Perfect Strangers

The orderly, Ernest, helps care for Olivia. He and Olivia banter about the center’s bad food and rigid schedule. He puts up a poster of the 20th-century singer and actor Frank Sinatra, whose nickname, Ol’ Blue Eyes, connects to James’s blue eyes. Kelly brings Olivia a poster of Provence’s lavender fields.

Olivia compares the center to the tyrannical psychiatric hospital in Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but the workers at Olivia’s center are nice. The other patients include Gigi, who has paranoid schizophrenia, and Gaspard, who has clinical depression and severe bipolar disorder. Gaspard “grunts,” while Gigi has “lusty screams.”

Olivia has ALS, and the diagnosis came after Emerson’s death. Olivia believes that the tingling, numbing sensation in her foot, one of the signs of the disease, is partly why she couldn’t brake right away. If she had, Emerson would be alive.

Dr. Chevalier tells Olivia that she can go home and live with her husband. Chris is a mechanic who makes enough money but lacks “ambition.” He’s also having an affair with the shop’s receptionist, who’s in her twenties. Dr. Chevalier believes Chris and Olivia might “reconnect,” and he also thinks it might help Olivia and others if she wrote a book. Missing James and the fantasy, Oliva wonders if she can induce her “psychotic state” again.

Dr. Chevalier recounts Olivia’s mental health history and the events that led to her stay at the center. She was approaching 40 and wanted another child, but she didn’t think Chris was a good father. Then the accident occurred; soon after that, Olivia was diagnosed with ALS.

Dr. Chevalier pontificates on the hazy boundaries between “hallucinations” and reality. There’s no way to prove reality, yet Dr. Chevalier confirms that reality exists. He compares Olivia’s fantasy about James and Paris to a “romance novel.”

Olivia hears gospel music, and Ernest tells her that they’ve played it every Sunday since her arrival. The singer’s name is James Blackwood.

Chris picks up Olivia in a wheelchair-accessible van. She meets her at-home caregiver, a forceful but compassionate German woman named Maria. Kelly visits and reads Hemingway to her. They drink, and Olivia describes how Kelly looked in her Paris fantasy. Kelly brings a tape recorder so Olivia can dictate her memoir, Until September.

One year later, Olivia sleeps in a hospital bed in the living room, as the ventilator makes it hard for Chris to sleep. Maria and Olivia hear Chris on the phone with the receptionist. He tells her he loves her, and he promises to sell the house once Olivia dies. Maria says she’ll smother Chris with a pillow if Olivia wants.

Olivia has published her book, and it is a bestseller.

Olivia tries to return to her fantasy of France and James. She looks at the poster of the Provence lavender fields, but it doesn’t work. However, Maria brings her a lavender bush, and the scent transports her to James. She hears him recite the Hemingway quote they shared earlier. As rain falls, they kiss and confess their love for each other.

The Epilogue is told by a third-person narrator and reveals that both the France fantasy and the psychiatric hospital are fictional. They are part of Olivia’s book, Perfect Strangers. In New York City, Olivia and Estelle playfully discuss the connection between her characters and their real lives. The women speculate on who might play them in a movie adaptation. Olivia compares her novel to the metafictional film Inception and describes her book as “a book within a book within a book” (556).

Olivia lives in the suburbs of New York City with James, whom she met during a brunch with her girlfriends. He’s an artist, and they’re constantly renovating their home. James is a constant presence in Olivia’s novels, and she’s made him a rock star, a bodyguard, and other cinematic identities; now, she’s made him an assassin with a 12-inch penis.

At home, she puts on butterfly body jewelry, and they have sex, since James’s “regular-sized” penis works fine for Olivia. Emerson comes home from school and hears her parents having sex, but she’s used to such an occurrence.