A sweet cherry smell
Alice recollected that her mother’s pillows when she was little “smelled like cherries”. It was not a usual natural cherry smell; rather, it was “a sickeningly sweet smell” and the most frightening thing was that her rapist had the same sickening “fruit” smell. She recognized that smell quickly, for this was the heady “smell of alcohol”. Her mother’s belongings and the rapist’s breath used to smell the same. The detailed description of sweet odor helps to create a snuff imagery of alcohol.
Barbie and Ken
Feeling rather lonely, Alice had to come up with entertainments by herself. She often played “histrionic games with Ken and Barbie where Barbie, by sixteen, had married, given birth, and gotten divorced”. Those games didn’t have happy endings. Although she was rather little to comprehend the problems her family had, she projected those problems onto her dolls unconsciously. For instance, the reason why Ken and Barbie got divorced was that Ken “didn’t touch”. This imagery creates a very unsettling feeling, portraying an unhappy family life and a lonely child.
Let’s Not Have a Scene
Alice didn’t witness many scenes in which her father showed any affection for her mother. The only memory she had, was of “a brief kiss” when they were dropping their father off “to catch a suburban limo to the airport”. Due to Alice’s “promoting, then begging, then whining”, he finally kissed his wife. This imagery shows that Alice’s parents are not exactly close and that there should be a reason behind the distraction of Alice's father.
