Last Night at the Telegraph Club

Judy and Francis take Lily and her brothers to Playland at the Beach. Next to the Musée Mécanique is the Opium Den diorama, a display that includes a caricature of a Chinese man that Judy has come to loathe. Lily tells her that she hates it too. They decide to go to Ocean beach.

The beach makes Judy feel like she can finally understand the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. As she watches Lily, she thinks of the miscarriage she had the previous April. She blames herself and her initial reluctance to have a child. The miscarriage reminds her of all of the terrible things she saw during the war.

The next morning, the headline “Teen-Age Girls Recruited at Sex Deviate Bar” (311) appears on the front page of the newspaper that Lily’s father is reading over breakfast, and while he doesn’t pay it any attention, Lily is terrified. She’s waiting a reasonable time before calling Kath. Lily’s mother asks her to stay home with Frankie, who hasn’t been feeling well, and then she can go to help Shirley since it’s the night of the pageant.

Once her mother leaves, Lily calls Kath, but no one answers. She tries to stay calm and convince herself that Kath’s family is out but then remembers the newspaper, retrieves it, and reads the article.