64 pages • 2 hours read
Goodbye, Vitamin
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Chapters 20-36Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 20-24 Summary: “February 2”, “February 5”, “February 7”, “February 8”, “February 9”
Ruth and her father drive to campus and park in the visitors’ lot because his parking permit expired. He asks Ruth to renew his permit sticker for him as part of her duties. Howard introduces Theo to Ruth. They pretend not to know each other and shake hands. In class, Howard goes over what the course, “California History, Pre-European Contact to the Present,” will entail.
While Howard lectures, Ruth thinks about the fact that she dropped out of college to follow Joel to medical school in Connecticut. Ruth worked at a Discount Fabric Outlet for a time, and then Joel’s residency brought them back to San Francisco, where she began working as an ultrasound technician. Ruth’s parents do not know that she never graduated because she convinced them not to fly all that way to see her walk at graduation.
Howard leaves another page of his journal out on the kitchen table for Ruth to see. The entry details more recollections of Ruth’s childhood, including the time he had to remove a corn kernel from her nose.
Ruth and Bonnie visit Bonnie’s boyfriend, Vince. Ruth internally remarks on Vince’s strangeness but claims that she has stopped judging her friend’s boyfriends. Vince presents Bonnie and Ruth with a stir-fry, proudly exclaiming “I’ve had Chinese girlfriends” (54) when they remark on how good it is.
Ruth visits her Uncle John, Howard’s brother. When she arrives, she finds him shooting a happy face into the side of a watermelon. He lets Ruth take a few shots and cooks lunch for them: Mackerel crusted in salt and baked in aluminum foil. When Ruth jokes and asks whether John knows about the dangers of foil yet, he says “Your mother is nuts” (55). They recall the time that Annie learned to make homemade Cheetos because Ruth was obsessed with them. She eventually made a pretty decent approximation after visiting and touring the Cheetos factory. John repeats “Your mother is nuts,” and adds “[b]ut she is the best” (55).
Before the next class, Theo calls Ruth to tell her that he saw Levin on campus and gives her directions to a more surreptitious parking lot. Ruth suggests grabbing dinner before class at a Mexican restaurant closer to the new parking lot. Their waitress recognizes Howard as her former teacher and brings them guacamole.
Theo leaves class a little early and finds that Levin’s car is still in the parking lot. Together, the class devises a plan (keeping it a secret from Howard) to have the tallest students walk Howard back to the car to block him from Levin. They manage to get Howard and Ruth into the car without incident. On the drive home, Howard is upbeat and talkative, discussing plans to attend conferences that spring and finish writing his book.
Chapters 25-29 Summary: “February 10”, “February 11”, “February 14”, “February 16”, “February 19”
When Ruth wakes the next morning, her father is already in his office, but Ruth is happy to see that the door is ajar. Ruth surveys the fridge and, finding its contents lacking, searches “How long to starve to death?” (58) online.
Ruth goes to the grocery store and buys garlic and canned tomatoes despite her mother outlawing canned goods at home. Ruth finds a single glass baking dish at home and spreads out the tomatoes in the bottom of the dish, adding salt, brown sugar, oil, and old, dried oregano. She boils pasta in the tomato can and toasts stale almonds that she finds in the pantry, blending them with the garlic and tomatoes to make a sauce.
Ruth sets the table for two and goes upstairs to ask her father to join her. After a few tense moments in which Ruth silently begs him to come out, the office door opens, and Howard appears. Ruth and Howard eat the meal at the table and discuss his class. Howard washes the dishes after they are done and pats Ruth on the back before heading upstairs. Ruth is happy for the rest of the night.
Ruth begins watching cooking videos and reading about the benefits of cruciferous vegetables on the Alzheimer’s forums. Ruth shares her findings with her mother, who says that while she does not object to Ruth's cooking, she will not be taking part. Ruth orders a new set of stainless-steel pots and pans online.
Ruth realizes it is Valentine’s Day while she is at the pharmacy picking up her father’s prescription. For dinner, she makes lamb chops with rosemary, the “herb of remembrance” (63), and rosemary mashed potatoes. She finds after tasting it that it is too much rosemary, which ruins the meal.
