Joyce

Joyce is Tom’s grandmother, introduced through a family-table conversation that turns a cheerful prediction about future children into an uncomfortable appraisal of Queenie’s appearance. Though she has cataracts, Joyce is presented with an ironic suggestion that she can see the future; what she imagines, however, reveals more about the assumptions shaping that future than about any prophecy.

Identity and Introduction

At the table, Joyce looks at Queenie and Tom and predicts that they will have beautiful children. She imagines those children as a selective combination of their parents’ features: Queenie’s brown skin made lighter, Tom’s green eyes, Queenie’s hair and eyelashes, and Tom’s straight nose. Her description specifies a complexion like milky coffee and stresses that it should not be too dark. The prediction frames inherited appearance as something to assess and improve, rather than simply a natural mixture of two people.

The Family-Table Exchange

Queenie responds that features cannot be selected like those in a facial composite, while fiddling with the pepper grinder. Joyce accepts the point but says that it is a shame. The exchange is brief, but its imbalance matters: Joyce’s comments pass without any apparent objection from the other people at the table, while Queenie is left to name the absurdity of treating a child’s face as a customizable design. Joyce’s fond prediction therefore carries a colorist standard within its warmth, making the family’s ordinary conversation a setting where that standard can go unchallenged.

Effect on Queenie

Later, in bed, Queenie puts down her book and asks Tom what is wrong with her nose. The question connects Joyce’s ranking of facial features to Queenie’s immediate self-consciousness: Tom’s straight nose had been praised in contrast to hers. Tom, focused on a technology article on his phone, asks what she means. The scene does not establish what Joyce thinks beyond this exchange, but it shows how her remarks continue to resonate after the meal, turning an imagined child’s features into a question about Queenie’s own.