47 pages • 1-hour read
The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss
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Chapters 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
Cooper tells the reader about his father, Wyatt Cooper: He mentions his birth and upbringing in Quitman, Mississippi; his profession as an actor; his marriage to Vanderbilt in 1963; his sons’ births; and his death in 1978 from heart surgery complications. Vanderbilt then tells Cooper about her first meeting with Wyatt at a dinner party she and Sidney Lumet attended. She and Wyatt fell in love immediately and began to build a future together, marrying and settling down in an apartment in New York City. Cooper tells her that he met his father’s family for a reunion in Mississippi and quickly bonded with the other Coopers, feeling like he belonged there. He expresses sympathy that Vanderbilt could not find the same sense of belonging with her family.
After the marriage, for the first time in her life, Vanderbilt was ready to make plans and think of the future because Wyatt was there. She then reveals to Cooper that before his older brother Carter was born, she suffered a miscarriage. The miscarriage made her fearful that she would be unable to have a child with Wyatt, and it sent her into a depression. However, Wyatt helped her through it, and soon she successfully carried her pregnancies with Carter and Cooper. Vanderbilt still wonders if she would have had a quicker grasp on parenting if she had a daughter, but Cooper believes that she would have struggled with the same insecurities and fears.
Vanderbilt then explains that Wyatt helped her learn how to be the parent she wanted to be and that after he died, she struggled. Cooper says that he sees loss as a language and that he wishes he could show a sign of his loss after his father’s death without having to say anything. Vanderbilt then details Wyatt’s heart attacks, the following heart surgery, and the news of his death. Cooper expresses how he changed as a person and that he had a void inside him after his father died. Though Vanderbilt believes that Wyatt could have parented Cooper and Carter better, and that Carter would be alive if she died instead of Wyatt, Cooper tells her that they cannot know what would have happened if she died instead. He assures her that she helped him grow as a person and fostered his and Carter’s critical thinking and independence. Vanderbilt says that Wyatt helped her in parenting and that, though she never remarried, she considered reconnecting with Sidney Lumet. Cooper then asserts that the past continues to be part of him and Vanderbilt and that they are who they are, in part, because of their parents and families.
At Cooper’s request, Vanderbilt details her reconciliation with her mother in 1960 after using LSD in her psychiatrist’s office. She made peace with her mother, but she was never able to talk about her childhood or the custody battle with her. Soon after, Vanderbilt went to Malibu and had a dinner with her and several other guests, including Wyatt and Thelma, with one of Vanderbilt’s favorite childhood singers, Harry Richman. He performed for them at the dinner, fulfilling Vanderbilt’s lifelong wish of meeting him and giving her a chance to bond somewhat with her mother. She recalls her mother having a secret conversation with her sister, Consuelo, that was halted when they realized Vanderbilt was listening. She realized that her mother’s life was mostly secret from her. Five years later, her mother was hospitalized with cancer, and shortly after Vanderbilt told her about her pregnancy with Carter, she died.
After Gloria’s death, Vanderbilt made peace with her mother never being the mother she wanted her to be. The sweater her mother knit for her comforts her still. Cooper asks if she thinks she is like her, to which Vanderbilt says she is more like Thelma. Vanderbilt reveals that she continued writing to Dodo, who was going by the name Emily Prescott. At 17, she reconnected with Dodo fully, and Dodo lived with her in Junction City, during her marriage to Leopold. After meeting Wyatt, Vanderbilt began to grow distant with Dodo, whom Wyatt did not like, especially as she began reconnecting with Vanderbilt’s mother. In 1973, Vanderbilt received a letter about Emily Prescott, which she burned. A week later, she received another letter and learned that Emily died. Vanderbilt mourned her.
Cooper talks about Vanderbilt’s art, including her decision to start designing jeans in 1979. The business was immediately successful, but Vanderbilt did not care for the business aspect of it; her former psychiatrist Christ L. Zois and his friend Thomas A. Andrews took advantage of her trusting nature, but she has made peace with it, as they have been disgraced. She then tells the reader about the potential corrupting power of money and mentions how Naney lived simply, unlike her, but built up a large stock portfolio. Cooper respects and relates to this.
Chapter 5 Summary
Cooper explains the events leading up to his brother Carter’s suicide on July 22, 1988. Carter’s relationship with his girlfriend had ended, and he talked about quitting his job and moving back home. He appeared more dejected and started behaving unusually. On July 4, he appeared to be feeling better and more like himself when he had lunch with Cooper, but on July 22, he came to the family’s apartment, took a nap, woke up, went upstairs, and spun on the window ledge before letting go. Vanderbilt recalls how devastated she was and how she still feels the pain of losing him. However, she tries to keep his memory alive. Though Cooper kept his feelings private following his brother’s death, he later reached out to his mother, telling her that they must rely on each other. He also told her not to drink alcohol.
