Alexis

Alexis, Page Clarke’s older sister, occupies an uneasy place between intimacy and estrangement in the family. She is closer to their mother, Maribelle Addison, than Page is, and shares her mother’s preference for preserving a smooth appearance rather than confronting painful truths. When Alexis visits during Allyson Clarke’s hospitalization, that polished surface gives way to Page’s account of childhood sexual abuse: Page says Alexis was abused too, and accuses her of helping redirect their father’s attention toward Page. Alexis does not offer a fuller account of her own past, but her fear during the confrontation and the laxatives she later leaves behind make her presence part of the novel’s portrait of injury hidden beneath respectability.

Family Position and Habits

Page describes Alexis as the sister who remained close to their mother. Although their mother complains that Page neglects her, Page observes that the older sister, who lives in New York, spends substantial time with her. The closeness has a particular character: after a difficult call with her mother, Page thinks of Alexis as someone who plays the same family games. In that household, Page recalls, everything was presented as lovely; wrongdoing was not discussed, voices stayed quiet, and distress remained concealed. Her image of calm water masking a family that was drowning gives Alexis a place in the family’s collective silence, though it does not establish that the sisters experienced that silence in the same way.

The contrast between the sisters is also practical and visible. During the weeks Allyson is in intensive care, Page wears familiar jeans, loafers, and old sweaters suited to the hospital’s drafty corridors. Alexis arrives with her mother dressed for an elegant New York lunch: at the airport she wears a pale pink Chanel suit, with carefully styled hair, conspicuous makeup, and a black alligator Hermes bag; on another hospital visit, she wears white silk Chanel with black patent shoes and a straw hat. Page finds the contrast amusing but unsurprising. The clothes do not prove indifference to Allyson, but their incongruity with the ICU underscores how differently the visitors and Page inhabit the crisis.

Visits During Allyson’s Hospitalization

Alexis participates in her mother’s decision to visit Page, despite Page’s assurance that the household is managing and Allyson’s condition is stable for the moment. Their mother says Alexis wants to speak with Page and raises the possibility of consulting a plastic surgeon for Allyson. Page recognizes that such help may eventually be needed, but her immediate fear is whether Allyson will survive and what function her injured brain may recover. To Page, Alexis’s focus on her niece’s appearance makes the family’s concern seem misplaced: perfection is being considered while survival and recovery remain uncertain.

The visit brings the family’s contrasting routines into the hospital. Alexis and her mother spend time in Allyson’s room before emerging together; their careful dress stands out against Page’s repeated, practical hospital clothes. Alexis also joins the social ritual of the airport greeting, kissing the air near Page’s cheek and cautiously greeting Andy Clarke. These gestures establish civility, but they do not repair the strained relationship or address what Page has carried from childhood. Even before the confrontation, the visit puts proximity and emotional distance side by side: the sisters are together, yet the family’s most consequential history remains unspoken.

The Confrontation and Page’s Account

The visit becomes a direct confrontation when Page rejects her mother’s denial of the abuse she says she suffered as a child. With Brad Clarke present, Page tells her mother that at thirteen she was made to sleep with her father, and accuses her mother of permitting it. She then turns to Alexis, saying their father had abused Alexis from the age of twelve and that Alexis pushed Page toward him so she would no longer be the target. Page describes Alexis as having been relieved that the abuse had shifted to her younger sister. These are Page’s accusations and recollections in a family confrontation; Alexis is not given an extended account of events from her own perspective.

Alexis’s immediate response is fear. As Page speaks, Alexis looks around at the others, begins to apologize, and trails off. Page throws her a bottle of Evian when her mother’s denial leads into the denial of what happened to either daughter, then presses Alexis to remember the alleged transfer of danger. Alexis invokes their father’s standing as a doctor, but Page answers that his profession did not make him safe. Page also explains that the abuse affected her later relationship with medical care: she says it took years to see a doctor and that fear kept her from going even during some pregnancies. Brad knows about Page’s history, but the scene is the first time he hears her confront her family so bluntly. Alexis’s frightened reaction does not resolve the dispute; instead, it reveals the cost of a truth the family has long avoided naming.

Aftermath and Narrative Significance

After the confrontation, Alexis and her mother leave with little further emotional exchange. Alexis wears a new hat; her mother wears one of the new suits they have bought. They give Page air kisses and depart in a limousine. Page feels relief as she watches them go and turns to the work of restoring order at home, changing beds, doing laundry, and vacuuming. That ordinary labor offers her something concrete to do after an explosive night, while the restrained departure leaves the argument unresolved rather than reconciled.

Cleaning Allyson’s room, Page finds an extraordinary quantity of laxatives Alexis has forgotten. Page regards Alexis as seriously unwell and understands the medicines as part of an attempt to make herself disappear, along with what happened to her. The discovery complicates the composed image Alexis presents during the visit: beneath the careful clothes and family performance is evidence of private distress. It does not supply a diagnosis or explain Alexis’s full experience, but it echoes the pattern Page identifies in their family, where pain is concealed rather than openly acknowledged.

Alexis therefore matters not simply as the polished older sister or as an antagonist in Page’s story. She is both implicated in Page’s account of how their father’s abuse was redirected and, in the aftermath, a person whose own suffering appears to persist in hidden form. The novel keeps those positions in tension. Page’s confrontation breaks the family’s practiced silence, but Alexis’s fear, the absence of her own sustained testimony, and the unnoticed laxatives show how little a single outburst can settle about a history shared unevenly and kept quiet for years.