Summary
Chapter 13
Maeve helps Danny a great deal with wedding plans and seems to enjoy doing so, getting along well with Mrs. Norcross. Danny knows nothing about Maeve’s love life because she does not say anything or show anyone; she is intensely private.
Maeve and Celeste butt heads a great deal, but Maeve is indispensable for Danny in this process. However, while all this is going on, Danny says nothing to her about their mother being out there somewhere. Their lives seem settled now after so much chaos and exile, and they do not even talk about Andrea that much anymore. Danny has no interest in reigniting the fire just put out.
On a hot day in July, Danny and Celeste are married in Rydal. Morey Able is his best man and treats him like a son. Later, Danny would buy a building on Riverside Drive for a song and give Dr. Able and Alice half of the top floor for almost nothing; they’d stay there for the rest of their lives.
On their honeymoon, Celeste gets rid of her diaphragm, and their daughter is born nine months later. She is named May. She is an easy baby, but Celeste's second pregnancy is not at all easy. Celeste has to be on bed rest, Danny has to work, and they need someone to watch May (Celeste would never consent to Maeve doing this and does not want her mother to have to come into the city and stay for so long).
Danny muses that they should call Fluffy, and Celeste asks who that is. Danny is surprised he never told her, and he proceeds to do so. They invite Fluffy over and, almost immediately, hire her as their nanny for May. Celeste is delighted.
Fluffy and Celeste get along swimmingly. Fluffy tells stories of working for the VanHoebeeks and how lonely she felt when they were both gone, what the house was like and how Elna felt about it, and anything else Celeste wants to hear about. Celeste remains as entertained by Fluffy’s stories of the past as Fluffy is happy about telling them to an audience.
Kevin is born, and Danny buys Celeste a brownstone just north of the Museum of Natural History. It is elegant but has a lot of stairs, which reminds Fluffy one day of how much Mrs. VanHoebeek hated the stairs in the Dutch House. She fell once, after her husband had already died, and Fluffy had to take her to the hospital. Two of her sons were dead in the war and the other had leukemia. Fluffy was nervous to be alone in the house, but she rallied. She went and saw Mrs. Vanhoebeek every day and took care of her when she was home. She says she felt bad that she did not have them set the old woman up downstairs, as there was nothing to do upstairs and she kept trying to get up and move around.
Time passes and Fluffy becomes like a member of the family. She will not brook Celeste’s critiques of Maeve, and Celeste falls in line. She is just as helpful with Celeste as she is with the children, and Celeste continues to eat up the stories of the past.
One day, Fluffy shares how Elna told her once how Cyril got the money to buy the house, explaining that, while he was recovering in France, he made a friend in the next cot who told him to buy up land in Horsham when he got home. He would not say why, but he was adamant that Cyril should remember Horsham, Pennsylvania. The boy died, sadly, and Cyril could not stop thinking about him. When he was released and came home, he went to Horsham and saw how cheap the land was. He’d saved up all his money from working on the TVA dams and bought land in Horsham. The following year, the Navy called him up and said they wanted to build a base there, and he sold them the land. He took the money and bought a large industrial building near the river, sold that, bought other tracts of land, and then bought the house, all the while Edna thinking they were poor.
Chapter 14
Danny continues to expand his holdings, buy new properties, learn new skills, and make money. He hires Maeve to do his books and personal taxes, not caring what Celeste thinks about it. Celeste is home with the young kids now, her brain prone to overthinking things now that Fluffy is nannying elsewhere and she is not working.
Danny is frustrated with Celeste’s annoyance regarding Maeve’s role in his business, but he knows Celeste knows very little about his company and dealings. Celeste projects everything she does not like about Danny onto Maeve, which keeps their marriage running but makes other things difficult. Celeste had always wanted to be married to a doctor, but Danny is forever grateful that he escaped that fate. Sometimes, Danny’s medical training comes up and is useful, and Celeste always seems a little bitter. Danny knows that his skills from medical school are valuable, but he learned many valuable skills in real estate as well.
*
Time passes and Danny becomes more and more concerned with fairness, thinking of how Maeve always took care of him and put him first; he resolves that she ought to go back to school. Maeve refuses and reminds Danny that she likes her job: she does not think it is beneath her, and she is grateful for the benefits, the flexibility, and the feeling of being indispensable to Otterson.
