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Book Five

Chapters 35–38

Summary: Chapter 35

This chapter is all Ginny’s memories and nothing else. She remembers a time when she ate baby aspirin and had to go to the hospital. She remembers her parents telling her that she was getting out of control. She remembers being uncomfortable in her clothes and the time she bit a boy on the playground and was punished. She remembers her wedding night with Ty and the cautious sex they had. When Ginny recalls never wanting to look at her own body, she knows it’s because of her father. She remembers once looking at her leg and thinking that it might be beautiful. Finally, Ginny remembers vivid details of her father in her bed—his smells, his voice, his nightshirt, and his calloused hands. She does not remember penetration or pain, just limp inertia. She wishes she were more like Rose, able to judge their father so clearly, harshly, and completely. 

Summary: Chapter 36

Ty, Pete, Ginny, and Rose meet with Jean Cartier, a lawyer in Mason City. He asks questions about Larry, the transition, and the farm, including about Larry’s DWI. He advises them to be model farmers until the court date. He even tells the women to wear dresses and keep their porches swept. Ginny finds comfort in all the discipline—cleaning, mowing, canning, organizing, and cooking. The days pass until August. One day, Pete gets drunk and threatens Harold with a gun. He then drives his truck into the quarry and drowns, his blood alcohol level so high he should have been unconscious. 

Summary: Chapter 37

The next morning, the sheriff comes to tell Rose what has happened to Pete. She goes to Ginny and asks her to be with the girls while she goes to the quarry. When the girls get up, they wonder where their parents are and tell Ginny they might not go back to boarding school. They talk about baby pigs and 4-H projects until Ginny snaps at them for bickering, causing Linda to think there’s something wrong. Ginny remembers when her mother died. She recalls the details of sitting at home in silence, the church women in their kitchen, her mother’s bed being moved out of the living room, and the funeral. Rose returns and matter-of-factly tells the girls the bad news. The girls go swimming, the funeral director arrives, and the church ladies bring food. Ty gives the eulogy. That night, with Ty asleep, Rose calls Ginny and asks her to come to her house. She cannot sleep, and Pammy keeps waking up. 

Summary: Chapter 38

Rose cleans like mad and drinks vodka. Ginny joins her. They toast to Pete, but Rose also curses him for leaving the girls. They go outside to look at the stars. Rose confesses that she and Pete did not have a good love life. She married him to erase their father and thought they would move away so Pete could play music, but instead, they returned to the farm. Pete had trouble keeping jobs because of his temper. Then the girls were born. Rose admits that she’s been having an affair with Jess for about three weeks and that she’s in love with him. Rose told Pete about Jess a week before. His response was wanting to kill Larry. She tells Ginny that Pete was the one who emptied Harold’s water tank, thinking that Larry might be affected, not Harold. Pete hated Larry. He was jealous of him and wanted him dead. Rose talks about how Larry beat them and had sex with them and how much she wants him to feel remorse for it.

When Ginny asks Rose if she knows that Jess has slept with her, too, Rose says yes. Rose admits that she’s jealous, but she knows that Jess loves her and she sees the whole situation as somehow working out for them now that Pete’s dead. Rose assures Ginny that she will never hurt her and that she can be trusted, but Ginny is no longer sure. Overwhelmed, she tells Rose that she’s going home. Walking back, as the sun starts to rise, Ginny thinks that Rose caused Pete’s death.

Analysis: Chapters 35–38

Chapter 35 breaks a narrative pattern followed in nearly every chapter before. Most chapters begin with Ginny’s remembering or musing about a topic from her life, usually in the past, and then the chapter shifts to events in the present, including action and dialogue. However, the memories revealed in Chapter 35 never leave Ginny’s mind. The only line of dialogue in that chapter is the eerie words of long-ago Larry in the middle of the night telling her to be quiet, that she doesn’t need to fight him.

Pete’s sudden death and all the memories and thoughts it triggers for both Ginny and Rose dominate these chapters. The way that Ginny presents the story to readers in a single paragraph at the end of Chapter 36 is strangely cool and detached. The family will never know if Pete’s death is accidental or suicide, but it sets a new narrative subplot into action after Rose reveals that she told Pete about her affair with Jess a week before his death. Rose was surprised when Pete got angry at Larry, not her. He blamed Larry for all their troubles, including this one, and his threats to Harold were really threats to Larry. Readers are reminded that Pete’s confession to Ginny that he wants to hurt someone happened at the same quarry where he dies. In addition, his death was foreshadowed that same day, when Ginny saw a snake at the quarry. Rose is correct that she and Peter probably should have moved their lives away from Larry and the farm.

Pete turns out to be a more complex figure than might have been suspected. His musicianship makes him one of the few creative, artistic characters in the novel, and his passionate streak separates him from the stoic Cook clan. Pete has been fun-loving, entertaining, talented, and ambitious, yet he also has been violent with Rose, and he never seemed to be considered a real part of the family. During the Monopoly games, Ginny develops her fondness for Pete and his sense of humor, and readers do, too. However, readers know that Pete knows that Larry abused his daughters when they were children. Perhaps that is why it doesn’t seem so odd that, when Rose tells Pete of her affair with Jess, his anger is directed at Larry and not Jess or Rose. Pete’s death is a tragic and senseless one. Pete is the victim of jealousy, hatred, and perhaps his alcohol abuse. His dark desire to hurt someone, expressed to Ginny at the quarry, suggests that he has been hurt in the past.

Most significant, the revelation of Jess and Rose’s affair sets up jealousy and a rivalry between the two sisters who had so recently bonded over their shared pasts. It’s another one-two punch for Ginny, the news of Pete’s death followed closely by the news of Jess and Rose, lubricated by alcohol. Rose comments that she was the most jealous child her mother ever knew. She’s been jealous of Ginny because of her closeness to and ease with Pammy and Linda. Just weeks ago, Rose was jealous of how much Jess liked Ginny. Rose admits that she has a mean streak, but her meanness gives her power. Ginny’s head spins with all this new knowledge, and she feels a kinship with Pete and his preoccupation with Larry. For Ginny, it’s all getting too complicated, too incestuous, and simply too much. At the end of Chapter 38, Ginny feels undone by Rose, alert and fearful, ready to spring but not yet knowing how that will look.

In a moment that is almost lighthearted amid all this anxiety and sadness, Ginny remarks that for the first time in all these years, they do not know exactly where Larry is. When Ginny says how strange that is, Rose responds that she doesn’t think of it as anything but freedom. Freedom from her father is what Rose wants out of life. She is worried that he will outlive her. She wants to live long enough to see him dead.

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