Summary
Chapter 16
Jocelyn’s words about Danny needing to step in and be calm if Maeve gets sick come back to him when Mr. Otterson calls and says Maeve has had a heart attack. Danny is struck that Maeve is 52 and their father died when he was 53.
When he arrives at the hospital, he learns Otterson saved Maeve’s life by not driving her home when she became ill but taking her to the hospital instead. Maeve later jokes that she could not believe Otterson raised his voice to the young woman at the desk. She also had not considered it was her heart until Otterson had said something.
During the next few days, Danny and Otterson are there continually, but on the fourth day, Danny enters the room to see an older woman with short gray hair sitting beside a sleeping Maeve. He is shocked to realize it is his mother. It turns out the heart attack had “lured her out from beneath the floorboards” (261). No other births or events had done so, but now, here she is.
Elna is crying as she stands up before Danny. She recalls their last encounter. He asks what she wanted, and she says she wanted to say she was sorry. He says curtly that it’s done now. She then says that she heard Maeve was sick and came, which prompts Danny to silently curse Fluffy and tell Elna she can come back when Maeve is healthy. Elna says she already came once that morning.
Danny has trouble comprehending that his mother was here this morning while he was eating breakfast. He asks how she got in and she says she told the truth about being Maeve’s mother. She says Maeve was delighted when she introduced herself.
Danny has to leave the room. He feels crazed, maybe like his father felt when he potentially tried to keep Elna from returning to Maeve. Danny thinks he must protect Maeve and keep her safe.
However, since Maeve can only have three short visits a day, she begins asking for Elna, and Danny complies so as not to be difficult. When he finally gets in to see her, she looks different and much better. She seems elated to see her mother, saying it was ironically the happiest day of her life. Danny is close-lipped, but she tells him to be happy for her. He also has to keep his cool when Maeve says she wants Elna to sleep in her house and asks him not to mess this up.
Danny goes to Maeve’s home and calls Sandy to pick up Elna. Sandy and Jocelyn apparently already knew about Elna and have dealt with it in their own ways. Danny is frustrated but knows they all have to make this work for Maeve’s sake.
Elna offers no explanation, nor any apology. She walks around the hospital talking to people, which Danny finds odd. He thinks she is like some “pilgrim who had fallen into ice for hundreds of years and then was thawed against her will. Everything about her indicated that she had meant to be dead by now” (267).
When Danny finally confronts Fluffy, she holds her ground and says it was best for Maeve. She says she thought Maeve would die, and she wanted her to see her mother before that happened.
Maeve does not die, though, and she improves more and more. She has numerous visitors, and Elna is there almost the whole time. Once, Danny is there with Fluffy and Jocelyn, who has remained more suspicious of Elna, and asks Elna how India was. Elna is quiet, then says it was a mistake.
She relates how she should have stayed in Philadelphia to take care of the poor there, but the house was too much.
Elna continues, saying she could never understand why Cyril wanted the house. They were poor, she explains, and she felt ashamed of the house, the servants, and the VanHoebeeks. Exasperated, Danny says he thought she left to get away from Dad, and she says she loved Cyril. This ends the conversation, as Fluffy, Jocelyn, and Danny all make their excuses to exit.
*
Danny recalls the first time he went back to Jenkintown after starting medical school. It was Thanksgiving, 1970; there had been no talk of marriage, so Maeve and Celeste were still friends, and Maeve and Danny were to have dinner with the Norcrosses.
It is a vibrant, busy, pleasant dinner, and Danny’s medical training is the talk of the table. When it is time for Danny and Maeve to depart, Maeve whispers that there is just enough time for them to check out the Dutch House before the lights come on and they are needed at Jocelyn’s for pie.
In the car, before the house, they smoke. Danny sighs that he thinks about death all the time now because of what he sees in medical school. He muses that there are a thousand ways the body can make a person go. Maeve shrugs, saying that she already knows what will happen to her: a stroke or heart disease, which is what people with diabetes get. Danny is unnerved and angry to hear her talk like this.
Chapter 17
Maeve and Elna reminisce about their days together, poring over the minutest details from life on the base. Danny had never had a mother when he was a child, so he did not miss her. He had Maeve, and Maeve raised him and taught him everything. The joys of his childhood ended not when Elna left, but rather when Maeve went to college.
