Slumberland, "Slumberland"

Slumberland is a motel the narrator often visits as she drives around taking photographs at night in "Slumberland." This story is set in Florida, north of Orlando, and the narrator describes the motel as being "in my old neighborhood near Lake Monroe" (19). She recalls multiple instances in which she has seen "some distraught woman...standing on the pitched roof and threatening to jump" (19). The motel has an "old-fashioned neon sign" (20) featuring its name in cursive, and next door there is a three-story Victorian house "with a wild yard and a drooping porch" (20). The Victorian is vacant and the narrator mentions that she later hears of the body of a teenage girl being discovered there. Slumberland and the things the narrator sees there are symbolic of the death of her son (who fell, presumably from a roof or tree) and the loneliness and emptiness the narrator feels as...