A Family Matter

The story continues to alternate between time periods 40 years apart. The 1982 rupture in the marriage of Dawn and Heron, and with it the question of what will happen to the child Maggie, is contrasted with the relative normality of the grown Maggie’s family. There are issues there too, though—things about the past that Maggie still has to confront her father about, like why he never told her anything about her mother. This huge gap in Maggie’s life has not yet been specifically identified, but the narrative moves inexorably toward it.

From the beginning, Dawn and Hazel know that theirs is a forbidden love, and they are careful to be discreet. They leave the curtains open so as not to arouse the curiosity of neighbors, and they leave Hazel’s apartment separately. However, Dawn is naïve about what awaits her in the wider world. She thinks that she and Heron will “work it out like adults” (63), and she envisions an amicable shared custody of Maggie, although she is also aware that people will never understand her. She believes that “[p]eople will only think about the sex” (64), acknowledging that many LGBTQ+ people are reduced to their sexuality.

One key point is that Dawn realizes that she has always felt the same regarding her attraction to women. Her being drawn to Hazel—a woman—is not “new at all but the opposite. Something she had always known, as deep and bright as bone” (63). The simile conveys how fundamental this is to her physical as well as her emotional nature. It is not a choice but a matter of being true to herself. This is also alluded to in part of the novel’s epigraph, which is taken from the poem “Peanut Butter” by Eileen Myles:

why shouldn’t

something

I have always

known be the

very best there is (ix).

The message conveyed is not only the presence of innate knowledge of who one is but also acceptance of it, not as an unfortunate fact but as a fulfilment of one’s being. Dawn knows very well that she married Heron only “because it was what they were supposed to do” (63). Although they get on well, they are not, in her understanding, in love with each other. Her burgeoning relationship with Hazel, however, fulfils her need for intimacy, understanding, and romance.

This section also shows how Heron’s instincts aren’t necessarily to cut Dawn from his and Maggie’s lives; this is an act that will occur later due to outside influences. Before that, he and Dawn seem to reach a rapprochement by means of a de facto shared custody that is “like signing a treaty” (92). He gives her a house key to seal it. He visits the solicitor only so he can get information about what he is supposed to do now. He just wants to know “[w]hat the rules are” (93), since he is a man who always follows the rules. In this respect, however, he, like Dawn, is naïve. He gets swept along by the process—the legal system with all its built-in assumptions and moral judgments, highlighting The Impact of Institutional Oppression. From the solicitor, he learns that he will likely get custody because Dawn will be declared an unfit mother, and Heron fears that if he does not go along with this charade, “they” (96) will take Maggie away from him. While his antigay bias toward Dawn is harmful, this presents a more sympathetic side wherein he feels pressed by other factors to exclude Dawn from his life.

Heron’s character in 2022 is further developed in this section. His need for order and to keep everything under control is shown again in his love of gardening, as well as his inability to talk about personal matters. He cannot tell anyone he is ill simply because he “cannot work out how to say all the things he would have to say next” (53). He thinks of just writing it down in a Post-it note and handing it to Maggie, which would allow him to control exactly how the news is given and received and spare him from the tension of emotional disruptions. His avoidance suggests that The Importance of Open Communication for Healing will become clear later in the novel. Heron is overall not used to communicating openly—just as he never talked to Maggie about her mother. There is continuity here in the character, with the older Heron behaving in ways that echo his younger self. 

Yet unknown to him, the pressure is starting to build. When Tom interviews his grandfather for the history project, Heron finds himself talking about how he and Dawn met, dated, and married, and then the baby came along, with all the nappies and bottles that parenting involved. Maggie is listening in the next room, and her father’s words raise all her old fears and questions, to which she still sees no resolution: “There are topics not talked about for so long they become impossible to say out loud” (83). This attitude echoes how many people approached societal antigay bias, as the topic of LGBTQ+ relationships was seen as shameful and inappropriate. This discomfort leads to dynamics like those between Dawn and Heron, as he would rather rebuke her and lock her out than speak to her and try to understand her perspective. He feels the same as Maggie, as both his history with Dawn and his illness have become so frightening and stressful that he cannot bear to convey them.