M (C's daughter, named after C) wants things other people have. She wanted her sister's earrings (she said: they will burn on your ears) and she probably wanted F, too, but not because of anything intrinsic to F. She might have wanted their apartment. She didn't want their children, and so she comforted herself. Her sister, despite the family pressure, and on account of the earrings, and maybe also the apartment, just across the street, or that time they almost went off the road (her sister pregnant in the driver's seat), still won't speak with her.
F eats an egg (soft-boiled) every other morning for breakfast, and yogurt on the other, with his pot of tea and toast with butter and quince jam. He runs every other morning, it must be on the day he eats the egg, he must be hungrier then, and when he returns, he showers, and donning his navy-blue Brooks Brothers robe with its reserved patterning of white polke-dots, prepares his little meal, with separate dishes for the butter and the jam, and a full spoon of honey from the country for his tea, and he reads the paper, and a little later, once it is all through, neatly puts it all away, including the toast-rack for the toast and the finger-bowl for salt, and wipes the counter with a sponge and sprays down the sink and then dresses in his old English suit and splashing tonic on his face, with its rich astringent smell, walks to work.
"Slam the symbolism on them with complete brutality."