Danny does not care where his mother has been all this time, though he hears bits and pieces about her time in India, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Mississippi helping the poor. When Maeve comes home and Elna stays with her, Danny is surprised at how happy and relaxed Maeve is. She is chattery, not consumed with work, and lets her mother take care of her. There is no distance between them; “they were living together in their own paradise of memory” (284).
Celeste suggests that Danny should let them be, and he knows she is probably right. Celeste asks if it seems okay with Elna there, and Danny has to admit it does. Elna takes care of the medicine, limits the visitors (except for Otterson, who is cherished), and makes sure Maeve goes on walks. Before Danny can get off the phone, May pops on and says she wants to come by train to visit Maeve and meet her grandmother. She says blithely that it is a pretty interesting thing to find out that one has a grandparent at this stage of the game.
After a minute of Danny’s expressing his reluctance, May asks to speak to her grandmother. Danny is surprised and thinks how his mother has actually never once asked after the children. Fluffy says it is because she told Elna everything, but Danny knows it might also be because he covers all his words to Elna with frost. Danny tells May her grandmother is asleep.
Back at home, Danny talks to Celeste about the weirdness of his mother’s situation. He does not think she is homeless, for one, but she does not have a real home. Celeste asks if they were really divorced and Danny says yes, he looked into it. She wonders if Elna is rich; Danny says, frankly, that she is “flamboyantly poor” (288).
Celeste then asks what Danny’s part is; when Danny says he just wants to make sure Maeve is ok, she wonders whether it is because he is worried she might have another heart attack or rather because he worries she will end up liking their mother more than him. At this, Danny, miffed, says it is not a competition. He knows deep down, though, that Celeste was very thoughtful when Maeve was sick, sending cards and peonies. Celeste presses on, saying that as long as she’s known Maeve she has wanted her mother back, and both of the siblings have gone through life moaning that they were abandoned. Here their mother is: Do they not want to be dislodged from their suffering? Why can’t Danny just let Maeve be happy? Why can’t she have her mother and Danny be with his own family?
Danny sighs that it is not a trade-off; Celeste argues that he is afraid that his mother won’t be punished and Maeve will be happier now. When May calls down that she can hear them fighting, they stop.
The summer passes. Danny could have spent it on projects in New York but finds himself going to Jenkintown every week to visit Maeve. He stays at a hotel, and one or both of the children often come with him. They fascinate Elna and she fascinates them. As time goes on, Elna speaks more and more, feeling especially comfortable around the children.
Sometimes Elna tells stories, such as wanting to be a nun and how Cyril prevented her from being one. So many things are new for Elna, such as May painting her nails for the first time.
Celeste comes too during that summer, seeing her parents and dripping off the children. She usually finds ways to avoid Elna, though she is polite. Now that Elna is back, the bright torch of Maeve’s anger for Celeste has been extinguished.
The summer ends and Maeve returns to work on her same irregular schedule. Elna stays, and mother and daughter begin going to the orchestra, volunteering, making food, and more.
One fall evening, Maeve asks to talk to Danny outside. She asks him when it will be over. He asks what she means, and she says she's talking about the petulance and the punishment. She knows her heart attack was hard for Danny, as was their mother coming back. Danny is startled and then defensive. They have not really talked since Elna came back, and it seems to have been building to this.
Maeve tells Danny frankly that she wanted her mother back ever since she was a child and now she’s here; Maeve will not be furious but instead will enjoy it. She says she’s told Elna everything about Andrea and their lives; Danny could have been part of the conversations, she says, but he excluded himself. When Danny wonders aloud why Elna left, Maeve says she wanted to help people—but, more importantly, she made a mistake. Danny scoffs disgustedly, wondering what kind of person leaves their kids; to this, Maeve yells that men do and no one cares. Their mother left, yes, but they survived. She doesn’t care if Danny ever loves Elna, but he has to be decent to her. Maeve ends by saying she is sick of misery.
After Maeve goes back inside, Danny makes the decision to change. It does not matter whether he likes it or not: it’s the way it has to be.
Chapter 18
It has been over a year since the heart attack and Maeve is healthy and happy with her mother. When Maeve recovers, she launches her mother on a phase of self-improvement, with cataract surgery, dentistry, and removal of basal cell carcinomas. Danny pays the bills by choice.
