Octavia, Jolinda and Petunia

Octavia can't allow herself the luxury and joy of a friendship. She cooks for a living to help others running the nursing home kitchen like a cook in a fancy restaurant. Yet brags about not owning anything except large sized black scrubs and not eating anything beyond toast and scrambled eggs. She no longer reads which she always loved to do, and took up drinking cheap whiskey and TV watching. She blames herself for giving birth to her son out of wedlock. He recently overdosed and died at 30. There's room for healing and growth if she would only allow herself but deprivation and punishment are all she thinks she deserves.

Jolinda also lost a child to overdose. She tool will not allow herself anything but strict laws of eating sleeping and exercising. Her current marriage is a disaster. Her current husband had a baby with another woman and kept it a secret. Jolinda is raising her dead daughter's son. Her living-legacy of self hate has been imprinted on all of the people in her orbit. One look at her and you see a woman who appears to be 100 years old and has no joy, has not laughed or smiled in 45 years. Her self hate is palpable. She is radioactive waste.

Petunia wants everyone to wait on her. She is perpetually stuck at age 16 when she got pregnant in high school. The father of her child is in prison. Most people feel sorry for her and she manipulates them and burns them out. She is stuck at age 16 and refuses to grow up. She is getting too much mileage out of remaining a child. Her son is now grown. He was raised by his grandfather and has a career as a diesel engine technician. Petunia was raised by her father who worked as a finish carpenter. Her mother has married five times, is mentally ill and left the family and the country many decades ago. Now Petunia takes care of her mother emotionally. They have long phone calls across three time zones while Petunia gets brainwashed by the continually blaring Fox News in her overheated subsidized apartment.