53 pages • 1-hour read
The One-In-A-Million Boy
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Part 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death and child death.
Part 4: “Draugas (Friend)”
Part 4, Chapter 17 Summary
Part of the boy’s interviews with Ona shows her discussing Louise’s impact on her education and on her life in general. Ona explains that Louise managed to fend off the rumors about a relationship between her and the senior student. Louise then proceeded to introduce more female authors into her curriculum and stacked dozens of books outside the headmaster’s door, hoping to overwhelm him into consenting to them all. Her ploy worked. At the same time, Ona developed romantic feelings for Louise but kept them a secret.
Ona describes a day when Louise invited herself over to her home and asked if she would like to sit in on her senior literature classes. Ona happily agreed and thoroughly enjoyed the process of reading and learning from various female authors. She recalls reading Mrs. Dalloway, and although it wasn’t exactly her style, she remembers Louise speaking about it with great enthusiasm. Louise’s hope was that the next generation of boys would become more enlightened and respectful toward women by reading such works. Ona felt like Louise was changing her life and leaving her stamp on it forever.
The narrative returns to the present. After the wedding, Quinn and Ona drive home mainly in silence, and Quinn thinks back to when he attempted to give his son guitar lessons and instill a love of music. The sessions were painfully awkward and tense because the boy couldn’t bring himself to find the pleasantness in the notes; instead, he found the music grating and upsetting. Quinn pressed his son to engage with the music and played a blues song by Eric Clapton in the hopes of reaching the boy. However, all it did was give Quinn a distaste for one of his own favorite songs. Despite everything, when one of these sessions ended, Quinn’s son told him that he played excellently, and Quinn realized that although his son could not appreciate music directly, he could still appreciate his father’s talent for it.
Now, to break the silence in the car, Quinn lets Ona practice driving. He is impressed to find that she is quite skilled and confident. When they get back to Ona’s house, Quinn notices many things in need of repair and starts to feel obligated to fix them. When a local realtor approaches the home, clearly hoping that Ona may have died, Quinn tells her that Ona is likely to outlive her anyway.
The narrative shifts back to the interview with the boy, with Ona telling him about how Louise gave her a lifelong love of reading. One day, upon hearing that Ona couldn’t dance, Louise insisted on teaching her, and they shared an intimate moment of closeness as they danced together. The emotional intensity of the moment caused Ona to cry, and Louise simply let her do so. Afterward, they shared some of Ona’s famous tomato-soup cake, which Louise loved.
After this interview, Ona began teaching the boy how to dance the jitterbug, as Louise had once taught her.
Part 4, Chapter 18 Summary
Back in the present, during the drive home, Ona keeps nodding off and having visions of the day when she first met Howard, her husband. She and Maud-Lucy were walking through the marketplace shortly after the sinking of the Titanic, and they went to Howard’s music shop, which he and his wife ran together at the time. Howard played a song for them and seemed to take an interest in Ona, but not in Maud-Lucy. Ona recalls sensing Maud-Lucy’s jealousy over this. Now, Ona understands things about her past that she didn’t before, and she realizes that nobody in her life ever loved her as much as they loved themselves, although she wonders if perhaps Laurentas may have. Quinn leaves, citing an upcoming gig, and promises to call.
Ona falls asleep early, and when she awakens in the night, she immediately senses danger. Hearing the sound of young men and smashed objects, she bravely goes downstairs. Most of the intruders leave, but one demands that Ona give him her cash. Ona insists that she has nothing worth stealing, but he takes her upstairs and continues searching through her belongings. When the young man comes close to Ona, she screams at him, and he tells her that she is too ugly for him to assault, anyway. Eventually, Ona uses the emergency button on her necklace to call for help, and the young man leaves. Paramedics and police officers arrive, along with a couple of neighbors. One of them happens to be the realtor, who spreads word of the incident. The following day, Ona has to hear the news announcer talk about how her home was robbed but nothing was taken because she had nothing of value. Ona wonders why she agreed to live another 18 years.
Part 4, Chapter 19 Summary
Ona calls Quinn to help her get her place back in order, and Quinn considers how he might pry himself free from Ona’s life in the gentlest way possible. He calls Belle to help him with this, but she refuses, telling him that helping Ona is his obligation, not hers. Quinn fixes Ona’s locks and a few other things, and Ona lets him continue borrowing her car. The thieves are caught, and Ona goes on with her life as though nothing happened, which concerns Quinn.
He keeps coming back week after week, finally realizing that there is no need to end a friendship as valuable as this one. When Belle tells Quinn to stop paying child support, he realizes that the chapter of his life that included her is now officially over. She gives Quinn a box that their son collected; it is filled with newspaper clippings from all of Quinn’s gigs. Seeing this, Quinn realizes that his son did admire his talent after all, and he hopes that if his son had lived, he would have eventually forgiven him for being absent. Later, Quinn asks Ona what his son was like, but she admits that she didn’t know him well enough to say. She does know, however, that when she was around him, he made her feel like dreaming again.
Part 4, Chapter 20 Summary
Quinn and his band show up to their usual venue to find that another band was booked in their place. One of Quinn’s bandmates is furious, while another tells Quinn that he should consider joining the Christian rock group, as they just let go of their guitarist and signed a record deal. Quinn finds out that he actually just missed a message on his voicemail telling him to switch the dates for the venue, and all is forgiven.