One day, Maeve and Elna pick Danny up from the train. Elna is driving and Danny is surprised to see how good she is at it. Maeve and Elna are talking about going to Paris.
Danny thinks about how when Elna came back, Maeve did the mental work of going back in time and figuring out what happened; Danny, in contrast, can only look at their mother the way she is now. She is old, helpful, and someone’s mother. In fact, Danny thinks of her as Maeve’s mother, not really his.
Elna shares a story of how Cyril taught her to drive, and how, while Maeve was a child at school, she would take the car out and drive. She went to Philadelphia to see friends at the base and Immaculate Conception, where she befriended the nuns and started clothing drives. She would go with Cyril to pick up the rent until, one day, she told a crying family that they did not have to pay them rent again, at which point Cyril stopped taking her.
They are driving through Elkins Park and heading toward VanHoebeek Street. Danny wonders if Maeve has ever brought their mother to the house. The siblings have not talked about it for years. Maeve mentions that she and Danny used to come and park here for old times’ sake.
Elna asks if they even saw Andrea. Maeve says no. Elna asks why they didn't see her if they came here. Danny and Maeve both say they were not welcome, even as adults. Elna drives down the street and suggests they go see the house. The siblings say no, but Elna says that all three of them should not be undone by a house. It will be good for them, she adds.
Maeve protests without any conviction, and Danny wonders what his own mother’s flight from the house was like. When they glimpse the house, it is exactly as they remember. Elna parks and exhales, saying they should confront the past and let things go. Maeve says she will not get out, but she urges Danny to do so. Danny feels the sense that “layers of loyalty…were being tested [and] were too complicated to dissect” (306), but he is too curious to resist. Elna and Danny get out of the car and walk up to the house.
Before they can do anything, Andrea, impeccably dressed, is at the front door. She begins howling and slapping the glass door, tiny but fierce. It feels like, any second, the house will shatter into a million pieces.
A heavyset Hispanic woman wearing scrubs sees them and smiles through the door, thinking they are visitors for Andrea. Andrea bursts out and comes running up to Danny, wailing crazily and grasping him. Maeve gets out of the car immediately and tells Andrea to stop while pulling her away.
The nurse comes limping down the stairs of the terrace toward them and says Missus needs to be inside. Andrea will not stop crying. Elna introduces herself and her children and says that Mrs. Conroy was their stepmother. The nurse is pleased, thinking that “family” has come to visit Andrea.
They all go inside, Danny awkwardly holding Andrea up. He does not think he has an imagination big enough to capture this scene. Inside, the house looks exactly the same as it always did. Maeve and Elna float through the downstairs rooms. They stand before the portraits. Elna says she hated them; Maeve says she loved them.
Suddenly, Norma comes running downstairs, asking what happened. It has been thirty years since Danny has seen her. She is tall and sturdy, wearing gold-rimmed glasses. She asks breathlessly what happened. Danny introduces their mother to Norma.
Norma’s wild eyes go to Maeve and she apologizes for Andrea. Maeve makes a joke about Norma getting the room, and Norma is horrified and apologetic. Maeve says she was joking. The three of them feel a powerful current running between them.
Elna asks about Andrea, and Norma explains she has either primary progressive aphasia or Alzheimer’s. She moved back a few months ago, but Inez does most of the care. When Elna kneels before Andrea, saying how wonderful it is that her daughter is home, Andrea looks at the portrait of Maeve and repeats “My daughter.” They all look at that magnificent portrait of a young girl with the whole world laid out before her.
Maeve stands up, goes over to it, and lifts it off the wall. She says she will give it to May because it looks like her. She kisses Norma and says she should have come back for her and Bright, and she leaves the house.
Danny stands and Andrea leans into Elna. He embraces Norma, realizing that “our childhood was a fire. There had been four children in the house and only two of them had gotten out” (314). Danny tells his mother to take all the time she needs and goes outside.
He joins Maeve in the car and they have a cigarette even though neither of them smokes anymore. They cannot believe this really happened. Danny is amazed she got the portrait. Maeve tells a story of Simon, who painted her when Elna refused to sit for a planned set of her and Cyril.
Danny remarks that Elna seems comfortable in the house right now, and Maeve replies that it is because the only person she could feel sorry for back in the day was herself. Danny sees what Maeve is saying. When Elna comes out, it seems she has a new purpose: she is going back to work.
