42 pages • 1 hour read
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
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Story 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Story 2 Summary: “Not-Daniel”
A grieving woman (nameless) sits in a car in the dark behind a hospice center with a box of condoms on her lap. She waits for a man (also nameless) that she met in the hospice center a few days prior. When she first saw him, she believed him to be Daniel McMurray, a boy she went to Jr. High with; quickly she realizes that he is not Daniel, but another grieving stranger. Not-Daniel’s mother is dying of breast cancer and the woman’s mother is dying of ovarian cancer.
Despite that Not-Daniel has a wife and two kids in another state, the two strangers begin to meet in a car behind the hospice center to have sex each night after being with their dying mothers. The woman wonders if one of their mothers will die while they are down in the car “rutting around” (15).
Story 2 Analysis
Philyaw presents the clear tension and irreverence of two strangers having sex in a hospice parking lot to complicate the concept of infidelity. The two strangers are responsible adults yet they’re still vulnerable in the space where death is looming and inevitable. The infidelity is unspoken yet understood; while waiting for Not-Daniel to meet her, the woman asks herself, “What do you call it when someone wears a wedding band but never mentions his wife by name? A wife and two kids back home in the next state over.
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