Summary
As autumn begins, Denny and Eve’s parents start discussing where Eve will stay once she is released from the hospital. Zoë, still only 4 years old, distracts herself with the excitement of Halloween. One October night while playing with Enzo, Zoë cuts the hair off of one of her Barbie dolls, pops the doll’s head off, wraps some tape around the head, pops it back on (all while telling the doll, “Everything’s going to be okay,” (112)) and proclaims that now, the doll will go to heaven, and she will go live with her grandparents. Enzo observes Zoë’s behavior and comes to the conclusion that Maxwell and Trish had been feeding Zoë selective information about Eve’s condition and plotting to raise Zoë, if Eve should die.
Zoë enrolls in kindergarten near their house in central Seattle. She is excited to start what she calls “real school” with her friend Jessie. Meanwhile, Maxwell and Trish plan for Eve to come live with them when she is discharged. They propose the idea to Denny, assuring him that their house has more room, and they could hire a round-the-clock nurse to tend to Eve. Denny agrees and explains to Zoë that her mother will be staying at her grandparents until she is well enough to come home.
When Eve is discharged, Denny, Zoë, Enzo, and a night nurse gather at Maxwell and Trish’s house to greet her. Eve is set up on a big hospital bed in the middle of the living room. She says she feels like a Christmas tree without the presents. Enzo is shocked to see Eve in such a sickly state and fails even to recognize her at first; but Eve calls Enzo to her bed. In her sickened state, she appears to have even more affection for Enzo than before. She sees him as a protector from death.
During Eve’s homecoming reception, Maxwell and Trish take Denny aside and strongly suggest that Zoë also stay with them on Mercer Island, indefinitely. Maxwell and Trish both believe that Eve will certainly die within a six-to-eight-month period, and Zoë should spend as much time as she can with her mother. The fact that the Twins are already resigned to Eve’s death angers Denny, but since he already agreed to have Eve stay on Mercer Island, he feels that he has no choice but to let Zoë stay there, too. Denny explains the situation to Zoë in the backyard, and despite her young age, she understands that Denny would never leave her at her grandparents’ for too long.
Eve fears that her first night out of the hospital will be her last, so she sends the night nurse away and enlists Enzo to be her guardian against death, and Enzo takes his job deadly serious. He lays awake by her side all night long, sitting up for any slight creak in the floorboard or breath of the air conditioning, and only allows himself to sleep when the sun rises the next morning, and other humans are up and about. When Maxwell spots Enzo sleeping the next morning, he calls him a lazy dog, but Eve knows otherwise. She thanks Enzo for saving her.
For weeks, Zoë lives at her grandparents’ house and Enzo and Denny hold down the fort in Seattle. Denny visits Eve almost every day and brings Enzo with him on the weekends. Denny insists that Eve is getting better, but Enzo understands that her health continues steadily to decline. The Twins quickly grow tired of the 15-minute commute to Zoë’s school in Seattle and propose to Denny that she enroll in a school on Mercer Island, but Denny refuses to budge on the issue—he insists that Zoë stay at her current school, where she feels the most comfortable.
On the few weekdays Zoë does stay with Enzo and Denny, they walk her to the bus stop, and in the process, Denny becomes chummy with one of the other fathers. They occasionally grab coffee after dropping their kids off. One day, the other dad asks Denny about his wife, and Denny tells him that Eve is recovering from brain cancer. From that moment on, the other dad shies away from conversations with Denny.
In February, Enzo, Zoë and Denny go to Methow Valley for Presidents’ Day vacation, where some relatives of Eve’s are hosting a family reunion of sorts. Since Eve is dying, her relatives take a sudden interest in getting to know Zoë. Over the course of the week, a much-younger relative of Eve’s named Annika grows fond of Denny. She makes a point to fawn over Zoë at every opportunity and always intentionally places herself near Denny at dinner or around the campfire. When it comes time for Denny to drive back to Seattle, Annika makes up an excuse as to why she needs to leave Methow Valley, too. So she drives home with Enzo, Zoë, and Denny. The trip through the mountains is treacherous, with melting snow flooding the roads and entire highways threatening to close. Eventually, after a long and tiring journey, they make it back to Seattle. Annika insists on staying at Denny’s house so that he does not have to drive her home that night. Denny sets up a cot for Annika, puts Zoë to bed, and passes out in his bed. Meanwhile, Annika takes a shower. When she is done, she sneaks into Denny’s room, undresses, and begins to perform oral sex on him while he is still half-asleep. Enzo snaps at Annika, fully waking Denny up. Denny tells Annika to get dressed so he can drive her home. Annika cries and insists that she is in love with Denny. She claims that he had been flirting with her all week and leading her on. Denny assures her that he was just being friendly. She is only 15 years old, and he has a wife with whom he is very much in love. Annika calls her father to pick her up and leaves in the middle of the night. As far as Denny knows, she does not say anything to her parents about what happened that night.
