This Thing Between Us

Thiago’s wife, Vera, dies before the text begins. However, Thiago’s memories of her and his grief over her death are so pervasive that she functions as a character despite never actually appearing in the narrative present. Vera was smart, tough, and interesting, especially—Thiago thinks—in comparison to himself. As Thiago tells her, “[I]f every guy in an indie romance wanted a manic pixie dream girl, then you were my Sarah Connor girl” (39). This view of Vera makes her death all the harder for Thiago to accept: “The way this would have worked in the movies, you would have been the first to sense something was wrong […]. But you didn’t see it coming” (39). Likewise, he tells Vera, “In the movies, that’s why you died first. Because you were too smart for your own good […]. In the movies, you would be my inciting incident, as if I was the more interesting one to follow, like I had more to offer” (39). A movie would ascribe meaning to Vera’s death—she’d have to die first because she’s too smart and could figure out the mystery too soon—but reality offers no such explanations, no matter how much Thiago looks for them. 

Vera is thus in part a vehicle for the novel’s exploration of The Limits of Rational Control. Thiago tries to make some sense of her death, questioning their respective beliefs about religion and an afterlife, and he wishes for something objective: some place(s) that everyone goes based on logical rules that remain constant. Likewise, Thiago wants there to be a logic behind the apparently freak accident that killed Vera; the idea that it was random, that it could have happened to anyone climbing the steps at the wrong time, highlights an existential chaos that is just too much for Thiago to bear.

This is not the only way in which Vera serves as a lens for Thiago. When she saves him from solitude after his parents’ deaths, he sees the world through his love for her, and this makes it somewhat more tolerable. She is, to him, the main character, and he merely plays a supporting role, even in his own life. He only maintains social connections through her, and after she dies, it is only her family who remains present for him. When she’s gone, he sees the world through his grief over her loss, unable to have any experience without filtering it through his grief; his early days with Brimley cause him pain because of his awareness that the dog will never meet Vera. Thus, it is Thiago’s idea of Vera that exists in the text, not really Vera herself, and this points to one of the title’s many meanings: the idea that people inevitably engage with others as constructs rather than as full people, which becomes a barrier “between” even those closest to one another.

Diane is Vera’s mother, a tough woman who relies on Vera as a source of meaning almost as much as Thiago does. Diane rejects Vera’s wishes about her own funeral and plans the “big Catholic mass [Vera] always never wanted” (8). Despite Vera’s rejection of Diane’s religious beliefs, Diane imposes them on her daughter’s funeral, apparently trying, like Thiago, to create meaning from the chaos of losing her healthy, vibrant daughter. 

Thiago allows Diane to plan Vera’s funeral as she wants to, and not as Vera would have wished, because, he says, “I was trying to think like you, the way you navigated your mom’s feelings for when the fight was actually worth it” (9). Vera thus becomes Thiago’s model for how to navigate his new relationship with Diane, echoing the broader way in which his and Diane’s shared grief unites them, especially against other people who want them to “move on.” Of her other friends and family, she says, “Phase talk. That’s all they’re good for. They don’t know what it’s like, not like you” (79). It is on the eve of Diane’s return to work following bereavement leave that she goes to visit Thiago in Colorado, suggesting her own reluctance to move on as well as the fact that she has come to care about or even to love her son-in-law. 

Diane’s toughness, which Thiago likens to that of The Terminator protagonist, Sarah Connor, coincides with open-mindedness. She accepts the existence of the supernatural; when Thiago tells her about the unnatural goings-on with the Itza, the dog, and the “wall,” she believes him, jumping on the phone to ask her friends and family what to do. She’s a problem-solver, and Thiago’s predicament gives her something to do other than wallow in self-pity. Her death is a turning point in the novel, as Thiago loses his only real ally in his struggle against the entity, whether that entity represents an external malign force or an aspect of himself.