Chapter 46 Summary
Thomas Stone has stopped talking, and Marion thinks he is debating what to tell him next. He thinks perhaps his father will skip his years at Missing and is about to interrupt the silence with a rude comment, but he is glad he did not do so because now he will hear about his mother.
Thomas continues talking. Outside the windows of his room, Thomas sees the glorious colors of fall; in him, there is an awful sickness. His nerves are oversensitive and he has vomited until there is nothing left in his stomach, but the impulse to run is no longer present. Several oceans now divide him and the place from which he fled. Eli Harris and another man, maybe a doctor, leave him a “tincture of paregoric” in a small bottle by his bed. Once he sees it, Thomas drinks it as if it is the only thing that can save him. He tells himself it is the small bit of opium that brings him relief, not the alcohol. “He is done with alcohol.”
The only two women he has ever loved are now dead. Although their deaths occurred years apart, this has caused him to lose his mind. That is why he ran, not knowing where he was going or even from what he was escaping. He has no memory of how he arrived in New Jersey from Kenya, but he knows it is far enough and he has a benefactor named Eli Harris. It takes two weeks for him to detoxify his system—two weeks of cold sweats and night terrors. He sees bread and cheese and a newspaper by his bed, but there is no longer a small bottle. Thomas is finally able to sit in a chair and make sense of what he sees and to see things for what they are. One morning he is steady enough to go downstairs. From the porch, he sees a cat is preparing to pounce on a sparrow, and he wonders if he is still hallucinating. When the kitten finally pounces and the sparrow flies easily to safety, Thomas is released from his torpor.
Thomas knows the ceiling of his bedroom better than he knows his own body. Clumsy work was done when the room was subdivided, but the marks of a craftsman remain in the carved details of the woodwork. When he looks at the ceiling, it is if his life plays, reel after reel, on a screen above him. At first he thinks it is another side effect of the paregoric, but the films continue after the bottle is gone. He cannot control which reel plays but he can view his life dispassionately, separate emotions and events, and judge the actor who plays in all of the films. An early winter storm strikes the east coast, and New Jersey is blanketed under five or six inches of snow. Everything has come to a halt and is closed. The world outside Thomas’s window is still and ghostly. What he sees in the reel on his ceiling that night makes him want to end his life.
He is working at Missing, and that is the only thing he is doing: operating clinics, writing, forcing himself to sleep. He is satisfied with his work until one day the machinery suddenly seizes. He wakes from sleep in his quarters at Missing and is terrified as if from a nightmare that will not release him. Everything in the room is exaggerated; as the room shrinks, the objects in it balloon in size. He is powerless to turn it off, and he...
(This entire section contains 1085 words.)
Unlock this Study Guide Now
Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
finds himself as if in a nightmare, slogging through scenes from his childhood and on through adulthood, where is drinking and is able to lose his fear but not his sorrow. Thomas never cries when he is awake, but in this nightmarish state he “weeps like a child.” Ghosh is there; he is concerned and talking. But the commentary from a cricket match drones in the background and drowns out Ghosh’s words. Then he sees her.
Thomas cannot hear her words, either, but she is a reassuring presence as she keeps vigil. When the tears come, she holds him and weeps with him in an attempt to rescue him from the vortex of the nightmare—instead she gets sucked in with him. When they work, there is another person between them, lying exposed and naked on the table. Now, though, as he is pressed against her, he feels something completely different, like a newborn placed on the naked belly of its mother. She whispers in his ear but he cannot remember what she says. He does remember her constant presence for days as he clings to her, weeping, then sleeps again in a constant pattern. She asks over and over what is wrong, what has happened, but she gets no answer from him. For hours, maybe even days, she stays with him despite raging storms that are trying to wrench him out of her grasp.
There is a lull in the storm, a startling silence, and then her blouse is open. When he looks at her he sees fear and desire, the same emotions she must see on his face. When they are finally united, there is desire and there is relief. He feels her presence covering him, and in their coming together order and proportion are restored and “sleep comes as a blessing.” When he wakes, though, all he senses is a gap in time, a disturbance in space, a deep sense of shame and embarrassment for which he cannot recall the reason. The only thing he knows to do is work. He blocks out that which causes him pain.
Now, in New Jersey, he thinks about how cruel it is that he remembers this now, when she is dead and it is too late. Out loud he tells Sister Mary Joseph Praise that she saved his life while he caused her to lose hers through his stupidity, indecision, and panic. It is too late to matter, but he must tell her that he loved her more than any other human being in his life. He cannot bear to mention the children, for he can do even less for them than he can for their mother. He knows the twins, his two sons, exist; he remembers them. Even this sensual memory of her brings him no pleasure or joy, for their pleasure doomed her to die. Even worse, he must live.
