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Chapters 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “Parents’ Weekend”
Sin-Jun’s dad owns several running shoe factories, so he’s rich, but her parents aren’t coming for parents’ weekend. Lee’s parents, however, are attending. At dinner, Maria Oldega says she likes parents’ weekend due to the food. Rufina thinks Ault serves better food with the parents around to make them think Ault takes extra good care of their kids.
Lee wonders if Nick Chafee—his grandparents founded the Chafee Museums—likes Rufina, and Lee remembers Rufina crying on the bus on the way home from a soccer game freshman year. Nick invites the girls to the activities center to listen to Pink Floyd, but Lee declines—she doesn’t want to ruin the positive interaction.
The dinner makes Lee feel like she belongs at Ault, and she worries her parents won’t embrace her identity and will clash with the Ault world. She hasn’t told them about how Ault has made her feel unhappy. As she thinks about them possibly missing the gated entrance to Ault, she compares them to Hansel and Gretel lost in the woods.
Lee’s parents arrive, and the Burger King bag in their beat-up Datsun makes her think about how Martha’s parents bring vegetable soup in thermoses and real silverware. She makes her dad, Terry, park in a less visible parking lot. In the bathroom, she hears her mom fart as she pees. Later, the trio jokes about praying and Lee’s mom’s supposed affair with an older neighbor whose wife died. After meeting Nancy Daley, a senior, Lee drags her mom away by the turtleneck sleeve. If they were in Boston, Lee would be more comfortable.
Lee brings her parents to her dorm room, and they meet Martha. Her dad comments on a picture of Lee in Martha’s pool, and her mom congratulates Martha for serving on the discipline committee. Terry calls Lee “Flea” and jokes about seeing Martha’s field hockey game instead of Lee’s soccer game. Terry sees a magazine on Lee’s desk and jokes about a sexual article. Lee stalks out and quarrels with her parents.
In the dining hall, Terry introduces himself to a senator—the father of Robin Tunniff)—and Lee wishes she’d never enrolled at Ault or that she could become a different person. Terry wants his daughter to calm down.
Though Lee isn’t good at soccer, she gets to play a few minutes. She goes with them to their hotel, a Travelodge that costs $39, and invites Maria and Rufina to join her and her parents for dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Maria and Rufina criticize Ault, and Terry joins them, labeling the lunch “a ratfuck.”
Rufina wants Lee’s parents to take her to the Sheraton to hang out with Nick. Lee and her dad fight in front of Rufina, but Terry gives in and takes her. Terry tells Lee they’re leaving early, and he’s disappointed in her. They insult one another, and Terry slaps Lee. The next morning, Lee and Mom talk on the phone and cry, but Lee’s parents do not return to campus.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Townie”
It’s the winter of Lee’s junior year, and Sin-Jun is in the hospital because she tried to kill herself. Lee can’t wrap her head around the news, but Mrs. Morino, Sin-Jun’s dorm head, convinces her and drives her to the hospital, where Clara, Sin-Jun’s roommate since sophomore year, cries dramatically. Mrs. Morino leaves but promises to come back to get Clara and Lee. Clara wants to stay, but Sin-Jun wants her gone. Clara refuses, and Lee feeds Sin-Jun words that sound like a get-well card before she goes downstairs to wait for Mrs. Morino.
A young man holding a little child, Kaley, approaches Lee. Lee doesn’t recognize him, but he’s David Bardo, a member of Ault’s kitchen staff. Bardo makes Lee think of Will Koomber, a Black person in charge of the grounds crew. He was supposedly “stoned” most of the time and had a chummy relationship with the guys, but Lee was afraid she might say something offensive to him.
Kaley isn’t Bardo’s daughter. She’s his niece, and Bardo is at the hospital because Kaley’s mom (Bardo’s sister) has asthma. As the Morinos don’t show, Lee catches a ride from Bardo. His niece and sister sit in the back, and Lee sits up front, and they discuss Ault students, and Bardo uses the word “ain’t.” Lee jokes that she’ll go to dog school instead of college, and, with the heat broken, Bardo lets her wear one of his gloves. After Bardo drops her off, she realizes she still has his glove on.
As Clara and Sin-Jun are not getting along, Mrs. Morino asks Lee to pack a bag for Sin-Jun as she’s moving to Ault’s infirmary. Lee thinks about Clara’s bigger body and how she hums and sings to herself. Lee thinks Clara should be insecure, but she’s confident. In Sin-Jun and Clara’s dorm room, Clara and Lee spar, but Clara tells Lee to bring a stuffed rabbit and to tell Sin-Jun to limit her drinks.
