Summary
They say goodbye to the wilderness with a prayer led by Beckett. The hikers clap as he asks Mother Nature to forgive humanity for desecrating the beauty they take for granted. Soon enough they finish the hike to the trailhead and the green BCSC bus is waiting. On the trip to the lodge, they speculate over who should get the Certificates. Windy says Helen should get one. At the lodge everyone showers and gets ready for the pizza banquet. Windy gives Helen a daisy chain to wear in her hair and confesses that she knows Jake is her brother’s friend. Helen says it was a dumb secret anyway. At the dinner, she finds the cleaned-up version of Jake very appealing, but has to accept that he is with Windy. Helen realizes that “not getting what you want forces you to appreciate what you already have.”
Beckett picks up a microphone and announces that Hugh is alive and is recovering from the fracture and dislocation. Martha from the front desk has tallied the ballots. She announces the Certificates of Merit go to Jake, Windy, and Hugh. As the crowd goes wild, Helen can’t believe it, but realizes she’ll have to accept that Hugh got the sympathy vote. She leaves, bumping into Beckett, who says both his votes went to her and Windy only got it because she’s prettier. Helen takes a deep breath and has one last look at everyone before telling herself it’s “time to go the hell home.” Jake catches up with Helen in the lodge hallway. She believes he is asking for a ride to Denver on her way back to Boston, but he is actually telling her that Windy is going to drive him on her way to one of her parents’ multiple vacation homes. He thanks her for the ride. She pretends like she is pleased to have the car to herself, even as she feels an electric flutter inside while taking one last look at him. He steps forward and says her name just as the guys rush in and hoist her into a chair, shouting Prom King! Prom King!
Helen stays at the motel room they’d been in on her way back to GiGi’s. She thinks about how his gaze made her feel not alone. At GiGi’s the next night, Helen drops her purse and finds the Pablo Neruda poem Jake gave her. She unfolds it and reads the excerpt: “Only do not forget, if I wake up crying, / it’s only because in my dream I’m a lost child, / hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands.” Helen’s grandmother gets Helen to talk about the good things that happened on the trip, saying she looks “radiant.” Helen says she “saw” Nathan in the painted meadow, which must have been healing; a way to “mend the hole he’d left in her life.” At GiGi’s prompting, Helen admits she fell hopelessly in love with Jake. GiGi says she could tell he’d been in love with her all the times he was at the house, visiting with Duncan. GiGi says, even if Jake goes off to have babies with Windy, at least he taught her that she could feel love.
The next day, GiGi insists on painting a portrait of Helen. While Helen sits for her, GiGi talks about the night Helen’s mother left Helen and Duncan to live with her. GiGi didn’t have any notice it was happening. GiGi reveals that she went to get Duncan’s comfort blanket that night from Helen’s mother’s place, and found her in bed having tried to take an overdose of painkillers. GiGi brought her to the hospital in time to save her life, then got her into a program for six months. She always talked about getting the kids back living with her, but GiGi knew Helen and Duncan were better off living at her house. Helen revises the story of her life, going from thinking her mother didn’t want her, to knowing her mother couldn’t keep her. Helen says it explains a lot. GiGi says, “Like why you have so much trouble letting people love you.” She says that Helen may have decided long ago that it made more sense for her to be alone, even if she hates it.
After lunch, Helen gets ready for the bar mitzvah. She wants to look good, as the child’s parents are her ex-high school boyfriend and her former best friend, with whom her ex-boyfriend cheated on her. Helen decides she has grown up to be the kind of girl you never get over. The doorbell rings: Helen rushes to get it, thinking it will be Jake, but it is Duncan, who hasn’t got his key. He sets down a heavy Igloo cooler. He asks if Jake got her to fall in love with him. She won’t admit to it. She tells him about their mother. Duncan is surprised, having thought she left them because he was a “little shit.”
After avoiding it, Duncan finally explains that it’s Pickle in the cooler. He checked her out of the vet to look after her himself, but she had a medical problem in which a gas bubble got trapped in her stomach. Ironically, he didn’t catch it in time because he’d gotten a tech job at the same vet he checked her out of, and had been working when it happened. She died in his arms as he biked back to the vet for help. He sobs and says he loved Pickle. Helen realizes it’s the first time they’ve had something in common. He brought the dog there to bury her. They dig a hole in the backyard, careful not to disturb the grave of their childhood bulldog, Lambchop.
Duncan insists on joining Helen at the bar mitzvah. She wants to back out, but he says they’ll think she chickened out and never got over high school. At the party, Helen’s ex David apologizes immediately for mistreating her like he did. So does his wife, though she doesn’t necessarily apologize for her role in it. The couple laments that their “party motivator” canceled at the last minute. They ask Helen to dance around and get the awkward kids to have fun. She says no, but changes her mind when she realizes she likes to dance for the hell of it. She and Duncan lead a group of children and elderly guests through various dance moves. GiGi shows up, revealing that she’d been invited.
