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After seeing Charlotte and Zoey outside, Mac goes to collect his mail in an effort to eavesdrop. Seeing him, Zoey introduces herself. Mac tells her about his job at a hotel restaurant called Popcorn. As they discuss Zoey’s job cleaning Lizbeth’s apartment, Mac tells her the building is owned by Roscoe Avanger. Avanger’s second book, Dancing with the Dellawisps, is about the building; Frasier illustrated the book and Avanger self-published it. As Mac turns to leave, Zoey remarks that he has cornmeal on his shoulder.
That night, Mac visits his cat, Fig. Fig was a stray Mac rescued from behind his restaurant after she was badly burned by a stray cigarette. He keeps her hidden from the Dellawisp residents because pets aren’t allowed in the building. He hears movement outside, but when he looks out he can’t find anything. Mac has unusual sleeping habits: He never sleeps anywhere but his bedroom and always on fresh sheets, because he wakes up every morning covered in cornmeal. The next morning, he shakes out the sheets and changes them for new ones.
Death reminds Camille of her first trip to the seaside with her brother. He pulled her into the sea, saying that the only way to learn to swim was to find her own way back. She almost drowned, but she survived to return to her family and her mother’s cornbread.
Now she’s ready to let go, but her son Mac keeps her tethered with his grief. She remembers the way he showed up at her door when he was a child, and much later, found her body when she died. She had been making cornbread at the time and was covered in cornmeal. She waits for Mac to let her go.
Zoey confronts Frasier about the intruder, but Frasier thinks it’s only a loose doorknob. In Lizbeth’s apartment, Zoey asks Frasier what to do with Lizbeth’s personal effects. Frasier decides to contact Oliver, Lizbeth’s estranged son. After Frasier returns to his office, he phones Oliver for the first time in many years.
On the other side of the country, Oliver wakes up next to his girlfriend, Garland. He’s staying with her and her friends at her father’s house, because he’s trying to get a job with her father’s company. Garland and her friends gather by the pool. When Oliver pushes her to reach out to her father, Garland ignores him. She and her friends discuss a potential trip, making Oliver feel left out. As he remembers his only real holiday driving Roscoe Avanger to an event, Frasier calls him and tells him about his mother’s death. They arrange to sell her condominium, but Oliver doesn’t want any of Lizbeth’s things. When Garland inquires, Oliver lies and says Frasier was calling to congratulate him on his college graduation.
Charlotte needs to look for new places to showcase her henna—if she doesn’t, she will probably have to leave Mallow Island. Instead, she joins Zoey cleaning the apartment. Together they search for Lizbeth’s lost story. They uncover boxes of loose paper that Lizbeth collected, including a collection of diaries from her youth. Then they stop to have lunch on Charlotte’s patio; Zoey makes them potato-chip sandwiches, which her mother used to make for her. Charlotte thinks about her own food memories with Pepper. They discuss their uncertain futures, and Mac’s restaurant, which specializes in cornmeal dishes. Mac emerges from his apartment and brings them some snacks as a welcome gift for Zoey. Zoey tells Mac that Charlotte needs a job, but after he leaves, Charlotte is suspicious of his friendliness.
Zoey continues to find Lizbeth’s door unlocked and is convinced Lucy is breaking in. Zoey and Charlotte continue looking through the apartment for Lizbeth’s story. Pigeon is impatient with the work and irritably knocks things over. Zoey remembers how Pigeon appeared just after her mother’s death and became the only loving influence in Zoey’s life. Zoey is grateful for Pigeon, but she senses their relationship has shifted since arriving on Mallow Island. When Zoey goes into Lizbeth’s bedroom, she discovers the fallen bookcase that killed her. Charlotte is incensed by the discovery, believing Frasier should have warned Zoey beforehand. Zoey discovers that all the fallen books are copies of Sweet Mallow and that each has the same four passages highlighted. The books are badly damaged, so they recycle all except one that bears an inscription from Roscoe Avanger. Zoey considers the loss of her mother’s things after her death, and her last day with her. Pigeon draws Zoey’s attention to a life insurance document made out to Oliver. Zoey becomes excited and wonders if Lizbeth took out insurance because she was afraid Lucy was going to kill her. When she shows it to Frasier, though, he dismisses this idea, and Zoey feels guilty for creating a dramatic narrative over someone’s death. She asks for contact information for Oliver so she can send him Lizbeth’s things.