Cooper explains that his mother’s occasional drinking bouts concerned him and that he is glad she did not drink alcohol after Carter’s death. She appreciates this but notes that she had started drinking occasionally during her marriage to Leopold; she had started to become worried that she inherited her father’s and half-sister’s alcohol addiction, which had killed them both. Her psychiatrist said he did not think she was addicted to alcohol, but Carter had questioned Cooper about her drinking when they were younger. She traces her drinking back to her problems in childhood but asks for Cooper’s forgiveness. Cooper does not feel that she needs to be forgiven. He confesses that he has a rage inside over the loss of his father and brother; Vanderbilt also struggles with rage, but over the pain her mother put her through, especially with the custody battle. They both realize that they share the same determination and drive, and Cooper asserts that while he used to believe he was more like his father, he now thinks he is more like Vanderbilt. She, however, believes he is more like his father and has the same ideals. Unlike her, he got to experience the love of a father and mother. Vanderbilt says that forgiving those who hurt her and asking forgiveness for her wrongs has helped her heal and that having photographs of her mother and Dodo has helped her feel connected to them after their deaths.
Chapters 4-5 Analysis
This section details Vanderbilt’s life after meeting and marrying Wyatt Cooper. Chapter 4 focuses on two major points: Vanderbilt’s life with Wyatt up until his death in 1978 and Vanderbilt’s reconciliation with her mother and her distancing from Dodo after her LSD experience. Chapter 5 details Cooper and Vanderbilt’s grief after Carter’s death and how they started supporting each other as the only immediate family members each of them had left, as well as coming to terms with the pain and loss in their lives.
Healing From Loss plays a major role in this section, with Cooper and Vanderbilt recalling their struggles to heal and move forward from the deaths of Wyatt and Carter. Wyatt’s death caused Cooper to withdraw and has made him relate to Vanderbilt’s grief and sense of danger following her father’s death. Carter’s death devastated them further, creating a deeper void in both of them. Vanderbilt states that she is no longer the person she was, having lost her son, which she states is “the greatest loss a human being can experience” (236). Cooper and Vanderbilt dealt with their grief over Carter’s death in different ways, as Vanderbilt preferred to “talk to people” about what happened and about her feelings, while Cooper withdrew and “found it hard to talk about what [he] was feeling” (239). They both realized that to heal from the deaths of both Wyatt and Carter, they would need to rely on each other and become “partners” (240). This helped Vanderbilt stop drinking, and it helped her and Cooper become closer as mother and son. The Importance of Strong Parent-Child Relationships was essential to their healing from such close and traumatic losses.
Wyatt’s death also made Vanderbilt insecure about her role as a mother. She struggles with the idea that he was a better parent than she is and that if she had died instead of him, Wyatt could have raised them without her insecurities. This sentiment also supports the importance of strong parent-child relationships. Cooper, however, believes that Vanderbilt was the mother he and Carter needed as children and that she helped them become intelligent, driven people who cared about others. Vanderbilt and Wyatt’s decision to include Cooper and his brother in their activities also made an impression on Cooper, showing to him that Vanderbilt and his father always valued them; he “treated [them] as if [their] ideas mattered” and treated Cooper and his brother as “people who deserved respect” (202). This allowed Cooper’s relationship with Vanderbilt to strengthen as they got older and build the parent-child bond they always wanted.
The theme also presents itself in how, despite Vanderbilt’s reconciliation with her mother, her mother’s inability to feel genuine love for her limited the strength of their relationship. Though this saddens Vanderbilt, she has made peace with the reality of her and her mother’s relationship and finds comfort in her photographs and knitted sweater. These items allow Vanderbilt to feel loved by her mother after her death. The theme is also important in showing the perseverance of Vanderbilt and Dodo’s mother-daughter bond despite their estrangement following Vanderbilt’s marriage to Wyatt. Though she was apart from her, the letter given to Vanderbilt that she burned shows that Dodo never stopped loving Vanderbilt and saw her as a daughter figure up until her death. Vanderbilt’s grief after her death also shows that she always had a stronger mother-daughter bond with Dodo than with her mother, as not being with her before her death “is one of [her] greatest sorrows” (222).
Photographs and portraits appear again as a symbol of those Vanderbilt loves never truly leaving her. In Chapter 5, she tells Cooper that she has her mother’s photo in her living room, which made her feel “fulfilled” for the first time in her relationship with her mother (254). She also has photographs of Dodo. Vanderbilt uses these photographs and portraits to keep her two mothers with her after their deaths—the biological mother whose love and attention she always wanted and the true, doting mother who never stopped loving her.
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