Summary

The novel continues the flashback to just after the funeral for Zuckerman’s mother. After the funeral, Zuckerman went to the condominium complex where she had lived, and he began to clean out her possessions from the condominium. While going through his mother’s things, Zuckerman thought with guilt about the fact that so many people had wrongly believed that the mother character in “Carnovsky” had been based on his mother. Among her things, Zuckerman found a parenting book, and he found a stain on one page that he believed to possibly be from his mother’s milk from when she was still breastfeeding. Zuckerman touched his tongue to the page. In his mother’s mailbox, Zuckerman found an anonymous and extremely aggressive note containing hateful wishes towards himself and his newly deceased mother.

On page 68, the narration then transitions to May of...