Summary
They get up at five to hit the road. Jake immediately addresses the night before, saying the bet is off and he won’t hold her to it. Helen feels disappointed, but says, “Good. Great.” They talk about other things while Helen continues to think about the almost-kiss. She realizes it might not have been a big deal for Jake; she decides to block it out. Helen thinks about the night she kicked out Mike. He’d gotten drunk at a business lunch and continued drinking all day, missing their ultrasound appointment. Helen learned at the appointment that her body had “shut down production” and the miscarriage aftercare would mean a lot of cramping and discomfort. In the morning, she told him she’d given up on the marriage. He was too hungover to argue. She knew it was the right decision. The year that followed was one of being very alone.
When they arrive at their motel to stop for the night, Jake says the bet is back on. Helen says it isn’t a good idea. To convince him, she lies, saying she just doesn’t want to. He accepts this as a good reason. In the room, Jake has a shower. Helen can’t look away from his athletic body; she imagines him diving off a highboard. After her own shower, Helen goes to Jake’s bed, seeing herself doing something she knows she shouldn’t. She starts her kissing lesson with a lecture about how it’s important for there to be a give and take, and she says he has to explore, kissing not just her mouth but her neck and collarbone and shoulder, biting occasionally.
They kiss, and she realizes he is a quick learner—so quick that she calls him out for lying to her, because clearly he isn’t a bad kisser at all. He admits it was a trick. Helen says she doesn’t care. The kissing feels too good for her to care. She begins to untie his pajama bottoms, but he stops her, insisting it wasn’t right of him to have tricked her. She says she is happy she tricked her.
As their kissing really picks up in intensity, Helen’s phone rings. They ignore it. But when it keeps ringing, and she sees her ex’s name on the screen, she knows it’s an emergency. Helen takes the call in the bathroom. Mike asks if he can come over, because he nearly relapsed by drinking. However, he spat the alcohol out. He says his Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor isn’t picking up. He says he misses her and loves hearing her voice. She says she is sorry he is struggling so hard. Mike cries, something he has never done in front of her. She wonders how he could have sensed that she was just about to give herself to someone else. After an hour on the phone, Helen finds Jake rereading his whale book. Helen asks if they should pick up where they left off. He keeps reading and says he wants to do but he should never have started it; it was selfish. Helen gets angry. Jake says she deserves someone better than him. Helen angrily tells him to get off her bed because she is going to sleep.
Helen ignores him in the morning and as they drive. She realizes Jake is the type of man who only wants her when he can’t have her. Like Mike, who only loved her when she was mad or distracted or busy. She eventually didn’t like playing the unavailable game and just wanted to be together. When they pull up to the BCSC’s hunting lodge headquarters, Helen tells Jake she never liked him and she wishes yesterday had never happened. She tells him to pretend while they are on the trip that they are strangers. He reluctantly agrees to pretend for her, adding that there’s no way he’s going to believe it.
They check in. Helen feels out of place as she sees the room fill up with college kids. She wonders where the other adults are. She is displeased when their instructor arrives: Beckett looks young enough to be in high school still. As the participants introduce themselves, Helen learns most are there to earn course credits. Many say they are there to have near-death experiences and return home skinnier. Stupid reasons, in Helen’s opinion.
Helen doesn’t know what to say, and begins talking about how her life fell apart. She says most of life is breaking promises to yourself. Jake impresses the room when he talks about wanting to take life “like a man” and mentioning that he just graduated from Harvard. Beckett deepens his voice and says they are going to the opposite of Disneyland—the Absaroka Range. They will pack out everything they bring in, including tampons. They will poop in holes they dig, and bury it. He says Mother Nature will kick their asses. Anyone caught bringing shampoo or deodorant will have to eat it. He pulls out a map and says they’ll travel six to twelve miles a day.
The group gets outfitted with things they haven’t brought to the lodge. While putting on her rental hiking boots, Helen sees Jake helping a blond girl called Windy try on hers. Within two hours, everybody loves Jake; he is the king of the group. She is angry that he is taking over her trip. They go to the pantry and distribute the food supplies. Helen learns that butter and cheese can last for weeks out of the fridge. Beckett weighs everyone to determine the limit of their pack’s carrying capacity. Helen’s pack is 79 pounds. The big men carry heavier bags. They have to practice putting their packs on by stooping down on a knee.
