Katherine’s parents send her to summer camp
Forever...Katherine’s parents send her to summer camp after arranging a paid job without her consent and then insisting that she take it. What begins as an appealing offer of summer tennis becomes a family confrontation over authority, a seven-week separation from Michael, and Katherine’s right to decide how she will spend her summer. The decisive point is not simply that her parents favor the job: her father has already told its contact that she will accept, so Katherine’s apparent choice is revealed as an order.
The Offer and Its Disguise
The discussion begins at a familiar family meal. When the weather is warm, Katherine’s family has salad for supper once a week, usually on Wednesdays, because her mother works late at the library. Katherine is peeling foil from a wedge of cheese when her father asks, “How would you like to play tennis all summer and get paid for it?” She answers with immediate enthusiasm, popping the cheese into her mouth: “Are you kidding … I’d love it.” Her father smiles and says he had hoped she would respond that way.
Katherine’s first understanding is that the opportunity might be at a tennis club. She asks whether the club is looking for someone, and her father’s opening description has invited precisely that expectation: summer tennis, with pay. But the job he has in mind is at Jamie’s camp in New Hampshire. The distinction changes the offer’s meaning. It is not an opportunity Katherine can welcome on its stated terms; it is a summer away from home and Michael, and her initial excitement gives way to an emphatic refusal. She says she will not go to New Hampshire even for $3,000, far more than the $350 her father names.
A Decision Made for Her
Katherine’s parents do not treat her refusal as the end of the matter. Her mother says her father went to a lot of trouble to find a good job. Katherine asks who asked him to, exposing the divide between his effort and her consent: finding a job for her does not mean that she has chosen it. When her mother objects to her attitude, Katherine fights back tears and accuses her parents of knowing what they are trying to do. Her father denies that the arrangement has anything to do with Michael; Katherine rejects his denial. The scene establishes her suspicion, not proof of his motive, while making clear that the question of Michael is already part of the conflict for her.
The disagreement sharpens when Katherine explains what the summer away would cost her. “Seven weeks may not be a lot to you but to me it’s forever!” she tells them. Her parents’ understanding of the job as a summer opportunity collides with her experience of it as an imposed separation. Her father then makes the arrangement explicit: he has already told Foxy it was settled and that Katherine would take the job. The decision has preceded the conversation in which she is meant to have a say.
Katherine responds by asserting her age and her right to answer for herself. She is eighteen, she says, and has already made up her mind; her father can call Foxy and find someone else. When he refuses, she understands that his decision is as fixed as hers. She asks whether her parents are telling her that she has no choice, and her father confirms that they are. Her mother, after first urging a rational discussion, tells her she should go for the summer. The disagreement thus ends not in persuasion or compromise but in the parents’ authority prevailing.
Compliance and Its Cost
Katherine protests that she had thought both parents were fair, only to conclude that she was wrong. The injury in the exchange is therefore not limited to losing control of her summer. The episode revises her view of her parents: they have heard her refusal, but the father has already committed her to the job and the mother supports her going. Her distress is visible in the dinner scene—she cries and wipes her nose and eyes with her napkin—yet the conflict does not dissolve into a dramatic departure. She later tells Jamie that she will not fall apart, and Jamie is relieved.
The next day and the day after, the family does not discuss the situation. Nevertheless, it is understood that Katherine will take the camp job. That unspoken settlement marks the practical consequence of the confrontation: her refusal has not changed the plan, and the summer away is now treated as arranged. The quiet that follows contrasts with the meal’s direct argument. Katherine has not been persuaded that the decision is fair; rather, the household proceeds as though the decision is settled.
Michael and the Unsent Birthday Gift
Once the camp job is understood to be unavoidable, Katherine turns to telling Michael. She considers waiting until his birthday, which is only a week away, and takes out the sweater she bought for him: a bluish-green Shetland sweater, chosen to match his eyes. She had returned two earlier choices, one because it looked too large and another because it itched when she tried it on. The care spent finding the right gift makes the timing of her next decision more pointed. Holding the sweater to her face, she wonders whether postponing the news would be fair or honest, then decides she must tell him at once.
The sweater does not prevent the separation or soften the fact that Katherine’s parents have made the summer arrangement for her. Instead, its carefully chosen color and the time she has spent selecting it place her attachment to Michael beside the approaching absence. Her decision not to wait for his birthday also carries the dispute’s concern with choice into her relationship: although she cannot make her parents reverse the job decision, she can choose not to conceal the consequence from Michael. The episode therefore closes not with Katherine’s acceptance of her parents’ reasoning, but with the next obligation created by their decision: telling the person from whom she will be separated.
