Family Identity

The valuable thing Avey had lost in this story, and the one that so broke her heart was the thing she wishes that night in the hotel room that she and Jay had "[held] like a jewel high out of the envious reach of those who would destroy it and claim it as their own." The essential beauties that made them who they were — their music, poetry, flirtation and even her own willingness to acknowledge the flaws and suffering of her own race — were the things she and Jay allowed to atrophy away as they chased with every drop of their energy and attention the money they saw as their salvation from the hopeless poverty they so feared. Even while it was the destruction of their family by unfaithfulness that crept into Avey's imagination as a thing worth fearing, destruction by decay is what their...