Analysis
This section shows Zoë contending with her mother’s illness with her limited, four-year-old understanding of what it means to die. Clearly Zoë has just been a sponge during her week at Maxwell and Trish’s house, absorbing the snippets of conversation that her grandparents allow her to hear. Zoë’s use of the Barbie as a stand-in for her mother demonstrates her limited understanding of the permanence of death—she has many Barbie dolls, but only one mother. Her focus on the doll’s head shows that she understands where in her mother’s body the disease is located, but the way she pops the head on and off reinforces her lack of understanding of the fragility of human life.
In this chapter, Stein references the previous trauma incurred by the Barbie doll from when Enzo hallucinates the zebra violating all of Zoë’s toys. If the zebra represents chaotic forces, and the doll is a stand-in for Eve, then at this point in the novel, we can make the connection that Eve is a victim of random bad fortune, like a racer who runs over a pothole in the road.
The idea of Eve being an object upon which negative forces act continues in Chapter 23. When she returns to her parents’ house on Mercer Island and settles into her hospital bed in the middle of the living room, Eve says she feels “like a Christmas tree,” and that everyone expects something from her, but she “[doesn’t] have any presents” (117). By comparing herself to a Christmas tree, Eve actually makes a pretty morbid joke, because Christmas trees are doomed plants. As life forms, Christmas trees are only alive in the sense that they respirate and carry on cellular activity while they sit in water; but the truth is, all Christmas trees are in the rapid process of dying.
Stein also returns to the theme of non-verbal communication, when Maxwell and Trish suggest to Denny that Eve will die soon without explicitly saying so. All they say is that Zoë should stay with them “until…” (119), and then they trail off. But Denny understands by their body language that they mean "until Eve dies." On the other end of the spectrum of non-verbal communication, later in the same chapter, Denny explains to Zoë that her grandparents would like her to stay at their house for a while. Without too much explanation, Zoë understands why she is needed on Mercer Island. Enzo marvels at the combined selflessness of Zoë and Denny and wonders if he has what it takes to be a human.
At the end of Chapter 23, Eve dismisses her night nurse and enlists Enzo to be her protector against death. This gesture strongly recalls the symbolic role of dogs as protectors against supernatural forces, and also the idea dogs, themselves, are specially attuned to the supernatural. Early in the book, Enzo reports sensing an inexplicable darkness in Eve, as if he knew she had brain cancer before she even felt any symptoms. Enzo also detects Eve’s pregnancy when Zoë was first conceived. Now, as she is dying, Stein confirms Eve’s belief that dogs do in fact have a precognitive sense of life and death.
And as if the Swifts did not already have enough on their plate, along comes Annika. Enzo suggests that Denny may have noticed Annika’s flirtations throughout the course of the family reunion, but chose to ignore them, and thus Enzo suggests that Denny shares some of the blame for what happens between him and Annika in Seattle. Annika essentially molests Denny, waiting until he is asleep to get into his bed, naked, and start pulling his clothes off without his consent. But Enzo prefaces the entire saga of the family reunion with a short lecture about how all heroes have tragic flaws. He says, “Who is Achilles without his tendon? Who is Samson without Delilah?” (135).
Stein presents the reader with a dilemma. If Denny did nothing wrong, then what exactly was his flaw? Perhaps the allusions are Enzo’s way of elevating Denny to hero status. He never actually reveals what Denny’s flaw might be; he simply suggests that Denny may have chosen to ignore Annika’s obvious flirtations and pretend nothing was wrong, which ultimately led to the disastrous consequences. The other possibility is that Denny chose to ignore Annika’s flirtations because it felt good to be wanted by someone so obviously young and healthy, with their entire life ahead of them. The way Enzo emphasizes Annika’s body in terms of its potential to reproduce and nurse her offspring directly contrasts Eve’s state of frailty and infertility. The description of Annika as having “a full set of breasts for milking and hips wide enough for childbirth, and “[being], for all intents and purposes, an adult,” (135) recalls the last time Denny and Eve had their “field is fertile” exchange in Chapter 12. There, Enzo also describes Eve’s body, but in terms of its lack of potential to reproduce. He describes Eve there as “her eyes having dimmed, having been sucked deep into their sockets and swallowed by the puffy skin, suggesting anything but fertility” (67).
In the end, Denny rejects Annika outright, demonstrating that the temptations of a young, healthy partner cannot sway him from his love for Eve. However, the fact that Annika is underage both complicates and simplifies this moment in the plot of the novel. Because it would always under any circumstances be unacceptable for Denny to have a sexual relationship with Annika, regardless of whether he was married or not, or whether his spouse was healthy or not. So, in a way, Denny could never choose to be with Annika and remain a viable heroic figure in this novel, and thus her age simplifies his choice. But if Annika were an adult Denny’s age, then the contrast between Eve and Annika would present a moral dilemma that purely tested Denny’s devotion to Eve. On the other hand, the fact that Annika is underage complicates the consequences of the encounter in Denny’s bedroom because if he is accused of making advances at Annika, it will be considered not just adultery, but also a crime.
