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Summary
Chapter 17
Lara begins the chapter by saying Michiganders don’t halt their plans for weather; they go to school in the snow no matter how deep. However, a summer lightning storm is too dangerous to work in, so the family have to pause picking cherries for the day. Nell asks if Duke and Pallace were sleeping together, and though Maisie is briefly shocked, Lara agrees that there was something going on when Pallace took over the role of Emily. Though Duke never directly mentioned it, it was clear from their behavior that they were involved. After losing her acting roles because of her injury, Lara describes how she ended up working in the fabric department with Cat, who was in charge of the show’s costumes. Because she’s a skilled seamstress and can do the work sitting down, she’s allowed to do the mending. The two chat as they work and become close friends.
Sebastian starts to visit less often because Pallace tells him she’s too busy to see him, but he returns for the opening night of Fool for Love. Pallace also distances herself from Lara, who ruefully notes that she should have guessed about the affair from Pallace’s standoffishness. When Sebastian and Lara watch Pallace and Duke kiss during the show, they realize that they’re having an affair. Sebastian leaves Lara sitting immobilized as soon as the show ends. She uses the backs of the theater seats to hop herself back into her wheelchair in the dark. Lara never sees Sebastian again.
Chapter 18
Maisie can’t believe that Sebastian left Lara sitting in the audience, but Lara explains that he’d rushed to the green room and started a fight with Duke and Pallace. Pallace and Duke leave together. In the present, all of Lara’s daughters are furious and begin to loudly disavow Duke, unable to believe what he did to their mother. They try to figure out how she got out of Michigan after all of the drama, and Nell guesses that Ripley came to get her. The morning after the opening of Fool for Love, Lara was still in bed, crying, when Ripley unexpectedly arrived. Duke had sent Ripley to take Lara to California, which Ripley interpreted as Duke wanting Lara gone as fast as possible. Lara then says that she soon realized that Duke had an ulterior motive in calling Ripley: aware of his potential as a movie star, Duke knew that Lara would convince Ripley to see the play. Even though Duke cheated on her with Pallace, Lara makes Ripley see Fool for Love. During the drive to the airport the next day, Ripley asks her if Duke’s talent outweighs how crazy he is, and she says it does. In LA, Ripley takes care of Lara and sends her to specialists for her Achilles. They watch a screening of Singularity, Lara’s movie, and Lara does press interviews and The Tonight Show while on crutches. Although she seems destined for success and Ripley tells her she’s making a mistake, Lara gets out of Los Angeles as soon as she can and goes home.
Analysis: Chapters 17 & 18
This section of the novel hones in on the cyclical nature of life, as events in Lara’s life and her relationships at Tom Lake take a sickening turn for the worse. Behaviors in Lara’s friends and loved ones echo mistakes she’s made herself or seen others make. They also seem alarmingly similar to the behaviors of characters in the plays she’s been in. Pallace, who is now starring in both Our Town and Fool for Love, is clearly having an affair with Duke. As Duke and Lara were when Lara played Mae, they’re also constantly drinking on set, which lowers their inhibitions and makes their attempts to hide their affair sloppy. Coupled with the intense magnetism of playing Duke’s love interest, Pallace quickly succumbs to his charm offensive. Here, Duke drags another woman into his recurring pattern of self-destructiveness and short-lived relationships. Lara and Sebastian try to ignore what’s right in front of them, but as she reflects on her past from 2020, Lara acknowledges that she knew subconsciously that the affair was happening. These aren’t the only cycles repeating, unfortunately. Pallace distances herself from Lara because she’s busy, her circumstances have changed, and she feels guilty about betraying her friend. The circumstances and location are different, but this is almost exactly what happened with Veronica when Lara got the part of Emily in the New Hampshire version of Our Town. Lara started sleeping with Jimmy and pulled away from Veronica, and now Pallace is doing the same thing to her. Recognizing these patterns, Lara acknowledges she has experienced such cycles before and didn’t know how to handle it.
The vast array of repeating cycles extends to Lara's relationship with Sebastian, who becomes increasingly absent as Duke's involvement with Pallace takes up more of her time. As has happened before in New Hampshire, romantic entanglements distance Lara from people who were once very important to her. After the opening night of Fool for Love, Lara doesn’t see Sebastian again until she’s finished telling Duke’s story to her daughters. He only returns to her life after Duke has died, and even then initially only to bring Duke’s ashes ‘home’ to the cherry farm. Sebastian's conflict with Duke, fueled by his frustration with Duke’s careless attitude toward himself and others, also repeats cyclically throughout Tom Lake. Duke manipulates others through charm or professional connections, making poor, impulsive choices based on his desires in the moment. He leaves Sebastian to deal with the consequences of these choices, and does so more and more as he sinks into alcohol addiction. His worst betrayal of Sebastian—having an affair with Pallace behind his back—is just another phase in his cycle of using people Sebastian is furious with him but can’t shirk his moral responsibility to take care of Duke.
Duke’s lack of responsibility for his actions and his tendency to use people are clearly demonstrated in this section when he brings Ripley to Michigan. Duke uses Lara to further his career ambitions under a smokescreen of caring for her after her injury. By bringing Ripley to take her to California, he perpetuates a cycle of manipulation wherein Lara knows she’s being used but is unable to refuse to participate in Duke’s schemes. Duke relies on her to persuade Ripley to see Fool for Love while he’s in town and to advocate for his talent as an actor, and Lara does so, despite knowing that he is using her. Even Ripley knows Duke is manipulating them, but he's so good in Fool for Love that it doesn’t matter. Despite the success of Singularity and all the positive media attention she eventually gets, Lara decides to leave Los Angeles and to break these cycles of manipulation. Her decision to walk away represents her desire to assert control over her own narrative. It’s the strongest action she can take to interrupt the endless push-and-pull of harmful behaviors. The novel suggests that this is an almost impossible task, making it necessary for Lara to completely change the course of her life in order to escape these patterns.
Read an explanation of a quote (#1) about Lara’s acknowledgement of the value of the present.