Elna tells them that Norma is a pediatric oncologist, as Andrea had been jealous that Danny was a doctor, and Bright is a yoga instructor in Canada who does not come home. She says that Inez works hard and Norma does what she can, but Andrea clearly needs someone she can trust.
Maeve hits the brakes, knowing what is coming. She says that she needs Elna and she cannot go take care of Andrea; she lost her once and cannot have that happen again. Elna says they will talk about it later. The next day, Maeve drives Danny all the way to New York, raving about how furious she is. She says it is not good for her health and Danny says he will talk to Elna. They arrive at Danny’s home and he says she should take the portrait home and give it to May when she is older. Maeve refuses; she says she does not want it.
After this, they talk frequently. Maeve says she is a complete wreck by Elna’s daily visits to the house. They talk about other things, though, like Otterson's, Danny’s buildings, how May loves the panting, and how Celeste loves it, too, since it looks like May.
Two weeks after the Dutch House trip, Elna calls to say Maeve is dead. Danny tells her to call an ambulance, and Elna begins to cry.
Chapter 19
Danny remembers little about the time right after Maeve died. At the funeral, Otterson cried and cried, his grief as deep as Danny’s own.
Chapter 20
Danny and Celeste eventually divorce, Celeste for years having blamed all of her unhappiness on Maeve instead of Danny, where it actually belonged. She tells him she didn’t want the brownstone in the first place and had never liked it, which surprised Danny.
Elna stays on in the Dutch House to take care of Andrea; for years, Danny does not forgive her. He stubbornly holds onto the idea that her leaving made Maeve sick in childhood and then again in adulthood.
One day, though, when Danny is dropping off some of Celeste’s things at her parents’ house, he drives by the Dutch House, thinking he might park for a bit. Instead, he gets out and rings the doorbell.
Sandy answers. She sheepishly explains that she missed Elna and Maeve and that she comes for lunch sometimes. It reminds her of Jocelyn, who died a few years back.
The two sit down in the kitchen for coffee. She explains that Andrea is still alive and a “toothless beast” (326), but they have not sold the house yet because she could die at any minute. The two sit together comfortably for a time.
After a bit, Sandy says that Danny should be less hard on his mother, who is a saint. Danny smiles but says she is not. Sandy encourages him to go upstairs and say hello, and he does.
Andrea is in a bed by the window, and Elna beams at Danny when he comes in. He says weakly that he was in the neighborhood. At his mother’s urging, he says hello to Andrea. He realizes that no anger could survive this. Andrea is smiling, thinking she is seeing Cyril.
Andrea falls asleep and Danny sits in chairs before the fireplace with his mother. He asks where she stays, and she points to the bed where she used to sleep when she lived here. She sighs and says she feels the house at all times and remembers when she first came here, but now she knows it is good to be here—Andrea teaches her humility.
Danny asks after Norma, and then he finally asks the question: Why didn’t Elna take them with her when she left? She sits quietly for a time. Finally, she says this was a good place for them and she knew they would be fine. As an afterthought, she says that their father would not have allowed it.
After that visit, things change. Danny’s rage against Elna dies. He does not feel love, but he feels familiarity. They take comfort in each other. He visits often and brings May, now a college student, when she can come. May is in love with the house and explores every nook and cranny of it, finding the most marvelous things.
One time, when Danny and May are at the house and Danny walks out to the pool to visit with her, May says that, someday soon, she will buy this house. Andrea had died a few years back. Bright, who did not come to the funeral, told Norma she could burn it down. Everyone knows the house and its parts would be worth millions, but Norma has not done anything yet. May tells her father she asked Norma to wait just a few years for her because she has a spiritual connection to the place, and Norma had happily agreed.
Norma and Danny talk a lot more now and become close. Once, she shyly suggests that she’d like to be a sister of sorts to him—never like Maeve, but someone close still. She is preparing to move back to Palo Alto and return to her life, which she misses.
Elna stays on at the Dutch House as a sort of caretaker, though she travels a bit as well. Sandy stays with her. Fluffy moves to Santa Barbara to live with her daughter, but she comes back for visits and sleeps in her room over the garage.
May fulfills her destiny, becoming a well-paid, famous actress. She buys the house. The painting of Maeve is restored to its rightful place. Though May cannot live there full-time, she comes as often as she can and throws lovely parties.