Helen leaves on her own, feeling suddenly lonely. She bumps into Jake’s chest. He explains he is there because he heard about Pickle, and GiGi brought him when he went by the house. He says he is staying at the hotel the party is being hosted in. Helen says he made it sound like he was broke. He reveals that his mother left him a nest egg in fact. Helen rushes off, and he stops her. She says she thought for a second that he was there for her. He says he is. He explains that Windy tried to put the moves on him after the banquet, and he had to tell her he wasn’t interested. Helen asks about the kiss on the trip. He is embarrassed she saw that, and says it only happened because she had banked up her kisses from Truth or Dare and was cashing them in. He says all those kisses weren’t real compared to their kisses. Helen can’t understand it. She asks if he only wants what he can’t have, like her ex-husband. As they’re talking, the hotel elevator stops. A voice comes over the speaker saying they’ll send someone to pry it open. While they wait, Jake says he went to Riverton with Beckett, who is in a reggae band with a guy who restores vintage Land Rovers. Jake bought one, and was on his way to Denver when Helen pocket-dialed him. She was singing while doing the dishes. He realized he wanted nothing more than to listen to her. So he drove to her.
Jake confesses that he’s been addicted to her for six years. He helped her move a sofa soon after her breakup, and he wanted to confess then, but she was crying the whole time he was at her place. He planned to try again, but then he went to get new glasses and learned he was going blind. It changed everything. Everything he wanted for his future was disappearing. The elevator drops a couple feet, but they are okay. Helen’s phone rings; it is Mike. She turns it off. Jake asks what she thinks about him just having confessed how horribly he loves her. She says she loves him horribly too. Jake confirms that she doesn’t hate him, and that she wouldn’t mind if he kissed her again. They kiss in the broken elevator.
In the epilogue, Helen comments on how she could have begun her story anywhere: on the day she met Mike, or lost Nathan, or lost her mother. But she didn’t want to tell a story that dwelled on the grief in her life. She is determined to make the one story of her life a good one. She looks back on that moment in the elevator and tries to remember how breathless she and Jake were at the start of their life together. She knows now that there will be heartbreak, sadness, and trouble to come, and they’ll face every hard thing better than they would apart. She returns to the memory: the doors open and firefighters lower a ladder. They climb up. The hall of middle-schoolers, Duncan, GiGi, and others look on and cheer. Jake pulls her in for a kiss at Duncan’s prompting. The EMTs check them over and pronounce them unharmed. Once the crowd disperses, Helen and Jake go to his room on the seventh floor. Helen says they take the stairs, of course.
Analysis
The theme of appreciation arises when Beckett leads a prayer dedicated to the wilderness on the hikers’ last day. Although most of the group, including Helen, had dismissed Beckett’s affection for Mother Nature and resentment for humans who desecrate her beauty when he discussed it at the beginning of the trip, by the trip’s end, every hiker understands and shares his appreciation. Center builds further on the theme with Helen’s bittersweet conclusion about Windy and Jake. Helen hasn’t achieved every desire, but this lack of fulfillment prompts her to appreciate what she already has.
Having redoubled her efforts to achieve a Certificate of Merit—so much so that she earns both of Beckett’s votes—Helen goes to the closing ceremony believing her chances are good. However, in an instance of situational irony, Helen not only loses Jake to Windy (or so she believes), she loses her Certificate to Hugh. Although it has been warped into a popularity contest akin to a high-school prom, the Certificate of Merit competition still holds significance for Helen, who wanted to achieve external validation of her personal growth.
The theme of support comes up with Helen’s stop at GiGi’s. Guessing at Helen’s disappointment over not being with Jake, the wise GiGi reminds her of the value of learning that she can love again. Even though Helen has tried throughout the book to push Jake away and pretend she wants nothing to do with him, she confesses that she did fall in love with him. The scene is significant because it shows how GiGi has been a source of emotional support for Helen and Duncan following their parents’ separation.
The theme of abandonment arises when GiGi explains to Helen what really happened with her mother. Contrary to what Helen had always believed—that their mother abandoned her and Duncan because they were too difficult to look after—Helen learns that the truth is far sadder. Unable to get over the loss of Nathan, her mother became a danger to herself. GiGi intervened to get help for Helen’s suicidal mother, and though she wanted to resume raising her children, GiGi understood the children would be better off with an emotionally stable guardian. GiGi believes that this formative trauma has made it so Helen puts up her guard whenever someone tries to get close; she is preventing the hurt that can come when someone she loves disappoints her. GiGi’s analysis explains why Helen made such an effort to keep Jake at a distance throughout the trip.
After Helen accepts these emotionally painful lessons, she discovers that she had been wrong about Jake and Windy. In an instance of situational irony, Jake surprises Helen by showing up at the same bar mitzvah. He explains that everything she assumed about him and Windy being together was fueled by other hikers’ gossip, and he was not comfortable with Windy’s affection. Jake confesses he has been hopelessly in love with Helen since he saw her on her wedding day. It was shame over his blindness that made him rethink his pursuit of her, as he feels guilty about the fact he will soon need significant emotional and material support because of his disability.
In this climactic scene, Center returns to the themes of powerlessness and control. While Jake had believed, illogically, that he could control his condition by concealing it from people and denying the limitations that come with it, he finally accepts his powerlessness over his blindness. In doing so, he is liberated from the pain that comes with trying to deny the inevitable. Similarly, Helen spends the book trying to control her feelings by keeping Jake at a distance, all because her affection for him is inconvenient. When she finally admits she is in love with him and is powerless to stop feeling that way, she is released from the anguish of denying her true feelings.
