how stupid all this was , to be a widow at thirty-five , to be a fugitive in a town full of dead people , to be sitting in the men 's room of an abandoned movie theater on a canvas port-a-potty , peeing and crying at the same time , pissing and moaning , you might say , and looking at a dim beast on a wall so warped that it seemed to be running underwater , how stupid to be so frightened , and to have grief all but stolen away by her mind 's brute determination to survive at any cost ... as if peter had never meant anything anyway , as if he had just been a footnote .