Chapters 13, 14, 15 and 16 Summary and Analysis

In the first part of chapter thirteen, the author describes how a friend at school patronizingly told him that the author's father was going to die from cancer. This, the author says, was the first he'd heard about his father's actual illness. He receives reluctant but honest confirmation from his mother, who tells him the truth while using the toilet. He then describes how he and Dagmar both arrived back home in New York, how Dagmar quickly got rid of Nell Smith, how Dagmar and Jean's relationship changed, and how Jean's behavior changed as a result. He writes of how one day, "after a bad morning at school and a long afternoon at work" he avoided going home, having dinner out and going to the movies, being overtaken by a surge of powerful emotion and running "his head into...