Maeve also enjoys working for Danny, and she keeps up-to-date on New York tax laws, rebates, etc. She writes to tenants about rent, records even the smallest expense, and, to Danny’s surprise, she always refuses to cash the check he sends her as salary. He offers to buy her a house instead of paying salary, but she likes her small red brick bungalow she rents two blocks from her church. One day Danny, purchases the bungalow, laughingly admitting to himself it’s the worst “deal” he’s made, but he drops the deed in the weekly folder of bills and receipts for his company. Maeve is elated and calls him up, raving that her place feels different now.
*
Maeve and Danny are both in their forties when they stop by the Dutch House for a lark. Danny is regularly going to Jenkintown to do business with Maeve, enduring Celeste’s protestations.
At the house, they are there now mostly for the nostalgia—not nostalgia for the house itself, but rather nostalgia for who they were when they first started going there. Maeve asks Danny if he would go in if he could, and he says no. She agrees, saying that it would kill her.
At some point, both had changed, knowing their memories weren’t in the house but rather in whatever car they sat in. Danny knows he would buy the street if it were for sale, but not the house.
Maeve often goes out to lunches with Fluffy, Sandy, and Jocelyn. One day, Maeve shares that Fluffy told her Elna wanted to be a nun. She would go visit the nuns at the convent even once she was married. Danny thinks about hearing his mother was alive years back, but he still says nothing.
Maeve rarely comes into the city, which Celeste criticizes until she realizes she actually does not want Maeve around that much. As for Maeve, she tells Danny flatly that the reason she does not come often is Celeste. This habit of dislike is sometimes broken, though, for special occasions. Maeve has the children, whom she loves deeply, visit her when they visit their Norcross grandparents. May, in particular, is obsessed with the Dutch House and likes to sit before it with her aunt, listening to the stories and pretending she were there.
Chapter 15
In her childhood, May pursues ballet and becomes quite good. At age eleven, she takes a minor position with the New York City Ballet as a mouse in a production of The Nutcracker. The whole family plans to see her in it, even Maeve.
On the night of the show, Danny marvels at the set that looks like a facsimile of the Dutch House—or maybe everything opulent or luxuriant reminds him of the place. The ballet is fine, though Danny and Kevin actually tire of the dancing, and it is a delight to see May.
The ballet ends and the audience begins filing out, but Danny notices Mrs. Norcross with Maeve at the end of the row. She is soaking with sweat, quiet, and drooping in her eyes. Danny gets a couple of glucose tablets for her. Celeste and Kevin run out to the lobby and get orange juice and a napkin of ice. Maeve tries to drink and take the tablets, but it is hard for her. Celeste moves everyone else out. An usher asks if they are okay, and they say Maeve just needs a minute.
The two siblings sit there. Maeve’s blood sugar is 38, but it should have been at least 90, even 70. Maeve closes her eyes and inhales deeply. She says she did not want to be disruptive.
Celeste comes back in and says Danny ought to stay with Maeve and the rest of them will go. She grimly says it is détente and everything is fine, and Maeve can tell May herself soon that she was a good mouse. Danny kisses Celeste, grateful, and after she leaves, Maeve tells him that Celeste was very nice. Danny smiles and says that most of the time she is.
Danny’s mind wanders, and he imagines the two of them having a lovely evening driving around the city, him showing his sister the buildings she has not seen. Maybe Maeve could stay with them that night; the kids would be glad, and Celeste would be kind. However, it becomes clear that Maeve is not okay, and Danny chides himself for thinking this way when Maeve really just needs to get home.
They agree that he will drive her home and spend the night. Maeve sleeps almost the whole way. They agree that Danny will get up early to return home. In the morning, they do indeed wake up, and Maeve suggests going to the Dutch House. They have never gone there at this time of day, which feels odd. However, Maeve is full of energy as she usually is in the morning, and Danny agrees.
It is still dark in the neighborhoods and the streetlamps are on. It is quiet and still. Danny pulls into their spot and they both sit, occupied by their thoughts. Danny asks Maeve if she has come here in the morning before like this. She shakes her head, staring at the house. Danny looks as well, long having stopped really looking at it. It is huge, preposterous, and grand. He cannot believe his father wanted to raise a family here.
