Crossroads

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Sections 1-2

Part 1, Sections 3-4

Part 1, Section 5

Part 1, Sections 6-9

Part 1, Sections 10-12

Part 1, Sections 13-19

Part 2, Section 20, Pages 373-450

Part 2, Section 20, Pages 450-479

Part 2, Sections 21-22

Part 2, Sections 23-24

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part 1, Section 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “Advent”

Part 1, Section 5, Pages 126-165 Summary

Marion Hildebrandt has recently begun seeing a therapist, Sophie Serafimides, in secret, telling her family that her weekly appointments are an exercise class. Marion feels invisible; Russ is no longer attracted to her, and she has no close friends. She tells Sophie her suspicions that Russ is trying to cheat on her with Frances Cottrell but holds back the full story of her past, just as she has always held it back from Russ. She told both Sophie and Russ that she spent 14 weeks in a Los Angeles mental institution in 1941 after a “severe psychotic episode” (137), and that she is divorced. Now, however, she tells Sophie the story she has been concealing in a long flashback narrative.

In Marion’s childhood, the stock market crash of 1929 destroyed her father’s business, and he fell into a deep depression. One day at school, an administrator pulled Marion aside and told her that her father killed himself, leaving a note explaining that the family’s debts were worse than anyone thought. Shortly after the suicide, the family dispersed. Shirley, who was in New York City for college, stayed there to find work as an actress. Marion’s mother moved in with a friend and sent Marion to live with Uncle Roy in Sonoma until she finished school. After graduating, Marion moved to Los Angeles with her best friend, who happened to share a name with her mother: Isabelle. Once there, however, Isabelle brushed her off.

On her own and in need of money, Marion took a job at a car dealership, Lerner Motors. One January day in 1941, Marion had to stay late to process the final sale of the dealership’s star salesman, Bradley Grant, and Bradley, who was married with children, suddenly began confessing attraction to her. Though she was never attracted to him before, she began to consider the possibility when he recited a poem he wrote for her. She let him kiss her.

That night, Marion disassociated in her apartment and woke with no idea of what happened between 11pm and 1am. This began a period of mental health issues, marked by obsession with Bradley that even Marion realized was not a healthy expression of love. She grew increasingly unable to process stimuli, struggling to take part in normal conversations. Meanwhile, Bradley got her a different job and a new apartment. One day, she ran into her former friend Isabelle, who told Marion where she lived, suggesting that Marion visit her.

Part 1, Section 5, Pages 165-189 Summary

After months of the affair, Bradley finally became overwhelmed with guilt over cheating on his wife and broke up with Marion. She suffered a breakdown and repeatedly showed up at Lerner Motors to beg him to take her back. Eventually, she went to Bradley’s house and told his wife, whose name also happened to be Isabelle, that Bradley did not love her anymore. Bradley came to see her afterward and angrily insisted she leave him alone.

Marion began disassociating more often and lost her job; her landlord threatened eviction. When she realized she was pregnant with Bradley’s child, her desperation increased. Out of money, she began wandering the streets one day, only to suddenly find herself at the address her friend Isabelle gave as her home: a small red bungalow. An older man who reminded Marion of Santa opened the door and informed her that Isabelle was no longer there, but her invited her in. He got her to admit to her unwanted pregnancy and then told her he could arrange an illegal abortion in exchange for staying with him for 11 days and letting him rape her. Out of options, she agreed, and spent practically the whole 11-day period in a dissociative state. When she left, she went back to Lerner Motors on Christmas Eve in such obvious mental distress that the staff there had her committed to a mental institution.

Back in the present in Sophie’s office, Marion then transitions to another Christmas memory from 1946, when she and Russ had been together for a year. On a road trip, they saw a family with daughters who were gleefully enjoying a Santa display. Marion had an intense emotional experience watching their innocent joy; she felt that she could be reborn into a similar state of innocence and leave her past behind. She tried to express this to Russ, but all he wanted to talk about was the parents’ failure to teach their daughters the biblical meaning of Christmas.

A fight ensued, but afterward Marion decided she must consider herself lucky to have found a man like Russ and the hope for a normal life he represented, so she committed to avoiding any more fights. She kept this resolution for 25 years, right up until the novel’s present, when she is starting to admit to herself how much she now hates Russ. She has grown weary of keeping the peace as penance for her former life, and weary of worrying that she has passed a mental health condition along to Perry.

Part 1, Section 5 Analysis

Marion’s long and traumatic story comes as a narrative surprise because none of the other characters introduced before her have given her much attention at all. They barely mention her, and when they do it is either with cruel thoughts about her weight, in Russ’s case, or with general disinterest, in the children’s case. They all seem to think much more about each other than they do about her; Perry and Becky spend energy disliking each other, Becky and Clem spend energy allying with each other, and all the children spend energy disagreeing with Russ. Marion rightly feels invisible, as the family treats her as more of a housekeeper than a person. However, she participates in maintaining that invisibility by making herself small; she tries not to cause any conflict as a way of showing gratitude that she was ever able to build a normal life after her troubled years in Los Angeles.

While the events of Marion’s life may have unfolded very differently had she experienced them in contemporary times, her options as a 20-something woman in the 1940s were narrow. Bradley’s advances are initially unwanted, but very few people in Marion’s era had any concept of reporting workplace harassment, so this thought never enters her head and she defaults to feeling that she should be flattered. Similarly, she becomes reliant on Bradley financially, as her own options for work are limited to low-paying clerical jobs. When she suffers blackouts and physical symptoms from her obsessive feelings, it never occurs to her to seek out psychological help, as this was so much rarer and more taboo at the time. Lastly, she must rely on “Santa’s” assistance with setting up an illegal abortion, as she has no allies in the city who might help her find an illegal abortion provider without such a traumatic payment.

The fact that Marion keeps almost everything about this period of her past a secret from Russ and outright lies about her previous relationship foreshadows trouble as the novel progresses. Much as she may wish otherwise, these events still weigh on her mind to the extent that she finds herself confessing them to her therapist. Unsurprisingly, her strategy of bottling them up is not working, and acknowledging their reality in Sophie’s office is the first hint of a coming reckoning.