Fall

Fall provides the calendar and changing backdrop for a sequence that moves from Halloween anticipation to a temporary easing in Henry Page and Grace Town’s relationship, then into the disruptions of Thanksgiving. The season is not uniformly bleak or picturesque: it brings a gaudy Halloween street, a vividly colored coastal forest, and the crowded domestic demands of late November.

Halloween and Anticipation

As All Hallows’ Eve approaches, Henry’s street becomes an extension of a cemetery, decorated with tombstones, cobwebs, and skeletons. By Saturday midday, the front yard looks to him like a kitsch apocalypse. Sadie brings Ryan over to carve pumpkins, but Henry’s attention is fixed on that night’s party and, more anxiously, what might happen after it. His pumpkin turns out misshapen: a soft pumpkin and blunt knife leave a face Sadie judges worse than Ryan’s. Henry defends the result as a surrealist interpretation of a jack-o’-lantern, making the domestic comedy a counterpoint to his private apprehension.

A Coastal Autumn and a Brief Upswing

During a drive north, the coast seems scarcely autumnal. Henry and Grace pass through a national park for more than an hour, slowing at lookout points without stopping; glimpses of bleach-white beach show through the forest, where stripped trees stand among evergreens, palms, and shrubs. The scenery grows more intensely colored deeper in the forest, even as the cold approaches.

The drive turns that seasonal contrast into danger. Grace ignores warnings about the winding road, raises the music, and speeds through the bends, braking, accelerating, and drifting around turns. Henry clings to the car and imagines a crash in graphic detail, including his own body thrown from the vehicle. His fear draws on the earlier wreck involving Grace and Dominic Sawyer: the road’s speed and curves make the possibility of another fatal collision present to him, even while Grace continues driving.

Afterward, a week of what Henry thinks of as Good Grace Days offers a temporary change in tone. The newspaper’s junior writers submit work not about cats, Lola designs nearly half its pages, and the Magic: The Gathering feature is cut to five thousand words. Henry also attempts his mathematics homework, though he does not understand it. He and Grace have sex again, and this time she does not cry. These ordinary improvements make the week feel like a genuine reprieve, though the narrative presents it as a passing stretch of better days rather than a resolution.

Late November and Thanksgiving

By the end of November, the annual Thanksgiving-weekend craft fair brings eccentric relatives from across the country to Henry’s home. Their arrival means more than a busy holiday: they eat the family’s food and disrupt the household’s usual arrangements. In previous years, they occupied the basement and displaced Henry upstairs. Because he is in his senior year and has substantial studying to do, the relatives are instead assigned to Sadie’s old bedroom and air mattresses in the living room.

The crowded holiday period also coincides with an invitation from Grace to her birthday party at the Thanksgiving fair. About a hundred people are invited, most of them from East River. Lola reacts as if a storm is coming, despite the forecast predicting only light rain. Across the season, the fair’s social gathering and the family’s influx of visitors turn late November into a renewed source of anticipation and unease, following the brief calm of the preceding week.