Summary

In Chapter 7 the mother contemplates keeping a dream diary, like the one Nikolai had once started. In one dream she is at a hospital and when she sees Nikolai, she blinks, and he disappears. The mother and Nikolai speak of needing some delusion in order to live and also enough to be willing to die. Nikolai says that after death your delusions become reality because you meet them; he then remarks that to live you must propagate delusions. The mother often returns to her own delusion of speaking with her dead son, then she explores her dislike of adjectives, believing them to be judgmental. Nikolai disagrees and relays that where he is one can live without being a noun.

Chapter 8 opens to Thanksgiving and the mother tells Nikolai that they family baked a pumpkin pie. She remembers how Nikolai’s baking, and, indeed...