Found a quote that kinda illustrates it. Page 319, no spoilers:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote
Of course during all this, the children are once again abandoned, left to look after each other, with no one around to help translate the horror of the afternoon. They hide in their room, rarely saying a thing. Not even Tom makes an appearance to even temporarily contest their fears with the soothing lyric of a bedtime story about otters, eagles, and the occasional tiger.
The story is often told, while traveling in strange places, Mark and Poe only had each other to depend on, because often they were the only ones who knew English. They would be in the care of nannies etc. who didn't speak the language. (I guess mom was helping dad with his films? Not sure what she was doing if not taking care of the kids...) They learned quickly that "Nein!" means no from some nuns and there is even a reference to it on page 503. When TZD and Priscilla were breaking up, the "I'm not gonna talk, you give this message to the other parent" thing was going on...and then eventually mommy ran away. Mark went off to Yale and Poe managed to get out of high school, to follow mom to New York and lived in a squat, then managing to get to Princeton...so yes, they had to look after each other, with nobody to talk to but each other about what was happening with their parents, where mommy went or anything.
There's plenty more I'm sure, but I'm not really awake yet :P
An obvious one...Poe quote from the Real Detroit weekly (you can read it on polishchick.com (http://www.polishchick.com/):
"If you have some kind of trauma in your life, let’s say five and a half minutes, it can take you a lifetime to get through it..."
[ June 22, 2001: Message edited by: MicheleVR5 ]