Elaine Atwell last wrote for The Toast about your dead literary mom. You are a good person. You are exactly the sort of person you would want to wait on if you were waiting tables. You consider yourself a lovable scamp when joking with your waitress*, a model of appropriate mealtime behavior to your fellow diners, and a tipper in the best tradition of rosy-cheeked liberality. So it may come as a shock to…

If your Dead Mother was not already Dead, no doubt your theatrics would kill her. That was your Dead Mother’s favorite horse. It trampled her to death when it became jealous of her attentions to other creatures. Anyway, it’s yours now. You do not resemble your Dead Mother in the slightest, except for your eyes. Your damned, cursed, pale eyes. Your Dead Mother’s feet were so small, she wept bitterly every time she danced. It…