Sin-Jun’s dad arrives and takes Lee to the hospital, and Lee gets the urge to grab Sin-Jun by the shoulders to snap her out of her sorrowful mental condition. Sin-Jun claims she’s fine, and Lee tells her life at Ault is stressful, but Sin-Jun is dismissive. Lee wonders what’s happening with Clara, but Sin-Jun doesn’t want to discuss Clara.
The next night, Lee meets Bardo by the dumpster to give him back his glove. Lee suspects Bardo thinks she’s rich, and Bardo invites her to Chauncey’s, a diner, to have “real” mashed potatoes. They agree on Sunday, and Martha is ecstatic, but Lee is nervous. The day before the date, Bardo approaches Lee when she’s eating with Aspeth, Dede, and other Ault students. He asks to postpone the date. Embarrassed, Lee gets him to go away. Aspeth calls Bardo Lee’s boyfriend, and Dede calls him a “townie.”
Lee brings Sin-Jun’s passport to the infirmary and discovers Sin-Jun and Clara passionately embracing. Sin-Jun screams at Lee to leave. Much later, after Ault, Lee learns Sin-Jun pursued Clara because she was her roommate, which made it convenient. Clara told Sin-Jun she loved her, but Sin-Jun thinks Clara just loved sex.
Chapters 5-6 Analysis
Lee doesn’t give the person she was in South Bend space for her Ault persona. Lee states, “[N]o matter what my parents might think, this—my Ault self—was now my real self” (251). Her inflexible idea of her identity makes her ashamed of her parents. She compares their Burger King food to the elegant food Martha’s parents bring, so the theme of Identity Construction connects to the theme of Money and Visibility. The fast food bag, the beat-up Datsun, and her parents’ diction—the homely words like when her dad greets her, “Heigh-ho, heigh-ho” (255)—make their lack of money visible. Lee doesn’t want their working-class/middle-class position to stand out, and she experiences “unease about leaving either of them alone” (257) during parents’ weekend.
There are moments when Lee lightens up, and Sittenfeld uses this to show Lee’s rather effortless rapport with her parents—particularly her dad. They joke about praying for each other’s sins and Lee’s mom’s supposed affair with Mr. Tonelli. Yet Lee’s worries triumph, and she scolds her dad for talking to the senator and joking around in front of friends. Lee’s shame about her parents sows further doubts about her reliability. Her friends like her parents. Martha “really laughed” (270) at his dad’s joke, and Rufina and Maria “roared with laughter” when Terry calls the lunch “a ratfuck” (285). Lee sees her parents as a blemish, but, in reality, they’re a bright spot.
Rufina’s request to have Lee’s parents drive her to Nick’s hotel spurs the dramatic fight between Lee and her dad. Sittenfeld uses dialogue and diction to highlight the animosity. Lee calls her dad “an asshole,” and Terry replies, “[Y]ou’re an ungrateful little bitch” (292). The slap puts the exclamation mark on a contentious day. Though a reader can think Terry crosses a line and abuses his daughter, Lee doesn’t present the violence as specifically traumatic or upsetting—everything about the day torments her.
Problematic behavior continues with Dave Bardo. His flirtation with Lee is inappropriate. He’s a 21-year-old man who works for the school, and she’s a teen and a student. He appears to want to start a relationship and eventually get her to have sex. However, Lee doesn’t present Bardo as particularly predatory. Her main issue is Bardo’s economic class. As with her parents, Bardo represents an identity she wants to hide. Thus, Bardo becomes a victim of Lee’s snobbery. She admits, “I felt angry at him for having approached me so publicly, for having made me act bitchy” (346).
Lee presents Sin-Jun’s suicide as a farce. Lee hears “a moaning wail […] a kind of crazy wail” (305), and Clara’s hyperbolic reaction juxtaposes Sin-Jun’s laconic attitude, and the outlandish difference produces a kind of dark humor. Sittenfeld adds a plot twist and uses imagery to show Lee intently watching Clara and Sin-Jun embrace in the infirmary. Lee says, “It was riveting to watch” (347), and she gives the reader a vivid illustration. With Sin-Jun and Clara, sex doesn’t symbolize validation. Their sex distances them from the community and, presumably, prompts Sin-Jun to try and kill herself. Later, Lee learns Sin-Jun was “the one who’d pursued Clara” (349), so Sin-Jun subverts Lee’s rigid Girls versus Boys theme. Girls don’t have to be passive: They can assert their sexuality.
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