““Jean Kurek looked a bit like a field mouse herself, with her close-cut gray hair, in her shapeless gray dress—no zippers, no buttons. Stroke clothes. Her appearance was no more or less distinguished than it had been all her sixty-eight years, the most likely description of her a string of negatives. Not really tall or short, you wouldn’t say she’s heavy but she isn’t particularly thin, not ugly, not at all, but not pretty either, her hair is that color that isn’t blond or brown. Arguably, her most striking feature was the absence of any striking feature—though her hair had finally claimed a color, gray. She’d certainly never been considered beautiful, not by anyone other than Cliff, who had been adamant on the point for over forty years; but if she’d ever yearned for greater consensus, that yearning had been tempered by her knowledge of how she would loathe the attention it would bring. Jean had spent a lifetime trying to be inconspicuous, appreciating that nature had given her a head start.””
