The Paper Palace

In Memphis, Elle visits Conrad’s grave alone. She thinks about the choice’s she’s made, saying, “if I had had the courage to tell my mother—to allow her life to fall apart instead of mine—Conrad would still be alive. It wasn’t only Conrad’s dreams that died. Stupid, stupid children. Conrad ruined everything. Jonas ruined everything. I ruined everything” (339). For the first time since he died, Elle cries for Conrad and tells him that she is sorry.

Back at the hotel, Peter asks if Conrad’s mother and Rosemary still live in Memphis, and Elle says she doesn’t know. He suggests looking them up.

Elle goes to visit Rosemary at her house where she lives with her husband, Edmund. They have coffee and carrot cake in the living room. Elle notices a photograph of Leo and Rosemary’s mother as an older couple. She explains that they got remarried a few years after Conrad died. They’ve both passed now.

Rosemary tells Elle she wishes she had seen Conrad die. Elle doesn’t understand, and Rosemary explains that the summer he came home to spend with her and their mother was when Conrad started coming to her room at night and raping her. She adds that he would say Elle’s name as he raped her. Rosemary prayed that Conrad would die, and says she’s always wondered if she had Elle to thank for answering her prayers. When Elle leaves, she calls Jonas.

Returning to the Back Woods, they are hosting dinner at their camp on the anniversary of Anna’s death. Elle and Wallace are setting up, and Elle tells her that she went to visit Rosemary and that Leo remarried her mother. Wallace says she wasn’t aware, but she doesn’t like to think about Leo since he was a bad man. Elle says she needs to talk to her about Leo, but Wallace says it will have to wait. People start arriving, and Elle feels nervous and excited for Jonas to arrive, “like a sense memory from my past—something I haven’t allowed myself to feel in so many years; and yet there it is” (348).

After dinner, Wallace asks Peter if he’s going to read the poem “To a Skylark,” which they read every year to remember Anna by. Peter says he’s too tired and drunk, so Jonas reads it. They continue to sit around talking, and Jonas stares intently at Elle. She gets up from the table and waits outside for him.

At 6:30pm, Elle gets out of her wet bathing suit and lies on the bed thinking about everything. She thinks about how she and Jonas were always meant to be together. If she could take back every bad decision she’s made that led her away from him, she would. She realizes she’s never thanked Jonas for saving her life, but only blamed him as well as herself. She says, “If I had told Peter about Conrad, about that day on the boat, I know he would have forgiven me. And that is why I couldn’t tell him. Because I did not want to be forgiven” (354). She steps into the shower and thinks about the choice she has to make between Peter and Jonas. She hopes the water will make her clean and scald away the past. She knows there is only one choice to make.

At 6:45pm, they are walking to Dixon and Andrea’s for a barbecue. They got back together a few years ago. Wallace realizes she forgot the red onion she wanted to bring, so Elle says she will go back for it. Peter also asks her to grab a sweater for him. When she’s in their cabin, Elle notices the drawer is open and that the ring Jonas gave to her is sitting in her jewelry box. It’s wrapped in a folded piece of paper in the shape of a snapping turtle. She puts it on, and then puts it into her pocket. She crumples the paper and throws it away.

Elle catches back up with her family, and Wallace goes to talk with their friend Pamela. Pamela is the kind of person who sees the best in everyone. She remembers a time Pamela took her and Anna out for fried clams, and they told her how horrible it was living with Conrad. Anna told her he uses up all the hot water by jerking off in the shower. Elle thought Pamela would be horrified, but instead she sympathized, telling them to remember that Conrad was suffering, too.

Elle goes inside to find something to drink in the kitchen. She watches Peter outside with her mother, laughing. She thinks that no one can make her mother relax into her old self like Peter can, and that, “In a way, Peter saved her all those years ago, after Leo disappeared, after her baby died, after she found my journal. Peter woke her up from a daze, turned the lights back on in our old apartment. Made all of us feel it was safe to be happy again” (364).

Elle goes upstairs to use the bathroom, which is a Jack and Jill bathroom with two doors. Elle locks the one door, and then Gina enters from the other side. Gina says hello and begins to urinate. Elle is mortified and scared of what Gina will say to her. Gina tells her Jonas was wandering around all day, and she used to think he was sneaking off to meet Elle. Once she followed him, but Jonas was tracking an osprey nest. Elle feels the ring in her pocket and thinks that Gina has no idea how close she came to losing him. They both go back outside, and Jonas asks to join them. Elle says she left her wine upstairs, and this time she locks the bathroom from both sides.

She says, “I have made my choice: to give up this love that pulses, aches—for a different kind of love. A patient love. A love love. But the anguish is raw” (369).

When she comes back downstairs, Jonas is in the kitchen running his hand under the water because he burned it on a hot spatula. She helps him with the burn, but she can barely look at him. Jonas tells her he left something for her in her cabin, and she says that she already found it. She pulls the ring out of her pocket, and Jonas puts it on over her wedding band. Elle wants to tell him that she’s always been his, but instead she takes the ring off and says she can’t. She says she is going back to join Peter and the kids. Jonas tells her to put it back on, and Elle takes his hand and kisses it. She turns to leave, but he stops her and stares at her like a drowning man. She tells him to let her go, and then she hears Peter in the doorway.

At 9:30pm, Elle and her family walk back to their camp. When Peter and Elle are alone together, he tells her that he saw her kiss Jonas. Elle holds her breath and says she doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He says he saw her kiss Jonas’s hand and the way Jonas looked at her. Elle says he’s being ridiculous, but Peter is angry. Elle worries that she will lose Peter just as she has chosen him. She says that of course Jonas loves her, but they are just friends, and they don’t love each other in that way. Peter is hesitant but says there is nothing going on with Jonas or any other man. Peter believes her, and then goes down on her. She has an orgasm thinking of Jonas, and “When the tears come, they are not for what I have lost, but for the truth about Jonas I cannot seem to shed” (377).

Peter falls asleep, and Elle goes to kiss her kids good night. Then, she goes back to the main house and Wallace is still up. Elle finally tells her that it wasn’t Leo who hurt her all those years ago, it was Conrad who raped her. Wallace says nothing at first, and Elle apologizes for letting her blame Leo. She says Leo left her, and their baby died. Then Wallace asks about Conrad’s drowning, and Elle tells her what happened. Elle says that Jonas is the only one who has known everything. Wallace puts her arms around Elle and strokes her hair. Elle feels years of bitterness fade away, and she says she’s sorry. Wallace says she was the one who let Conrad into their lives. She gets up to leave, and then gives Elle one more piece of advice, saying there are some swims you do regret, but you’ll never know until you take them.

Elle gets up at 6:30am and asks Peter to go for a swim with her. He says he promised Jack he would take him into town, so Elle goes out alone. When she walks out of the house and compares it to her own fortitude:

This house, built out of paper—tiny bits of cardboard pressed together into something strong enough to withstand time, the difficult, lonely winters; always threatening to fall to ruin, yet still standing, year after year, when we return. This house, this place, knows all my secrets. I am in its bones, too (386).

Elle sees Jonas waiting across the pond, and she takes off her wedding band and leaves it behind.