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Summary
Part V: Peacehaven, December 1999
Marion and Tom’s doctor, Dr. Wells, visits to examine Patrick. Dr. Wells speaks frankly with Marion, telling her that Patrick is unlikely to recover. He advises her to put him in a nursing home. Marion resists the idea, but Wells persists, urging her to consider the effect that caring for Patrick will have on her relationship with Tom. Marion realizes that Wells believes she is caring for Patrick because she is infatuated with him. Marion assures the doctor she will discuss the matter with Tom. That night, Marion finishes reading Anna Karenina aloud to Patrick. She rushes through the ending to be sure there is time to read him the history she has been writing before he declines further or, worse, dies.
The scene shifts to 1958. The afternoon after Marion sends the letter to Houghton, Tom returns from Venice. He is wearing a shirt he claims looks good because of the skilled hotel laundry service, but Marion recognizes it as a luxury item. She later takes pleasure in ironing it poorly. Marion waits anxiously for news that Patrick has lost his job as a result of her letter, but nothing happens. Meanwhile, she reminisces about her friendship with Julia and hopes they can be friends again. However, when school begins again and Marion apologizes for reacting badly to Julia’s disclosure about being gay, Julia tells her she is moving away. The following night, Tom does not come home for dinner. When Marion awakes to find him still missing, she rushes to Patrick’s apartment to confront him, only to learn from a neighbor that Patrick has been arrested.
Marion then goes to Sylvie’s apartment and tells her about Patrick’s arrest and confesses her role in writing the letter. Sylvie advises her to keep the letter a secret from Tom, promising to keep Marion’s secret as Marion has kept her secret about her false pregnancy. After her workday, Marion comes home to find Tom waiting to tell her about Patrick’s arrest, which he witnessed at the police station. Tom begins breaking their dining room furniture. Realizing her letter has put him in danger as well as Patrick, Marion attempts to take control of the situation by telling Tom they can restart their marriage, he can get a new job, and she will never leave him. Tom spends the next several weeks crying himself to sleep at night. He resigns from his job and becomes a security guard. Marion visits Patrick in prison but keeps the visit secret from Tom, despite having told Patrick she will ask Tom to visit.
In 1999, Marion lies to Tom, telling him the doctor has said that Patrick has less than a week to live and that Tom should talk to him. She suggests Tom could read Patrick the manuscript she has been writing. Tom becomes angry, believing it to be a list of his and Patrick’s failings, and accuses Marion of bringing Patrick into their home as a punishment. Marion tells him that the manuscript is a confession. In the morning, she takes care of Patrick as usual. She is surprised to discover that Tom has returned home after his morning swim. They eat breakfast together and she gives him the manuscript. Throughout the day, she hears Tom reading to Patrick as she packs a suitcase. At dusk, she finds them sitting together and turns on a light for them. She puts the final page of her manuscript on the kitchen table as she leaves, planning to go find Julia.
Analysis
The shirt Tom brings home from Venice is a symbol of the cultured world Patrick introduces him to. The shirt is beautiful in every respect, down to its perfect creases, a gift from a lover meant to enhance Tom’s natural beauty. Although Tom tells Marion that what makes the shirt look special is the hotel laundry service, she recognizes immediately that it is handmade and must be a gift from Patrick. Tom’s deception illustrates his desire to keep secret from her the intimacy of his relationship with Patrick. The lie also shows the growing distance between him and Marion. Once they shared a desire to learn more about the finer things, but now Tom guards the information jealously, an indication that he is less willing to share Patrick’s attention and knowledge with Marion than he once was. Patrick has introduced both of them to high culture in the form of art, opera, and intellectual conversation, but the shirt is a gift for Tom alone. Marion’s passive-aggressive pleasure in laundering the shirt poorly, breaking its beautiful lines, reflects her growing anger at Patrick’s increasingly fierce hold on Tom.
The skirt that Julia lends to Marion represents the lost promise of their friendship. Julia offers Marion the garment in a moment of need, when Marion is soaked with rain. In the same way, Julia first offered her friendship to Marion when she felt out of place at school and needed someone to talk to about her frustrations with the students. Julia gave Marion advice and encouraged her to laugh about her difficulties, advice which gave Marion the confidence to face her new career much as the right garment might. Marion’s decision to pursue a career had created distance between her and Sylvie, and Julia had stepped in to be a peer for Marion. Just as Marion initially thinks the skirt will not fit her, she notices early on that the older teachers consider Julia a little odd—but, in fact, the skirt fits her perfectly, just as Julia also proves a good fit as a friend. Marion wears the skirt longer than she needs to, trying to hang on to her sense of connection to Julia, but Julia announces that she is moving, leaving no time for reconciliation. Marion keeps the skirt for four decades, and at the novel’s end, she is still hoping she can rebuild her friendship with Julia.
The manuscript Marion creates and gives to the men at the end of the book functions as a counterpoint to the letter she sends to Houghton in 1958. Tom fears that the manuscript is an attempt at revenge against him and Patrick for hurting her, but her revenge had actually taken place in the original letter decades earlier. While the letter she sends to Houghton is an attempt to force closeness between her and Tom and distance between Tom and Patrick, the attempt backfires horribly, breaking Tom’s relationship with Patrick but also the emotional core of Marion’s relationship with Tom. Her confession, in contrast, is meant to bring Tom and Patrick closer together again and to finally end her loveless marriage with Tom. The manuscript is also a confession, meant to ease her guilt and relieve her of her secrets, secrets that have alienated her from herself and others for four decades. Without her secrets weighing her down, she is free to finally leave Tom, to look for Julia, and to write a new story for herself, one that is defined not by Tom’s indifference but by her own desire.
