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Anthony’s Mother
Tom is Anthony’s 10-year-old nephew, Margaret and Ian’s son, and Hannah’s younger brother. He’s a sweet, thoughtful boy who tries hard to do as he’s told. During their family Christmas party, Anthony has the strong urge to hug Tom, whom he describes as “[t]oo troubled for a ten-year-old”—perhaps because his parents are struggling financially. At one point, Tom thanks his grandmother (Anthony and Margaret’s mother) for the walkie-talkie set she got him, but she hardly notices when he kisses her on the cheek. From this, readers can gather that Anthony and his nephew are similar: they both try to win their family members’ approval, though neither of them receives much recognition or affection for their efforts. This may be why Anthony and Tom seem to effortlessly connect with each other when they go outside to test the walkie-talkies: they seem to be similarly alienated in their family, and Tom is the only person whom Anthony is able to let loose with. The brief moment of lighthearted fun that Anthony has with Tom is perhaps what leads him to the epiphany that he doesn’t want to have a baby with his wife, Marie—seemingly because he realizes that he wants all of his family relationships to be as natural and easy as his bond with Tom.
Tom Quotes in Static
The Static quotes below are all either spoken by Tom or refer to Tom. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Quotes
How to broach it with Margaret, how to offer? Tell her he never uses the one in the bedroom? Yeah, tell her it’s been sitting in the guest bedroom gathering dust, be great if she could take it off his hands. A loan. As long as they’d like it. His fault for buying the gadget. Anthony has to squeeze his hands together between his knees to stop himself grabbing Tom and hugging him as hard as he can. A thin boy. Too troubled for a ten-year-old. Reading out those stupid knock-knock jokes at the table, trying his best to do just what's expected of him, to decipher all those signals and stand in the firing line of all those deadly rays.
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[…] Anthony’s praying for her to just shut up for a minute, just one fucking minute for once in her life, but she can't, of course, she has to start in on how he’s got to look after it because it cost a lot of money and he can’t take it to school, it’s just to be played with at his house, and she accepts Tom’s muted kiss on the cheek without even looking at him, not really, because what she wants are babies, she only likes them when they're babies, by the time they’re Tom’s and Hannah’s age they’ve learned to be wary and submissive and not to trust her, and who can blame them?
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He watches as Marie takes the sifter and starts dusting the pies with icing sugar and something dislodges in him with a delicate gush of pressure, something shifts to let bright sound in.
He watches her wrists flex, the air going out of him, certain, all of a sudden, that nothing of him will ever take root inside that thin, tightly wound body, nothing. Tom’s voice comes through the handset again. Clear as a bell now, the clearest thing he's ever heard.
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Tom Quotes in Static
The Static quotes below are all either spoken by Tom or refer to Tom. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Static
Quotes
How to broach it with Margaret, how to offer? Tell her he never uses the one in the bedroom? Yeah, tell her it’s been sitting in the guest bedroom gathering dust, be great if she could take it off his hands. A loan. As long as they’d like it. His fault for buying the gadget. Anthony has to squeeze his hands together between his knees to stop himself grabbing Tom and hugging him as hard as he can. A thin boy. Too troubled for a ten-year-old. Reading out those stupid knock-knock jokes at the table, trying his best to do just what's expected of him, to decipher all those signals and stand in the firing line of all those deadly rays.
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[…] Anthony’s praying for her to just shut up for a minute, just one fucking minute for once in her life, but she can't, of course, she has to start in on how he’s got to look after it because it cost a lot of money and he can’t take it to school, it’s just to be played with at his house, and she accepts Tom’s muted kiss on the cheek without even looking at him, not really, because what she wants are babies, she only likes them when they're babies, by the time they’re Tom’s and Hannah’s age they’ve learned to be wary and submissive and not to trust her, and who can blame them?
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He watches as Marie takes the sifter and starts dusting the pies with icing sugar and something dislodges in him with a delicate gush of pressure, something shifts to let bright sound in.
He watches her wrists flex, the air going out of him, certain, all of a sudden, that nothing of him will ever take root inside that thin, tightly wound body, nothing. Tom’s voice comes through the handset again. Clear as a bell now, the clearest thing he's ever heard.
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