Eileen

Eileen helps her father get ready for Sunday Mass at X-ville's Catholic Church. Her Aunt Ruth comes each Sunday to pick him up, at which time Eileen consents to unlock the trunk of the car and give her father shoes to wear. Though she hates her father for his verbal abuse and alcoholism, Eileen is devoted to their routines: “I felt like killing my father, but I didn’t want him to die” (69). Eileen considers her Catholic upbringing: Her mother was aggressively nonreligious in comparison to her father’s rigid sense of Catholic duty. Eileen attended a small college for a year, until she was required to return home and care for her dying mother.

Eileen drives to the library, then spontaneously drives to Boston to test whether the car can make it. The broken exhaust pipe eventually makes her woozy; a cop pulls her over for swerving. The cop lets her go. On her return home, Eileen drives past Randy’s apartment and fantasizes about his reaction to her leaving town. When Eileen arrives home, she changes clothes, dressing from her mother’s closet. She remembers her old dog Mona that died a few days before her mother; Eileen considers the loss of Mona as far more emotionally jarring than the loss of her mother.