Summary

In Chapter 5, Tracy enters the dining room while his family is still eating breakfast. Dorothy calls for Tracy but he instructs Henry to tell her he’ll call later. Laura announces she’s going out to play tennis. When he mother requests she be back in time for morning services, Laura balks and calls the community revival services crude. Tracy only laughs at the exchange, causing his mother to spill her coffee. After breakfast, Alma Deen goes to Laura’s room to straighten the drawers and finds a clay torso of a female that Laura has made. She is sickened by the torso and destroys it.

That night in bed Alma, who is going through menopause, thinks about how she’d hoped her family would be different from her mother's. She always thought her mother was not supportive enough of her father, who...