Summary

The story begins with the speaker explaining the "silence mark" (◻), which indicates an absence of language in conversation. He says, "Most often used in the conversations I have with my grandmother about her life in Europe during the war, and in conversations with my father about our family's history of heart disease – we have forty-one heart attacks between us, and counting – the silence mark is a staple of familial punctuation" (82). He provides an example of a conversation between himself and his father after his father's recent angioplasty. In it, his father tells him "I just wanted to let you know – " and the speaker cuts him off with, "I already know" (82). Then the conversation is punctuated by the silence mark (◻) back and forth until they say goodbye and hang up the phone.

The next punctuation mark is the "willed silence mark" (◼), which signifies an intentional...