Summary: Chapter 22
At the supermarket, Jack pushes Wilder in a shopping cart.
A storm is on its way, and the threat and excitement seem to permeate
the store. Jack notes that the elderly shoppers seem particularly
anxious and confused.
In the generic-food aisle, Jack runs into Murray, who
tells Jack that Dimitros Costakis, Murray’s Elvis rival from the
American environments department, has drowned in the ocean off Malibu. Jack
suddenly becomes aware of the “dense environmental texture” that
surrounds him: the sounds of cars, the noise of maintenance systems,
and the shuffling shoppers’ feet. As Jack pushes Wilder around in
the cart, he thinks about how many of the houses, parks, and roads
in Blacksmith need maintenance and repair. As long as the supermarket
remains clean, bright, and well stocked, however, Jack believes
there is reason for optimism.
That evening, Jack drives Babette to her posture class.
On the way, they stop to watch the sunset. Sunsets have become much
more beautiful and brilliant since the toxic event, possibly as
a result of all the Nyodene D. having been released into the air.
On the way back home, Babette says she’s going to start teaching
a nutrition class called Eating and Drinking. The world has gotten
complicated for adults, Babette says, and a class like this will
prove soothing to students, assuring them that an authoritative
figure—who can instruct them on the right and wrong ways to be doing
things—still exists in the world.
Lying in bed, Jack takes great comfort in being physically
intimate with Babette and resolves never to tell her about the SIMUVAC
man’s diagnosis.
Summary: Chapter 23
Jack increases the length and frequency of his German
classes as the conference approaches. His pronunciation is still
problematic, despite his skill with vocabulary and grammar. At one
point, Dunlop reaches into Jack’s mouth and adjusts his tongue,
which Jack calls a “strange and terrible moment, an act of haunting
intimacy.”
Dogs and men in Mylex are still patrolling the town. Over
dinner, the family discusses the toxic event. Heinrich claims that
the authorities aren’t reporting everything they know to the public,
then goes on to declare that toxic spills don’t represent the biggest
threat to human beings. The world is full of dangerous domestic
radiation, coming from power lines, televisions, and microwaves.
The girls look at Heinrich admiringly, but Jack wants to argue with
his son. He wants Heinrich to understand that as he matures, he
will develop a more balanced, restrained perspective on the world.
Babette wonders aloud if Heinrich is being taught these morbid scientific
facts in school, and then the entire family tries to remember random
facts they once learned in classes.
