Just Another Missing Person

In their previous home, Julia and Art had a skylight over their bed. As part of their nighttime ritual, they would lay in bed and “look at the stars, debrief before sleep. Julia would tell Art her worries, and he would take them from her” (67). The skylight symbolizes the clarity and openness of their marriage and communications as well as Julia’s honesty with her husband.

Although they are separated, Julia and Art buy a house together. Julia is now alone in the master bedroom, which doesn’t have a skylight. She and Art “[settle] down to sleep on either side of a thin wall. Where, previously, they’d lie under the skylight talking, now, he goes to the spare room” (121). This shift shows the closed nature of their communications. She shut him out and is not telling the truth. Her worries remain her own, and instead of sharing a clear pane of glass, they share a wall.

At the end of the novel, Julia and Art move toward reconciliation. She opens up to him again and shares her troubles. He listens, and they fall into their old pattern of communication. The night before the trial, he tells her that he ordered “a skylight, just like at their old house.