Suddenly, a light in the master bedroom comes on and a woman starts walking down the driveway. The siblings realize it is Andrea, and they nervously think she sees them. Andrea pauses at the edge of the driveway, closing her coat collar. She is probably about sixty-two, as Danny is forty-two and Maeve is forty-nine. Maeve and Danny grow nervous as they slump down in their seats. There is nothing unique or extraordinary about Andrea. She is a woman Danny knew once a long time ago.
Andrea moves to go around the back, which makes no sense to Maeve and Danny. After they leave, they analyze her strange behavior. She probably lives alone, they decide.
After a bit, Maeve announces that she is done with the house. She felt like she was going to have a heart attack when Andrea came out, and she does not need to do this anymore. They don’t need to do this anymore. Danny agrees. He knows they’ve “made a fetish out of our misfortune, fallen in love with it” (255). Maeve wonders what would have happened if Andrea came outside twenty-seven years ago. Danny sighs that they could have had their lives back.
After their meal, Danny drops Maeve off and prepares to head back into the city. It feels strange to him that it has only been one day since May danced and Maeve got sick. Now, everything has changed—they are done with the Dutch House.
Analysis
Danny and Maeve have been going to the Dutch House for years. No matter what period of their lives they’re in, they sit in a car, smoke, and reminisce about what went on in the house and during their childhood. Their reasons for carrying out this ritual change throughout the decades, but for most of the time, they feel compelled to do so, unable to change. Once, Danny says, “there was no extra time in those days [medical school] and I didn’t want to spend the little of it I had sitting in front of the goddamn house, but that’s where we wound up: like swallows, like salmon, we were the helpless captives of our migratory patterns” (74). Sitting in front of the house is painful, but impossible not to do. In fact, Patchett parallels sitting in front of the house with smoking, another bad habit. When Danny and Maeve sit there and discuss whether Danny should marry Celeste, Danny recounts, “Maeve said she had an emergency pack of cigarettes in the glove box and we decided that it was a good time to relapse” (157). This very well could have been a reference to the Dutch House.
In the beginning, the siblings aren’t as cognizant of their reasoning for what they’re doing. Danny acknowledges this by saying, “We pretended that what we had lost was the house, not our mother, not our father. We pretended that what we had lost had been taken from us by the person who still lived inside” (74). In those early years, Danny and Maeve “[were] still at the point when the house was the hero of every story, our lost and beloved country” (177).
As time passes, though, the ritual shifts. When they are in their forties, Danny says that “The fact that we were parked there now was really just an act of nostalgia, not for the people we’d been when we lived in the house, but for the people we’d been when we parked on VanHoebeek Street for hours, smoking cigarettes” (234). The house “became the car”; if anyone had asked where Danny came from, he would have said, “I was from the strip of asphalt in front of what had been the Buchsbaums’ house” (235). These early years were thus formative years for the siblings as they worked out who they were, what their lives were going to be, and how to consider their past.
Celeste, regardless of the fact that her analysis partly comes from a place of selfishness, can see that what Danny and Maeve have been doing is deleterious to their mental health. She lambasts their behavior, saying, “It’s like you’re Hansel and Gretel. You just keep walking through the dark woods holding hands no matter how old you are. Do you ever get tired of reminiscing?” (237.) This question is answered soon enough, for when Maeve and Danny go to the house in the early morning after Maeve's health scare at the ballet, they have an encounter of sorts with Andrea that forever changes their perspective of what they’re doing.
While sitting in the car, Andrea comes outside and Maeve and Danny think she sees them. It does not appear that she does, and in retrospect we know that she is already probably suffering some sort of cognitive trouble, but it is enough that they realize it was a possibility. Maeve tells her brother it felt like she was having a heart attack, and she is ready to decide that she is done with Andrea and the house. Danny, too, has been shocked into this realization, thinking that “we had made a fetish out of our misfortune, fallen in love with it. I was sickened to realize we’d kept it going for so long, not that we had decided to stop” (255). He also validates Celeste, thinking about “all the years she told me how insane it was that Maeve and I parked in front of the house we had lived in as children, and how I thought the problem was that she could never understand” (255). Maeve and Danny wonder what would have happened if Andrea had scared them twenty years ago—if it would have changed the course of their lives. Now, the question is: is it too late to change?
