Average Waves in Unprotected Waters

“And his face was elderly—pinched, strained, tired—though it should have looked as unused as his jeans.”

Tyler uses specific word choices to illustrate the discord in Arnold’s life. She juxtaposes his face with the description of his jeans to emphasize the contradictions; previously, appearing unused sets him apart from normal children; here, the anachronistic aging separates him. Arnold’s “pinched, strained, tired” face belies a difficult home life. The contradictions between these details also hint that Bet is an unreliable narrator; her descriptions convey more about her emotional state than the objective truth.

“Nothing you could do to it would lighten its cluttered look. There was always that feeling of too many lives layered over other lives, like the layers of brownish wallpaper her child had peeled away in the corner by his bed.”

Tyler presents Bet and Arnold’s apartment as dingy and littered because of the years of use and all of the figurative fragments previous occupants have left behind. Bet internalizes others’ baggage, but the “layers” also represent her own past lives having a psychological effect on her. The color brown symbolizes the mixing of multiple colors or the amalgamation of the pieces of others’ histories across time.

“She had to struggle to stuff his arms in the sleeves. Small though he was, he was strong, wiry; he was getting to be too much for her.”

Bet’s fight to put Arnold’s coat on shows her ongoing efforts to take care of him. Arnold has preferences and a strong will, so he is not as acquiescent as Bet would like him to be. In addition, he has grown enough to physically overpower her. The battle of the coat signifies Bet’s loss of control.

“Maybe she felt to blame that he was going. But she’d done the best she could: babysat him all these years and only given up when he’d grown too strong and wild to manage.”

Just before this, Mrs. Puckett cries as she greets Arnold and Bet on their way out. Tyler does not elaborate on the reason for her emotions; instead, Bet projects her feelings of guilt, shame, and rationalization as possible explanations. In this way, Bet is able to express her remorse without accepting culpability. Mrs. Puckett was Arnold’s literal babysitter, but Bet has done little more than that as his mother.

“He was so thin-skinned, almost transparent; sometimes she imagined she could see the blood travelling in his veins.”

Bet observes Arnold as “thin-skinned,” both literally and figuratively, which is why she gets angry when people stare at him. Tyler’s use of the word “transparent,” in addition to being a physical description, implies that Arnold is easy to understand, yet Bet has consistently struggled to deduce his needs. She also has trouble seeing Arnold as “real,” partially because he is nonspeaking, and despite his reported lucidity, she still can only “imagine” his blood bringing life to his body.

“When the train reached a steady speed, he grew calmer, and after a while, he nodded over against her and let his hands sag on his knees. She watched his eyelashes slowly drooping—two colorless, fringed crescents….”

Arnold’s tranquility during this moment directly contrasts his earlier fight with Bet to get dressed and his initial nervous energy upon boarding the train. The image of him relaxing and allowing himself to fall asleep on his mother’s shoulder is one of the only tender interactions between mother and son. In the same breath, however, Tyler emphasizes the disconnection between them with the word “colorless.”

“Avery said [Arnold’s behavior] gave him the chills…A few weeks later, he left. She wasn’t surprised. She even knew how he felt, more or less.”

Both Bet and Avery are frightened by their infant son’s unusual behavior, and neither knows how to deal with it. Readers might be quick to blame Avery for giving up and leaving, but this quote shows that Bet understands how he feels and can relate—a bit of foreshadowing about Bet and Arnold’s destination. The straightforward tone Tyler uses here shows that Bet does not judge Avery for leaving; rather, she is resigned to the situation.

“She’d had moments herself of picturing some kind of evil gene in her husband’s ordinary, stocky body…But other times, she was sure the gene was hers. It seemed so natural. She could never do anything as well as most people.”

Bet elaborates on how she and Avery perceive Arnold’s condition. The language here reflects society’s ableism in the 1970s, and Bet is determined to believe that Arnold’s condition is a flaw instead of who he simply is. She attributes the traits she perceives as negative to herself, a testament to her low self-worth. She compares Arnold’s differences to her perceived deficiencies, pathologizing her low self-esteem.

“She thought of her parents’ humped green trailer, perched on cinder blocks near a forest of mists in Salt Spray, Maryland. At this distance (parents dead, trailer rusted to bits, even Salt Spray changed past recognition), it seemed to her that her old life had been beautifully free and spacious.”

Bet escapes her unsavory present life by dreaming about her past, using the “distance” her memory provides to soften the elements she once wanted to escape. Tyler’s word choice here signifies one of the only bright moments of the story. The “green trailer,” the “forest of mists,” and even the name “Salt Spray” contradict all the browns, yellows, and grays of the rest of the story and drive Bet’s mood out of misery into winsome charm. Bet acknowledges that memories are unreliable here; she looks on the past fondly, but she was determined to escape at the time.

“There was something about the breakers: she just gritted her teeth and stood staunch and let them slam into her. As if standing staunch were a virtue, really.”

Instead of learning to bodysurf or glide gracefully through the water, Bet chooses to suffer the punishment of the breakers, taking pride in bearing them stoically. This scene is a metaphor for how Bet handles all the hardships in her life—until she decides to institutionalize Arnold. Tyler elicits some sympathy for Bet here, as many readers can relate to the “virtue” of silent endurance.

“She couldn’t stand it if they thought he was just ordinary and unattractive. She wanted them to see how small and neat he was, how somebody cherished him.”

In the train station, Bet does not want people staring at Arnold and thinking he is weird, but at the hospital, she does not want people to think he is unremarkable. Ultimately, she wants to control Arnold and other people’s reactions to him, but not because she cares about his feelings. She sees the world’s perception of Arnold as a reflection of her and her effectiveness as a mother. That she wants them to see that “somebody” loves Arnold reveals how Bet wants to fulfill the expectations of motherhood, including nurturing her child, but still separates herself from him and that role.

“Bet thought Arnold might like [the typewriters], but instead he got lost in the lights—chilly, hanging, ice-cube-tray lights with a little flicker to them.”

After Bet’s initial impression of the hospital as mansion-like, this scene in the admittance room is her first introduction to the discordant reality. It’s also the first time she feels Arnold slipping away. Tyler’s imagery here is jarring: blinding fluorescent lights that flicker, like an interrogation room, and two references to a glacial environment, the opposite of what one would expect from a lobby. Arnold is metaphorically “lost in the lights,” but he is also literally in the process of vanishing from Bet’s life.

“She set her hands on Arnold’s shoulders. Then she lay her face against his hair, which felt warm and fuzzy…But he went on pivoting. She straightened and told the nurse, ‘I brought his special blanket.’”

This is the first time Bet attempts to show Arnold physical affection. She draws closer to him, risks being vulnerable for a moment, and tries to feel the mother-son bond she’s been seeking the whole story. Even though Arnold’s hair is “warm and fuzzy,” he still cannot demonstrate love in the way Bet expects, and this rejection snaps her out of the moment. Her motivation for bringing the blanket is complex; part of her does want to offer Arnold some comfort, but she also wants to convince herself and others that she is a caring, thoughtful mother despite the current situation.