Later, he runs into the physician who looked after his son; the man happens to be playing in the other band. The man breaks down crying and apologizes to Quinn several times, saying that the lawsuit nearly broke him. Quinn tries to help him get his composure, knowing that his son’s death was not anyone’s fault.
On the way home, Quinn gets pulled over in Ona’s car, which has an expired registration. His own license also appears to be out of date, even though he knows that he recently had it updated. Quinn calls Belle and Ted, who help get him and his belongings home, while also returning Ona’s car. On the way, Ted reveals to Quinn that Belle has been passing Quinn’s child-support payments on to Ted’s Boy Scout troop. Quinn immediately senses the irony but finds it a fitting “punishment” and agrees to continue sending money to Ted directly.
The narrative shifts to a more lighthearted portion of the boy’s interviews, when Ona asks the boy whether he is finding ways to stand up to the bullies at his school and suggests that he puff up like an owl. She assures him that it will intimidate them and even make them run away in fear.
Part 4, Chapter 21 Summary
Quinn decides to call the band manager for the Christian rock group. She invites him to come down and ameliorate the “situation.” While riding the bus home after a work shift, he reflects that his mother was always supportive of his music, and he now knows that his son secretly was too. He sits with the painful irony that his son, who could not enjoy music himself, was still his biggest fan; he compiled a record of his career as though it were something worth treasuring.
The narrative displays a list of 10 records based on personal success, after which Ona’s interviews start to come to a close. In this final session, Ona explains that Louise was fired after the grumpy librarian reported her for being involved with another student; Ona speculates that the librarian was likely taking a passive form of revenge on Louise’s progressive ways. Louise asked Ona to stand up for her, but it was not in Ona’s personality to rise to confrontation, and she couldn’t do it. Louise ended their friendship that day, along with her own job at the academy, and Ona grieved over losing her only friend and someone she truly loved.
Part 4 Analysis
As the story progresses, the line between past and present blurs, complicating the novel’s focus on The Balance Between Honoring the Past and Embracing the Future. Notably, the association between the Titanic disaster and her first meeting with Howard set a foreboding tone about the nature of her future marriage to Howard. Ona recalls the moment when he serenaded her at his shop, a gesture that both flattered and bewitched her younger self. Later, she uses an iceberg metaphor to reflect on the unreciprocated love that she experienced throughout her life. She muses, “Can you see the iceberg coming? No one will love you more than they love themselves” (225). This metaphor encapsulates her entire romantic history, which is filled with unrequited affection.
Music remains a prominent motif in both Quinn’s and Ona’s lives and memories. For example, the narrative finally reveals Quinn’s difficulties in sharing his passion for music with his son, who was not neurologically equipped to appreciate the sound of music. Quinn’s guitar lessons with his son served as a reminder of their fundamental incompatibility, and it is clear that Quinn failed to understand or fully appreciate his own child. However, a moment of redemption was attained when his son still complimented Quinn’s playing, expressing genuine admiration for his father’s talent. Yet because Quinn only values this gesture in retrospect, even this moment of connection is tinged with a bittersweet tone. Similarly, music also finds its way into Ona’s more significant memories, as when Louise taught her to dance and created a space that allowed a younger Ona to temporarily indulge her secret emotional and romantic connection with Louise. The act of dancing, with Louise taking on the “man’s” role, also symbolizes Louise’s refusal to remain within the confines of patriarchal traditions.
In the present, Quinn’s long search for reconciliation and redemption comes to a close when Belle gives him a box of old newspaper clippings detailing his many gigs over the years; all were saved by their son, whose dedication to preserving records of his father’s music career reveals just how deeply he cared about Quinn despite the distance between them. This moment serves as an emotional turning point for Quinn, standing as proof that someone noticed his efforts and achievements. Quinn’s incredulity is conveyed when he muses, “The boy, who listened to music in puzzlement and pain. The boy, with his razored clippings and neat beads of glue, dogged and watchful, arranging his father’s story, preserving and tending it, page after page after page” (271). In this context, the boy’s habit of record-keeping is revealed to be a unique way of loving and understanding his father. As Quinn’s journey reflects the power of sharing stories, legacies, and memories, he realizes that although his son never understood music, the boy deeply understood him.
Just as Quinn experiences distinct personal revelations, he also gains the emotional maturity to recognize the value in preserving close relationships with those he loves. Thus, as his time of obligation to Ona comes to an end, he does not vanish from her life. Instead, he returns voluntarily to visit and help, and he no longer feels a sense of burden or obligation. As the two continue to bond, Ona even lets him borrow her car and later requests driving lessons just to keep him close. In turn, Quinn begins to subconsciously see Ona as a mother figure, even momentarily confusing her for his biological mother, who died when he was young. Though he can no longer change the past, Quinn feels that his bond with Ona gives him a second chance to be present, reliable, and emotionally honest with someone who needs him. This monumental shift in his life philosophy demonstrates The Life-Changing Power of Unlikely Friendships.
The narrative continues layering past and present by interweaving personal experiences with historical events. To this end, Ona’s explanation of Mrs. Dalloway to the boy becomes a metacommentary on the novel’s own approach, as both works feature depictions of seemingly mundane and ordinary lives, as well as the quiet underbelly of what goes on within them. Ona ironically mentions that the novel was not one that she particularly enjoyed, although she shares the common experience of secretly loving a woman. This pointed allusion to Mrs. Dalloway also reinforces Ona’s strength as an independent woman and who is still capable of embracing dramatic life changes.
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