That night, Helen goes for dinner at the Mexican restaurant that’s the only open place in town. She finds everyone in the group, including Beckett, already eating together at two tables. Intimidated, Helen gets food from the gas station and eats on a park bench. She notices her phone is on a call to Mike. He explains that she pocket-dialed him, which she does often. He thanks her for being so kind the day before. He tries to talk her out of taking the trip, saying it’s dangerous and she isn’t exactly a jock. She says she has been training by taking three-mile jogs every morning. He tells her she can’t change who she is, and it isn’t like her to do stuff like this. He says he wants her to come home. To him.
She drops the phone, picking it back up a moment later. He says he can be good for her now. Mike says he has been “dating constantly” and nobody can compare to her. He tells her again to come home. She knows it is their pattern, and that Mike is the kind of person who “can just unlock all your doors, somehow.” Helen’s phone dies. She chews the rest of her gas-station dinner slowly, rattled by her ex-husband’s proposition. She sees a group from dinner walking back to the lodge. Windy, drunk, invites her up to the roof to play Truth or Dare. She wishes that Jake would come by and reach out to her, but he continues on as the stranger she ordered him to be.
Analysis
The fifth chapter begins with an instance of situational irony: presumably having spent the night absorbing the fact that Helen decided not to kiss him before bed, Jake declares that he doesn’t want her to think she has to honor their Scrabble bet of a kissing tutorial. Despite having convinced herself the night before that it was a bad idea for them to kiss, Helen feels disappointed to have Jake echo her sentiments.
The themes of support and abandonment arise when Helen looks back on the dissolution of her marriage to Mike. At a crucial moment in their lives together—an ultrasound appointment to check up on the health of their baby—Mike was a no-show, having gone out on a drinking binge instead. This instance of abandonment was made much worse when the doctor informed Helen that she was about to miscarry and would need a lot of support from her husband. Realizing he was not someone on whom she could depend, Helen asked for a divorce.
In another instance of situational irony, Jake, acting childishly, declares the Scrabble bet to be back on. Helen argues with Jake, saying he can’t simply decide to call a bet back on, but he insists. The theme of control arises as Helen and Jake struggle for power over the situation. It is only when Helen lies and says she doesn’t want to kiss him that Jake accepts her reasoning and drops the subject. For Jake to give up reignites Helen’s interest, and she begins her lesson, finally bringing about the kiss they both want. Helen realizes that he had tricked her and is actually a good kisser, but the kiss is good enough she isn’t offended.
The romantic moment is interrupted by two calls in a row from Helen’s ex-husband. The themes of support and codependency arise as Helen stops what she is doing with Jake to provide emotional support to her alcoholic ex, who uses a near-relapse as an opportunity to cross the boundaries that should have been established following their separation. Rather than politely suggesting Mike seek support from someone more appropriate, Helen spends an hour on the phone with him, drawn back into the codependent dynamic of their marriage. When Jake rejects Helen’s second attempt to initiate sex, it seems he is put off by her willingness to disregard him for her ex. However, his cryptic statement about her needing someone less selfish than him and Mike suggests once again that Jake is concealing something about himself.
In response to Jake’s rejection, Helen’s resentment flares up. She interprets his decision as fickleness she has known in other men, such as Mike, who have chased her but lost interest as soon she returned their affection. Helen perceives the destabilizing rejection as an abandonment of her needs. This provokes Helen to seek control over her uncertain reality, so she demands that Jake pretend they don’t know each other—her way of regaining power.
To Helen’s annoyance, Jake, after being pushed away from her, is immediately welcomed into and appreciated by the other college-student hikers. Alienated from the others, Helen spends her last dinner before the three-week hike alone with gas-station snacks. Mike phones to continue acting inappropriately with Helen. The theme of codependency comes up again when Helen comments on their dynamic by referring to Mike as someone who can “unlock all [her] doors.” Having let himself in the night before, Mike goes further, asking Helen to return to Boston and to him rather than pursue her reinvention goals. In an instance of situational irony, Helen’s phone dies and she doesn’t have to answer.