Elsewhere, Roscoe Avanger sits at home alone and begins his uninspiring, heavily structured evening. He grew up almost wild, living with his grandfather. Now, he’s achieved fame and success with Sweet Mallow; however, he wasn’t able to write anything else for many years until he bought and renovated the building that became the Dellawisp. He self-published Dancing with the Dellawisps, but it disappeared into obscurity. Now he lives in disguise. Lizbeth, who managed his online fan site, always said she wanted him to write her story. He doesn’t believe there really is a story in her apartment, but wants to honor her memory by searching for it.
Lizbeth reflects on Oliver’s father, Duncan, whom she loved passionately and who introduced her to Sweet Mallow. She believes Lucy stole Duncan away and got him hooked on drugs, which resulted in them both going to prison. Soon after, Duncan died of an overdose. After Oliver’s birth, Lizbeth ignored him and left him in the care of her mother. This is when Lizbeth’s mental illness became worse and she began obsessively collecting paper. One day, Lizbeth was out with Oliver when she met Roscoe Avanger; she recognized him even though he was in disguise. Avanger was enchanted by Oliver, and offered Lizbeth a job managing his fan mail. Lizbeth felt solidarity with the letters she read. Later, he gave her the condominium at the Dellawisp for free, and in return Lizbeth kept an eye on the other occupants. When Lucy was released from prison, Lizbeth kept her distance. However, Avanger learned about Lucy and gave her a condominium too, but Lizbeth told her to keep away. Now, she wants Avanger to find her story so he can learn the truth and make sure Lizbeth is loved by everyone.
As the novel introduces new characters and deepens its presentation of existing ones, it uses several rhetorical devices for conveying personality. Mac’s first point-of-view chapter uses several characterization techniques to showcase his warmth and humanity. The description of Mac’s daily practice for managing his manifestations of cornmeal uses setting to connect him to the cornbread-baking Camille; the story of how he saved his cat Fig displays his empathy. Immediately following this is a first-person chapter from Camille, whose characterization also uses past history, and fills it out through juxtaposition. Camille filled a maternal role for an entire neighborhood and shaped Mac into a generous and sensitive person—a back story that allows readers to understand her as a loving and giving woman. As the only other ghost given storytelling powers in the novel, Camille also becomes a foil to Lizbeth, a contrast that reveals important character traits: They react to their ghostly afterlives very differently; each is shaped by their views on what it is to love and be loved.
This section highlights two of the novel’s major motifs: food and storytelling. While Mac and Camille are both characterized through their relationship with food, Zoey and Charlotte also reflect on what food means to them and the memories—or stories—intrinsic within it. Zoey’s food memory connects her to her mother, while Charlotte’s memories of going without food connect her to Pepper. Each character’s particular relationship to food, sharing food, or hunger becomes a narrative framework through which they see themselves and others. In particular, seeing Charlotte’s relationship with food helps Mac understand better how to communicate with her. These connections reveal one of the ways that the novel will explore the theme of Blood Family versus Found Family.
These chapters also expand on both the legend and the character of Roscoe Avanger, whose myth pervades much of the story. His point-of-view scene and third-person descriptions explore his career and his relationship with the Dellawisp, which becomes the source of his creative inspiration and a resource he can share with others—for instance, giving Lucy and Lizbeth apartments for free. Avanger’s vocation as a professional storyteller puts him in juxtaposition with the novel’s ghosts, who in many ways exist primarily as narratives themselves. While Avanger is experiencing an artistic drought, the ghosts cannot help pouring out their histories, though they need a medium through which to share what they are saying with the world. Lizbeth in particular feels that her fate is tied to the need to share her story; she assumes that she can’t move on until it is revealed—a desire that only Avanger could fulfill.
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By Sarah Addison Allen
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