How It All Goes Down
Night Thoughts
- Wendy and Jack are in bed. Jack is asleep, and Wendy is thinking about him.
- Before Danny, Wendy and her mother weren't speaking.
- When Danny was born Wendy and her mother started talking again, but Wendy doesn't like being around her. Especially with Danny. Her mother criticizes everything she does.
- She thinks of the days when Jack would type all night with baby Danny by his side. She'd find the two of them sleeping together on the couch, Danny on Jack's chest.
- (Flashback.)
- Jack is in grad school and his drinking is under control. It's mostly social.
- After grad school, Jack gets the job at Stovington Prep.
- The day he sells a short story to Esquire magazine for $900 he gets really drunk and comes home late.
- Baby Danny wakes up. Jack tries to comfort him, but (oops!) drops him on the floor. Then Jack and Wendy fight.
- Now Wendy thinks of Danny with his arm in the cast. She doesn't leave Jack after he breaks Danny's arm because a) Danny loves him, and b) she doesn't want to have to go live with her mother.
- Her mother didn't go to her wedding, but her father did.
- Wendy doesn't want to admit to her mother that the marriage to Jack is a failure.
- She watches Jack's drinking get worse and worse and hopes for some kind of miracle.
- Then the miracle does happen.
- It happens the night Danny dreams Jack is in a car crash; Jack gives up drinking.
- Wendy plans to tell him she wants a divorce. She will go to live with her mother; her mother had said it was Wendy's fault when Wendy's father left her.
- Although she expects Jack to show his mean side when she tells him she wants to talk, he asks, gently, if she can wait a week. Then, the drinking stops, but she doesn't know why.
- She remembers giving birth to Danny. When he's born, she thinks "He has no face!" (6.64).
- But he does have a face; it's just covered by "a caul" (6.65). Wendy doesn't believe in old wives' tales that caul babies have "second sight" (6.65). Still, sometimes Danny seems to know things.
- Jack has always been a great father and taken responsibility for much of Danny's care and feeding. She knows Danny loves his father best.
- And Wendy still loves Jack, in spite of all that's happened. She definitely loves Danny, and she loves seeing Jack and Danny together.
- Now that Jack has this job at the hotel, maybe everything will get better.