to Francie's most significant journey, a bus ride to confront her father in Manhattan. During the ride, Francie meets a "crazy" old woman who claims her mother was killed in a blimp accident. Francie arrives in Manhattan and waits for her father at his building. The doorman greets her and, before leaving her to wait, comments on the wild morning they've had, "starting with the blimp." Literal journeys are woven throughout the story to compliment the figurative journey Francie is on.

In Deborah Eisenberg's story "The Girl Who Left Her Sock on the Floor," there are a number of themes. The first one is class differentiation. Second, there is evidence that supports the theme of facing adversity under fateful circumstances. For Francie’s whole life, her mother tells her that her father was killed in an accident. Although her mother struggles through life as a single parent, Francie eventually ends up attending a prestigious boarding school. Francie is exposed to class differences that she is unprepared for, and to which she must adapt. The title of the story alludes to the difference between Francie and her roommate on how to maintain their shared room. In spite of her academic proficiency, Francie’s home life has not given her the skills for life at boarding school with upper-class girls.

While at school, Francie receives word that her mother died of an aneurysm. Once again, her world is shattered by fate, and she has to respond and move forward. Her saga continues, when she is directed to the funeral home for her mother’s remains, she finds that her mother designated a man as her next of kin. Francie has to find a way to understand that her father was alive all of these years. She shows up at his home with her mother’s ashes in a box. She is challenged to pick up the pieces of a shattered life.

There are a couple of themes in this story. One is class differences. Francie's mother is a single parent who struggled to take care of her daughter to be able to send her to a prestigious school. Francie is a self-confessed slob, while her roommate is stylish and neat.

Another theme has to do with keeping secrets and not really knowing people. Francie thought she knew everything about her mother. When her mother dies, however, Francie discovers that her mother had been keeping secrets from her. Her father hadn't been killed by a bus. He was alive and living in the same city. When Francie goes to visit him, she discovers that besides the fact that he has made no effort to see his daughter, her father has other secrets.

See the link below for a good summary and discussion of themes.

In Deborah Eisenberg's short story "The Girl Who Left Her Sock on the Floor," Francie McIntyre goes on a physical and metaphorical journey back to her roots. The journey begins in the exclusive preparatory school where she has always felt out of place and takes her back to her mother's home. Francie then follows in her mother's wake from hospital to funeral home and finally to her father's current home, though the narrative ends before she meets him.

Francie's physical journey through New York is paralleled by her emotional and mental journey away from the school where a sock left on the floor is a source of conflict and drama to places where sickness and death are a matter of routine. As the story ends, she is in a strange space of uncertainty and potential, not yet connected with her father, talking to a man whose identity she cannot place. Her journey into the unknown is set to continue beyond the parameters of the story.