53 pages • 1 hour read
Cylin BusbyThe Year We Disappeared
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 10-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary: “John”
John recalls his rookie year (1970) under the tutelage of Don Price. Price instructs his new charge on the nuances of policing in Falmouth, including “local politics, local untouchables, local bad guys” (89). He is told to look the other way when dealing with certain high-ranking people. John finds this confusing. A crime is a crime as far as he’s concerned, and he doesn’t understand why some citizens get special treatment. One class of untouchables, for example, is anyone related to a cop, and one night, John arrests the nephew of an officer who “knew or owed favors to so many people in town that when you pulled over a local, they would say, ‘So, you know Monty?’” (93). John confronts Monty over the incident, establishing his credentials as an honest cop.
One of the most egregious untouchables is Raymond Meyer, an ex-convict who has served time for burglary and arson. He also has a history of threatening anyone who might testify against him. During John’s rookie year, Meyer’s wife, Brenda, disappears, and Meyer starts dating his 18-year-old babysitter. The police suspect foul play, but they never find Brenda’s body. John quickly realizes that Meyer is no petty criminal but a major player establishing powerful connections in town based on threats and intimidation.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Cylin”
As Joe, Polly, and the kids drive to the hospital, Polly cautions her children not to tell any of John’s fellow officers where they’re staying. Cylin, Shawn, and Eric don’t understand why, but Joe and Polly don’t offer any explanations. When they enter John’s hospital room, Cylin can’t believe the man in the bed is her father: “[H]is head didn’t look right, like his eyes were in the wrong place or his face was shorter” (99). John’s bandaged, distorted appearance frightens the children. Shawn runs from the room in tears, Cylin can’t look at him, and Eric remains silent. Polly and Joe decide they’d be better off back home, so Joe drives them back to the house while Polly stays with John. On the ride back, Shawn and Cylin discuss whether the person in the bed was really their father; deep down, Cylin knows the truth, but she can’t admit it to herself.
Back at Uncle Joe’s house, even the lure of the swimming pool can’t soothe the kids’ anxieties. Later that evening, Polly comes home and goes right to bed without eating dinner. Cylin, who hates her aunt’s cooking, refuses to eat dinner until Joe offers her cereal. After dinner, she helps clean the dishes, a task she enjoys because she likes “scraping the leftovers into the garbage, where they belonged” (103). After dinner, her cousin Lauren tells Shawn that their mother has had a nervous breakdown, but the next morning, Polly seems fine. Cylin sees Lauren as a know-it-all, and she relishes the chance to prove her wrong.
Chapter 12 Summary: “John”
About five days after the shooting, John notices substantial improvement: The pain decreases, his blood oxygen levels are close to normal, and he is more lucid. He receives a visit from Joe Urcini, a ballistics expert and old high school classmate. Urcini tells him that the bullets that tore through his face are “impossible to trace” (107), but John doesn’t need a ballistics test to confirm what he already believes. He recounts the story of a fellow officer who picks up a teenager one night. As they sit in the police car, one of Meyer’s garbage trucks drives by, and the boy hides on the floor of the car. He says Meyer threatened him, and he fears for his safety. Shortly thereafter, the boy is found dead, shot through the head with an untraceable bullet. Meyer is the chief suspect, but the police have no evidence.
As John’s condition improves, he receives more visitors, but he finds all the note writing exhausting. Communication with the hospital staff is particularly difficult—he can’t tell an IV nurse, for example, the pain she causes him by inserting a needle five times in search of a vein. John exhibits a mischievous sense of humor during this time, pranking the nurse by hiding her “Little Red Riding Hood basket of pain tools” (110). After a week and a half, John gets out of bed for the first time and walks. After only a few steps, he gets dizzy and returns to bed. He realizes now how long his road to recovery will be, but he is resolved to go the distance, not for his family or career, but for revenge.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Cylin”
A week after their first hospital visit, Polly decides the kids are ready for a second. While Cylin makes her father a card, her cousin Lauren gives her some clothes that she’s outgrown, expensive-looking clothes that Polly and John couldn’t afford. She hopes the nice clothes will please her father. The next day, Cylin is disappointed that her father doesn’t look much different, still bandaged, still connected to tubes and machines. Handmade get-well cards cover the walls, including a box from Cylin’s school. John tells the kids that they are going home the following week and will return to school, a life that seems like a distant memory to Cylin.
On the way back to Joe’s house, they discuss how John will eat. Polly explains they will inject liquid food into his stomach tube because he can’t ingest food orally. Cylin looks forward to going back to school because of the attention she imagines she’ll receive (and the new clothes). Polly, who is in nursing school, is eager to have John home, and she feels capable of caring for him. While everyone is keen to return their normal lives, Joe reminds Polly that their safety is still an issue. Nevertheless, they pack up and head home at the end of the week. Despite the trauma and uncertainty of the past month, Cylin is happy things are returning to normal.
Chapters 10-13 Analysis
Although John survives and is on track to recover, he underestimates the effect his injuries will have on his children. He has become used to the tubes and bandages, but he cannot see himself the way Cylin, Shawn, and Eric see him. He forgets their preconceptions of him—as the invincible father, the strong authority figure. While that aura of parental invincibility is an illusion, that realization can fundamentally shake a child to their core, and John’s Superman image is shattered when his children see him as vulnerable and changed. Shawn runs from the room, unable to see his father in this reduced capacity. Cylin cries. Eric is frozen in shock. It’s not only the tubes and bandages and blood, it’s the radical difference in John’s facial structure. Seeing a parent without part of his face would disturb most adults let alone a child. John and Polly realize they’ve made a mistake, that the kids aren’t ready to see their father like this, and Joe quickly hustles them out of the room.
Meanwhile, all the evidence seems to point to Raymond Meyer as the prime suspect, and with this certainty, John provides a peek into his own wounded psyche. He admits his sole motivation for recovery is to exact revenge on Meyer. He is consumed with anger, and he sees vengeance as the only way to exorcise it. This view is not unusual. Many Americans favor the death penalty because they equate retribution with justice, an eye for an eye. It can be easy to defend this position when confronted with particularly grisly crimes; John’s injuries, his endless treatments and surgeries, and the danger his family is in all feed his rage to the point that revenge becomes more important than his career or his loved ones. It is a brutally honest revelation, and one that provides some important insight into the psychology of victimhood.
