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Summary
Part 1, Chapters 7-10
Chapter 7: LUCY, October 2010
Pippa convinces Lucy to come to Wrigley’s birthday party, saying that Stephen likes her and is said to be good in bed. Lucy is concerned that Stephen is a little fat, which Pippa counters by saying all boys are fat and only get fatter. By 1:00 p.m., all the alcohol at the party has run out except for raspberry vodka, which no one wants. Lucy is wondering what to do when Stephen appears and offers her tequila. Stephen flirts with her and they discover they are both from the same part of Long Island. Realizing the others have left for another party, they walk to Stephen’s dorm. They kiss, and then Lucy tells Stephen she doesn’t want to have sex and vomits in his trashcan. Although Lucy offers to go home, Stephen insists that isn’t safe to walk by herself, and they both fall sleep without having sex. In the morning, Lucy watches Stephen sleep, thinking she is not attracted to him after all. Nevertheless, she texts Lydia to tell her about the hookup.
Chapter 8: STEPHEN, October 2010
Stephen finds Lucy in the library and talks to her about her classes, her family, and her ambition to become a travel writer. Stephen thinks disdainfully of Lucy’s lawyer father’s decision to be a criminal defense attorney rather than work in a more highly paid specialty, which is Stephen’s plan. Stephen tells Lucy about the origin of the song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” which he has memorized with the specific intention of charming her. Lucy tells him he is interesting and apologizes for not returning his phone calls. However, when Stephen asks her to dinner again, she refuses. Stephen interrupts her with a sudden kiss, feeling certain from her response that she will ultimately sleep with him.
Chapter 9: LUCY, November 2010
Lucy is helping Jackie write a text to her high school boyfriend, who doesn’t yet know she is dating Stuart, when CJ calls her. Lucy thinks about CJ and the person who most formed her character, Marilyn. In high school, CJ ran away home to live in California with Marilyn. Wealthy thanks to a divorce settlement, Marilyn devotes her life to travel and to AIDS advocacy in the developing world. Together, she and CJ build a collection of jewelry souvenirs. When Marilyn dies, CJ pours the jewelry on her bed and sleeps surrounded by it. Lucy connects her ambition to be a travel writer to Marilyn’s love of travel. CJ returns to the East Coast when she falls in love with Ben, whom she meets at a Fleetwood Mac concert. Lucy remembers thinking of CJ as “Mommy” and later as “Mom,” but since early in Lucy’s freshman year of high school, she has only been “CJ.”
Chapter 10: STEPHEN December 2010
Finding Lucy crying outside the Ugly Christmas Sweater party, Stephen sees his chance to get her attention. They walk toward Stephen’s dorm, and he tries to draw out what is upsetting her, telling her his family is also dysfunctional and mentioning his mother’s bipolar disorder. When Stephen was eleven, Nora disappeared for a week, taking along his four-year-old sister. Although his father finally divorced Nora following that incident, Stephen remains fixated on her, despite her many failings. Drunk and high from the party, Stephen offers Lucy wine when they get to his room. She tells him about the Unforgivable Thing, and though he is distracted by her flushed cheeks and her breasts, he pretends to empathize and comforts her. Exhausted, she asks to sleep in his room again. Although Stephen is aroused by her, he does not make an advance, reasoning that having her in his bed means she will have sex with him soon.
Analysis
Stephen’s offer of tequila to Lucy in Chapter 7 illustrates the role alcohol plays in the book, both as a means to encourage social connection and to facilitate manipulative behavior. When the alcohol runs out at Wrigley’s party, Lucy “needs” one more drink, a choice of words that underscores Lucy’s pragmatic use of alcohol to fuel her tolerance for Baird’s party scene. She feels alone without her friends in that moment, and alcohol will allow her to overcome her social anxiety in their absence. Stephen’s arrival with his flask of tequila suggests the appearance of a savior in this moment. The tequila represents the sense of belonging he can offer Lucy when he chooses to. However, alcohol is a false means of finding comfort in social settings, as demonstrated by Lucy’s vomiting in Stephen’s room later. Throughout the book, Lucy drinks to the point of becoming ill, including in the opening scene in 2017, when she wakes up with a hangover. This is an indication that the tool that allows her to move through her social world is simultaneously taking a toll on her physical health, a trade-off she accepts to ease her anxiety.
Marilyn, CJ’s aunt, is an important force in shaping both CJ’s and Lucy’s personalities. Although Lucy’s anger at CJ causes her to push her mother away and hold her in contempt, their shared connection to Marilyn reveals that Lucy and CJ are fundamentally similar. CJ’s intense wish to be like her aunt is shown in her reaction to Marilyn’s death, when CJ spreads Marilyn’s jewelry collection over her bed and sleeps in it for a week, an image that suggests her desire to literally absorb her aunt’s qualities. Lucy chooses to wear Marilyn’s sweater as a kind of armor, taking on Marilyn’s strength of character in a paradoxically soft garment. Marilyn’s life story serves as a parable for the freedom available to women who walk away from bad relationships with men who sap their strength. The Marilyn whose example inspires CJ and Lucy is the divorced Marilyn, who walks away with money and a decision to throw herself into travel and helping others rather than spending her energy on men. Marilyn’s story is a counter-example to Lucy’s growing obsession with Stephen and an example of hope for a different future.
Lucy and Stephen share stories of their mothers in this section of the novel, which is an example of the theme of secrecy. Stephen tells Lucy about Nora’s bipolar disorder, her abduction of his sister, and his father’s ongoing emotional attachment to her. Lucy tells Stephen about the Unforgivable Thing—CJ’s affair with Gabe. For Lucy, this scene functions as emotional bonding. She is moved by Stephen’s attention to her story, which strikes her as unlike the ways men usually behave, and by his openness in sharing his own pain. However, for Stephen, the conversation serves only as a practical step toward his goal of getting Lucy to trust him enough to have sex with him. While Lucy’s story holds enormous emotional power for her, Stephen does not feel strongly about what he shares with her. By showing this scene from each of their perspectives, the novel makes it evident that when Lucy is talking, Stephen is not particularly attentive at all. While she tells her story, he is imagining her naked. The disjuncture in their experiences of the moment functions as dramatic irony, with the reader aware of Stephen’s emotional distance and manipulative nature even as Lucy believes that she is bonding with him over shared vulnerability.
