A Family Matter

In the first chapter, Heron learns that he has terminal cancer, then he goes to the supermarket, climbs into a waist-high chest freezer, and pulls the lid down over him. He looks at the ice that drips and shines on the inside walls, and he feels comfortable. He would have been happy to stay there had he not been found and pulled out by members of staff.

Heron’s immersion in the freezer symbolizes his desire to avoid change, to escape facing up to what is happening to him until his eventual death. He wants to freeze life as it is now. His unwillingness to accept change is echoed soon after when he cannot bring himself to tell his daughter about his illness. This also parallels how he was unable to change and accept Dawn’s lesbian identity, instead cutting Dawn entirely from his and Maggie’s lives.

Maggie has her own way of climbing into a metaphorical freezer. She finds it hard to confront her father about the events of the past, which would stir up old wounds and perhaps change the existing dynamic between them. She evades answering the questions her children have after she tells them their grandfather is ill and will die.