The Death and Afterlife of the Father-in-Law

This subplot follows the father-in-law's death and the mother-in-law's unending widowhood.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

The Christmas Gestation

The Christmas Gestation Context The narrator's in-laws come for Christmas while she is pregnant, and the questions about work, nursery and taxes perforate her. The father-in-law spends his afternoon checking supermarket receipts. Turn At dawn, the mother-in-law brings her a green-and-white pill, which the narrator throws into the fire. In the father-in-law's bedroom there is a rifle and cartridges on the night table. Aftermath The narrator flees to the woods and sees gypsies camping by the frozen pond. The in-laws' world of order and firearms becomes a background for her panic.

The Funeral

The Funeral Context The father-in-law dies in his sleep, and the narrator stands before his grave with an image of his teeth stuck in her mind. The father had promised that his grandson would follow in his footsteps. Turn She watches the small group of mourners and imagines the mother-in-law airing out the house and giving away her husband's socks. Her son smiles at the graves. Aftermath At the wake, the guests call the dead man an excellent father and husband, but the narrator feels closer to her mother-in-law for the first time. Death becomes a family institution.

The Ashes Question

The Ashes Question Context When his lungs are giving out, the mother-in-law asks her husband what to do with his ashes. He answers that he does not care, uninterested in final instructions. Turn After his death, she keeps cooking for two, changing the pillowcases and mending his underwear. She relives his death day after day. Aftermath The house remains a concrete block surrounded by mole mines and carcinogenic smoke. The father-in-law's casual phrase about the Shoah of moles stays in the family's vocabulary.

The Widow's Limbo

The Widow's Limbo Context The mother-in-law sleeps badly and walks through the village in her nightie shouting Fire. She uses a shoe as a phone and converses with God. Turn She eats white bread left out for days and does not check the expiry date on her medication. The narrator thinks time does not pass for the person left behind; it is a perpetual limbo. Aftermath The mother-in-law's body becomes an infested house she tiptoes through. Her mourning is a separate country where the narrator learns to recognize her own future.

The Dawn Questions

The Dawn Questions Context The mother-in-law wakes at four in the morning and sees her dead husband sitting in a striped deckchair reading the paper. She asks the narrator when she will start feeling he is dead. Turn Her son stirs her herbal tea and says there is nothing she can do. The narrator wants to climb into the mother-in-law's chest and stick her fingers into her eyes because she understands her so well. Aftermath They stop answering her questions; there is simply no point. The widow's grief becomes a wall that the family surrounds but cannot penetrate.

during the narrator's pregnancy, at Christmas

after the son is born, when the father-in-law dies

shortly before the father-in-law's death

in the months after the funeral

later in the story, at four in the morning