A Family Matter

This final section brings both plots from the two different time periods to their climax and ultimate resolution: Maggie’s confrontation with her father and Dawn’s disturbing encounter with the legal system in the courtroom. The two narrative lines converge into one as Maggie meets her mother Dawn, and there is eventually a quiet reconciliation and acceptance between them regarding what happened all those years ago.

Dawn’s day in court is one long humiliation. The system is designed to shame her, and she experiences it as an “unfair” and “surreal” (168) procedure. She is forced to listen as Heron’s lawyer contends that having a lesbian mother would ruin Maggie’s life; it would turn her into a lesbian. The court hearing is both brutal and bizarre, such as when the lawyer asks Dawn about what “appliances” she uses during sex (167), a question that embarrasses and confuses Dawn. A report from a psychiatrist, who has studied the children of sex workers, states that Dawn’s daughter will suffer similar moral harm. No attempt is made by the court to allow Dawn to talk about how much she loves her daughter. She is defeated by a system that never gives her a chance.

In the other plot, when Maggie finally manages to talk to her father about the past, it is something of an anticlimax. She does not rage or shout, which is entirely in keeping with the novel’s consistent tone of restraint. As Maggie rings the doorbell of Heron’s home, she is full of “words and fury and questions” (186) and plans to let them all out, but when her father opens the door and asks mildly if she would like to come in, she simply says, “Not today.” They instead talk in the open doorway, with Maggie neither in nor out of the house, which symbolizes the hesitant and limited opening for honest communication she actually has with her father. Heron, who has obviously seen the court welfare documents that she left in the box with his Christmas gift, explains quite simply that he thought the court and the lawyers were helping them both. He adds, “Things change, don’t they? […] It wasn’t like now, then” (186), a comment that Maggie’s husband Conor will later echo as he tries to soothe Maggie’s feelings. This sentiment dismisses the culpability everyone has in the mistreatment of Dawn, and Heron clearly feels no guilt about the matter.

Heron also hands Maggie the cardboard box full of Dawn’s gifts that never reached her, as well as newspaper articles about the case. The truth of what happened and why is finally revealed to her. As she goes through the box, memories of her childhood surface, and she is left on her own to deal with it all. However, she believes that it is better to know than not to know, and her decision to seek out her mother is a brave attempt to overcome the legacy of those 40 lost years and establish something new.

When the meeting takes place, Maggie manages to speak bluntly and directly to her mother—more so than she had done to her father—but her feelings gradually soften. Eventually, she takes her mother’s hand and holds it, and in the spare bedroom that night, she no longer feels that something is lacking in her. She tells herself that “she is a finished person […] She is fine. She has survived this. They all have” (218). Her feelings emphasize The Importance of Open Communication for Healing. There is a sense that whatever happened is over, and it is possible to make peace with it. The chapter title, “And this, this is a lullaby too,” aligns with the final image of Maggie sleeping in bed and Dawn looking in on her, as she must have done often in the early years of Maggie’s life. Learning about her past and reconciling with her mother lulls her to a peaceful sleep.

The novel thus achieves its peaceful conclusion through Maggie’s determination to overcome her hesitation and try to understand Dawn’s perspective, something her father failed to do. Foregoing her similarities with Heron, she decides that this conflict is too important for her to ignore as her father has done. Nonetheless, Heron’s actions haven’t ruined Dawn and Hazel’s lives, and there is closure in learning that they found stability and peace. They have a “little house of their own” by the sea “with their things displayed on the shelves” (169), which is exactly what Hazel described wanting in one of her letters to Dawn. This is one of correspondences used with such devastating effects against them by Heron’s lawyer, yet they’ve not allowed this prejudice to keep them from pursuing what they wanted. This little detail shows that Dawn and Hazel did in the end get exactly what they envisioned, including each other, and Dawn’s life can now be complete with the inclusion of her daughter.