Absolution

Part 2 consists of Rainey’s response to Tricia. Now a retired, well-off woman with several adult children, Rainey lives in Maryland with her husband Doug. Charlene has been dead for over 20 years.

While renovating a beachside property for their retirement, Rainey meets Dom, now an elderly man himself. She watches Dom playing in the yard with his son Jamie, who has Down syndrome. Rainey is charmed by Dom’s handsome appearance and gentle demeanor with Jamie. When Rainey and Doug return to the property the following month, they attend a party in Dom’s yard, where Rainey meets his other four children and his wife Ellen. Jamie takes a liking to Rainey, and the two form a friendship. Later, Rainey and Doug discuss whether Dom and Ellen are disappointed by Jamie’s condition. Rainey wonders if they feel like “Mother Nature [has] failed them” (244).

During their next visit, Dom invites Rainey inside. He has a Saigon Barbie encased in plexiglass propped on a shelf. Rainey and Dom recognize one another, and they reminisce on Charlene. Rainey’s memories of Saigon are vague, most of them anchored by vignettes of her mother. She recalls her “wholly physical” love for Charlene and her desire to gain her mother’s approval. As a young girl she wholeheartedly believed in her parents’ every decision, but this changed when, as a teenager, Rainey met Doug, who inculcated her with his cynical attitude about the US’s involvement in the Vietnam war. Rainey adopted Doug’s views and became a vocal critic of the war, sowing tension between herself and her family, which eventually caused her father to kick her out of the house. She and Doug moved in together, and Rainey settled into family life.

After becoming a mother herself, she gained a more empathetic perspective on her mother, now understanding that Charlene did what she had to in order to get the family home safely. Rainey recalls going through Charlene’s things after both of her parents’ deaths. She read Charlene’s letters and learned about Tricia. Rainey ultimately threw away all of Charlene’s letters because they were “the record of a disappearing generation’s efforts at inconsequential good” (291).

After Charlene’s death from kidney cancer at the age of 59, Rainey and her brothers visited their aunt Arlene. They shared stories from Charlene’s life, which was full of philanthropic efforts to the end. In the 1980s, Charlene volunteered visiting AIDS patients in hospitals despite the stigma surrounding the disease. Arlene told Rainey that Charlene almost left Kent for an unknown lover on her return from Saigon, but balked at the last minute because she couldn’t bear the thought of losing her children. Rainey doubted this story because she believes that nothing could have stopped her mother from living the life she wanted.

Early the following year, Rainey and Doug return to the beachside house. Rainey notes that Doug is growing increasingly irritable and disoriented, and they have several fights. Rainey does not see Dom again until she comes to the house on her own in spring. In the morning, she takes a walk with Dom and Jamie. Dom recounts the time that Charlene, during one of their hospital visits, held a malnourished child in her arms as he died. He describes Charlene’s anguish and rage at the child’s fate, admitting that he himself was not brave enough to hold the child.

Rainey asks about Jamie, and Dom reveals that he and Ellen adopted Jamie after he was abandoned at the hospital by his birth mother. Later that day, Dom and Jamie are playing in the yard when Jamie climbs into an unsecured septic tank. Dom jumps in after him, succeeding in rescuing his son but drowning in the muck himself. Shortly after Dom’s death, Doug is diagnosed with dementia and Rainey becomes his caregiver. Recalling Tricia from childhood memories and her mother’s letters, she resolves to track her down.