She invites Celeste, Danny, Kevin (who was pursuing medicine, not real estate as Danny had hoped), Elna, and Sandy to the house one evening for one of these parties. The house is gorgeously lit as Danny had never seen it before.
At one point, he walks outside, noticing someone sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs in the shadows. For a second, it looks like Maeve and he allows himself to think it is her, as Maeve never had use for parties. He approaches and sees May. She stands up and smiles, and he puts his arm around her. She sighs that she loves the house, and Danny tells her that that is good, as it is hers. She asks him to take her inside.
Analysis
Maeve and Danny have completely different responses when their mother comes back to them. Maeve is overjoyed; she comes to terms immediately with her mother’s choices and her own feelings of loss, choosing to forgive Elna and enjoy life with her. Maeve had a mother and lost a mother; she is not going to let it happen again. Furthermore, her health scares make her aware of how short life is and how much time she wasted being obsessed with the Dutch House and Andrea. As for Danny, he has no memories of his mother; when she returns, his only thought is for Maeve and her health. When he accepts that she is fine in that respect, he still cannot muster much, if any, affection for Elna. He is angry and confused, certain that the other shoe is going to drop soon. Celeste, ever the perspicacious outsider, also suggests that, somewhere deep down, he does not want Elna to supplant himself in Maeve’s favor.
Elna is a complex character, and it behooves the reader to remember that we see her only through the eyes and words of others. Everyone has opinions on Elna, ranging from her being crazy to her being a saint. The “real” Elna is perhaps somewhere along that spectrum, but it is hard to pinpoint where exactly. First, Cyril truly did not seem to know his wife all that well when he bought her the house. She could not come to terms with it and what her life there was, and the descriptions of Elna in that house testify to her deep misery. However, Elna does leave her children instead of making her life bearable in Philadelphia. Perhaps she should have been bold in staying instead of bold in leaving. On the other hand, Maeve’s angry comment that men get to leave their families and make mistakes while women do not is worth considering. If it had been Cyril who left and came back, would the distaste and the ire have been as strong towards him? Most likely not. Elna’s sense of shame and sadness is palpable, and it does seem like she does regret some of her choices. She throws herself into taking care of Maeve and forging a relationship with her, as well as getting to know her grandchildren and doing the best she can with Danny.
It is her decision to step in and care for Andrea that is a more complicated one. Andrea’s acute memory loss is a shock to Maeve, Danny, and Elna. For the siblings, it further diminishes any lingering anger. Danny says frankly that no anger could survive seeing what Andrea has become. Elna is struck by Andrea’s condition and decides she must help, which is her way of being in the house and dealing with her own trauma from many years back. The decision is controversial in that it does seem to be very hard on Maeve, who dies two weeks later, but Elna is remaining true to her identity as a servant to others.
As for Maeve, she does come to terms with the house before she dies. Though she does not want to go inside initially, she does when Andrea latches onto Danny, and once inside, she takes the portrait of herself to give to May. This portrait is something long-cherished and something she wished she’d taken out of the house, and now she can give it to her beloved niece—a niece who loves the Dutch House as much as Maeve did, but without all of the associated emotional baggage. Maeve also gets to make peace with Norma and her own guilt that she should have come back for Norma and Bright. She stays only as long as she needs to and walks out; this, for Maeve, is reconciliation.
Now that Danny has lost Maeve, he has to figure relationships out for himself. He and Celeste divorce. He stays close to Sandy and Fluffy. He remains a good, loving father. He becomes closer with Norma, another sister of sorts. And, eventually, he makes peace with his mother. Patchett doesn’t make Danny’s transformation unbelievable: Danny does not love his mother; he only grows to be comfortable around her and ultimately forgives her. But this is important progress: Danny is not staying in one place but rather changing and moving forward. The best way this moving forward manifests itself is by Danny being able to go to the Dutch House, whether it is to see Elna or to attend one of his daughter’s soirees now that she has purchased the house. At the end of the novel, Danny is peering through the darkness of the lawn, trying to find the light; the light turns out to be the memory of Maeve, embodied in his lovely daughter who represents progress, reconciliation, and the laying to rest of grievances and burdens. The house belongs to the right people again, but Danny also fundamentally realizes it’s not the house that matters: it’s the people who lived there and the memories of those people that remain.