Before the next class, Ruth challenges her father to a game of tennis. Her father easily beats her five times. As they walk back to the car, Ruth sees a parking ticket on their windshield, which she quickly tries to hide from Howard. When he asks what it is, Ruth lies and says it is a menu.
The next entry begins with another excerpt from Howard’s journal in which he told Ruth that babies came from the Burlington Coat Factory. Ruth recalls this day; she and Howard made a game of trying to find the most expensive coat, and Annie looked at Howard as if to suggest this was not a good idea. Howard dismissed her concerns saying that Ruth would not remember this anyway, and at that moment Ruth remembers thinking: “Remember this. You’ll show them” (64).
Chapters 30-36 Summary: “February 20”, “February 23”, “February 24”, “February 25”, “February 26”, “February 27”, “February 28”
The next series of entries illustrate Ruth adjusting to life at home as her past and present collide. Howard brings up Joel; he forgot that they are no longer together. Howard tells her “When you know you’ve found the one [...] you know you’ve found the one” (66) and Ruth has to explain their breakup to her father again.
Ruth recalls when she and Joel met and how she only went out with him after a coin flip. She also thinks about the last time she saw Joel. It was at the supermarket after they broke up, and his new girlfriend was there with him.
Ruth runs into an old friend, Reggie, at the gas station. They sit together and catch up. They watch as an animal enters the parking lot, and Reggie tells her that it is a coyote looking for water because of the drought. Reggie takes a whistle from his pocket and blows into it, which causes the coyote to run away.
Unable to sleep, Ruth finds her father watching television downstairs. They eat peanut butter sandwiches and watch a late-night infomercial advertising a rotisserie oven. Howard tells Ruth to get his credit card and they order it.
Ruth finds herself getting “re-used” (71) to the daily occurrences, smells, and sights of daily life at her parents’ house. Two boxes arrive at the house: a mysterious box no one can remember ordering filled with colorful, mesh poufs and the rotisserie. Ruth goes to the store to buy a chicken and they all gather around the rotisserie to watch it cook.
In the section’s concluding chapter, Ruth reflects on the fact that she is feeling “more forgiving” (73) lately. She used to judge the old men that sweep the sidewalk without pausing when she walks by, but now she considers that they may have “maladies–diseases that affect their manners–and should be pardoned” (73).
Chapters 20-36 Analysis
This section of chapters features Ruth reacclimating to life at home with her parents. She finds that living at home and caring for her father comes with its challenges but also inspires positive changes in her character. Through caring for her father, Ruth finds a sense of inner purpose that she has been lacking. Ruth reveals a bit more about her insecurity over not finishing college, choosing instead to follow Joel across the country for medical school. While she claims that she tries not to think about it because she doesn’t know if her life would be any different if she graduated, she still feels that it was “idiotic of me not to finish school, though. Idiotic, and stupid, and now what?” (52). This quote shows that while Ruth accepts the choices she made, she still harbors regret and now finds herself feeling adrift and unmoored. She chooses to address this feeling by taking on the challenge of getting through to her father and finding ways to support him. She begins this process by helping Howard’s teaching assistant, Theo, enact a ruse in which Howard “teaches” his California History class as usual, despite the dean firing him. Ruth shows her devotion to her father and her desire to help keep him occupied by not only agreeing to Theo’s plan but attending each class session as her father’s assistant.
Ruth also finds purpose and meaning in cooking, now that her mother has all but stopped cooking at home. Ruth begins researching ingredients that aid in memory retention–rosemary, cruciferous vegetables, limited fats and salt–and begins cooking elaborate meals for her family. After her first successful attempt, which coaxes her father out of his office for the first time in days, she basks in the excitement of this breakthrough, which fuels her interest in cooking further: “This is how calibrated my happiness has become to him: I’m happy all night” (61). Cooking emerges in these sections as a motif that emphasizes the restorative effects of nourishing and caring for others. Adrift after her relationship fell apart, caring for her father gives Ruth a renewed sense of purpose and control in her life. She finds that this has a positive effect on her overall outlook, as she writes on February 28 that she is more forgiving than she used to be. Ruth’s experience with her father’s illness thus far, and her desire for others to empathize with him as he navigates this new reality, permeates Ruth’s subjective experience of the world and better equips her to extend this empathy to others.
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