, so that he occasionally paused to wipe his coatsleeve roughly across the corners of his mouth." [pg 35]
Yet with this revealing and seemingly undesirable mental portrait of him, Van Horne manages to drive a wedge between the three friends by making them compete for his...shall we say, affection: "'Well,' Alexandra sighed, 'he's challenging us. He's stretching us.' Over the phone she did sound stretched--more diffuse and distant...A pause occurred, where in the old days they could hardly stop talking. Now each woman had her share, her third, of Van Horne to be secretive about, their solitary undiscussed visits..." [pg162]
Felicia:
Clyde's wife, Felicia was once a peppy youthful girl. While age has done little to her looks, it has completely ransacked and mutated her demeanor. Once energetic, Felicia now constantly takes out all of her stress energy in rants against Clyde. "Felicia had never outgrown the presumingness of a pretty and vivacious high-school girl...When she had been in high-school girl she had had shining round eyes, but now her face, without growing fat, with every year was pressing in upon these lamps of her soul; her eyes had become piggy, with a vengful piggy glitter." [pg 124...127]
A self conscious mother, Alexandra makes her living by constructing small and quaint figurines modeling her full figure that she is unable to appreciate. "Her figurines were...dubbed her "bubbies"--chunky female bodies four or five inches long, often faceless and without feet, coiled or bent in recumbent positions and heavier than expected when held in the hand."[pg 19]
She is also very paranoid about getting cancer and is very conscious of her age, although she rarely vocalizes her worries. "Her poor insides: she was sure one day she'd have an operation, and they'd open it all too late, just crawling with black cancer cells. Except they probably weren't black but a brighter red, and shiny, like cauliflower of a bloody sort."[pg 122]
Jane:
Jane is sharp-witted and seemingly the oldest of the three, and very comfortable with her age. She plays the cello, a talent which Van Horne capitalizes on to get on her good side. She is Somewhat shrewd and judgemental of people, but she is soft-hearted towards her friends. "'She [Felicia] is a ridiculous and vapid woman'...'She was full of hate, darling. It was the hatecoming out of her mouth that did her in, not a few harmless feathers and pins. She had lost touch with her womanhood...She needed to be beaten, Clyde was right about that, he just went at it too hard.'"
Sukie:
Naturally thin and lithe, Sukie has few thoughts on the improvement of her body. Full of nervous but benevolent energy, Sukie participates in a number of committees and organizations. "Her weight was not among Sukie's worries: all that nervous energy, it burned everything up."[pg 129]
Darryl Van Horne:
The mysterious pursuit of all three witches, Darryl Van Horne seems to hold the attraction of the three main characters despite their less than flattering descriptions of him. "...a bearish dark man with greasy curly hair half-hiding his ears and clumped at the back so that his head from the side looked like a beer mug with a monstrously thick handle."[pg 34]
"When he spoke, his voice resounded in a way that did not quite go with the movements of his jaw, and this impression of an artificial element somewhere in his speech apparatus was reinforced by the strange slipping, patched-together impression his features made and by the excess of spittle he produced when he talked, so that he occasionally paused to wipe his coatsleeve roughly across the corners of his mouth." [pg 35]
Yet with this revealing and seemingly undesirable mental portrait of him, Van Horne manages to drive a wedge between the three friends by making them compete for his...shall we say, affection: "'Well,' Alexandra sighed, 'he's challenging us. He's stretching us.' Over the phone she did sound stretched--more diffuse and distant...A pause occurred, where in the old days they could hardly stop talking. Now each woman had her share, her third, of Van Horne to be secretive about, their solitary undiscussed visits..." [pg162]
Felicia:
Clyde's wife, Felicia was once a peppy youthful girl. While age has done little to her looks, it has completely ransacked and mutated her demeanor. Once energetic, Felicia now constantly takes out all of her stress energy in rants against Clyde. "Felicia had never outgrown the presumingness of a pretty and vivacious high-school girl...When she had been in high-school girl she had had shining round eyes, but now her face, without growing fat, with every year was pressing in upon these lamps of her soul; her eyes had become piggy, with a vengful piggy glitter." [pg 124...127]
Clyde:
Editor of the paper, Clyde is Sukie's boss and Felicia's husband. He is a habitual drinker, and as he approaches the end of his life he begins to make blacking out due to alcohol a part of his daily routine, mainly just to avoid his wife. "Alexandra believed that nature, the physical world, was a happy thing. This huddling man, this dog-skin of warm bones, did not believe that. The world for him had been rendered tasteless as paper, composed as it was of inconsequent messy events that flickered across his desk on their way to the moldering back files." [pg 139]
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