"A Grain of Mustard Seed" and Other Short Stories
SHOPPING by Joyce Carol Oates1987 What do paragraphs 66-69 reveal about Mrs. Dietrich and Nola's relationship?
Her expression is calm but her voice is shaking. Nola turns away covering her face with a hand, for a moment she looks years older than her age — in fact exhausted. Mrs. Dietrich sees with pity that her daughter’s skin is fair and thin and dry — unlike her own, which tends to be oily — it will wear out before she's 40. Mrs. Dietrich reaches over to squeeze her hand. The fingers are limp, ungiving. “You're going back to school tomorrow, Nola,” she says. “You won't come home again until June 12. And you probably will go to France — if you father consents.”
Nola gets to her feet, drops her cigarette to the flagstone terrace and grinds it beneath her boot. A dirty thing to do, Mrs. Dietrich thinks considering there's an ashtray right on the table, but she says nothing. She dislikes La Crêperie anyway.
Nola laughs, showing her lovely white teeth. “Oh, the hell will him,” she says. “---- 11 Daddy, right?”
They separate for an hour, Mrs. Dietrich to Neiman-Marcus to buy a birthday gift for her elderly aunt, Nola to the trendy new boutique Pou Vous. By the time Mrs. Dietrich rejoins her daughter she's quite angry, blood beating hot and hard and measured in resentment, she has had time to relive old quarrels between them, old exchanges, stray humiliating memories of her marriage as well, these last-hour disagreements are the cruelest and they are Nola's specialty. She locates Nola in the rear of the boutique amid blaring rock music, flashing neon lights, chrome edged mirrors, her face still hard, closed, prim, pale. She stands beside another teenage girl looking in a desultory12 way through a rack of blouses, shoving the hangers roughly along, taking no care when a blouse falls to the floor. As Nola glances up, startled, not prepared to see her mother in front of her, their eyes lock for an instant and Mrs. Dietrich stares at her with hatred. Cold calm clear unmistakable hatred. She is thinking, Who are you? What have I to do with you? I don't know you, I don't love you, why should I?
What do paragraphs 66-69 reveal about Mrs. Dietrich and Nola's relationship?