Lily Devereaux

Lily Devereaux is William Henry Devereaux, Jr.’s wife, a source of emotional steadiness whose importance becomes clearest when he is apart from her. Their bond is not presented as effortless: their daughter fears that they may divorce, Lily worries about her husband’s increasingly reckless conduct, and their family faces financial and domestic pressures. Yet the novel repeatedly shows Lily understanding what he has not understood about himself, and their marriage endures into the epilogue with renewed affection.

Identity and Family Background

Lily’s relationship with her father, Angelo Caprice, carries both love and estrangement. Her mother died while Lily was still a girl, and Angelo’s devotion to his daughter helped her through that loss. For a time, father and daughter were inseparable. Their relationship changed sharply after Lily went away to university: she acquired language, commitments, and a social world that Angelo felt excluded from, while she asked him to give up some of the expressions he had long used. The closeness of her childhood gave way to a sense that they had become strangers.

Their differences did not erase her attachment. Lily cannot stop loving Angelo, even though his bigotry shames and angers her. He disapproves of the men she dates and regards William Henry Devereaux, Jr. as the worst choice among them. The novel places Lily between the father whose devotion once sustained her and the adult values that now separate them. Her continued love is not an endorsement of his views; it is a consequence of their shared history and of the care he gave her when she was young.

Marriage and Emotional Recognition

The novel often reveals Lily’s importance through William Henry Devereaux, Jr.’s awareness of her absence. When he calls her from a telephone booth in the basement of the university, she answers immediately. Hearing her familiar voice makes him feel restored to himself, while also exposing how much he has missed her and how often he has taken that comfort for granted. His reflection turns an ordinary phone call into evidence of a deep dependence: Lily’s presence steadies him, but it also unsettles the fantasies and self-deceptions he has entertained in her absence.

Lily, in turn, recognizes that he relies on her to keep track of the emotional realities he avoids. When he wonders why he did not know more about the developing trouble between their daughter Julie Devereaux and Russell, Lily gently points out that he depends on her to know such things. Her response is neither a dramatic accusation nor a denial of his responsibility. It names a pattern in their marriage: she has often carried knowledge of family circumstances that he has preferred not to face.

She is also alert to the danger in his behavior at work. After seeing him on television, she tells him she wishes he would request a leave of absence or resign rather than do something worse in the hope of being fired. William Henry Devereaux, Jr. asks whether she thinks he is trying to get himself dismissed; Lily asks whether he is. Her concern connects affection with clear-eyed judgment. She does not simply reassure him: she recognizes that his conduct may be moving toward consequences he has not admitted he wants.

Motherhood and the Fear of Divorce

Lily’s relationship with her daughters is not equally open from every direction. Julie complains that her mother tells Karen things she will not tell her, and that this difference makes her angry. The family history helps explain why Karen may have become a confidante: after seeing friends’ families go through painful divorces in high school, she grew anxious about the possibility that her own parents might separate. She interpreted ordinary disagreements and conversations she did not understand as signs of an impending divorce, and, as Julie’s older sister, passed some of that anxiety on to her.

Julie eventually tells her father that she could not bear the prospect of her parents divorcing at that moment. Her fear makes the parents’ marriage a source of security for both daughters, even though the daughters experience family communication differently. Lily is not present in that conversation, so the scene does not establish exactly what she has told Karen or what she thinks of Julie’s appeal. It does show that concerns within the marriage have traveled through the family, and that the daughters’ readings of their parents’ relationship shape their own sense of safety.

Angelo Caprice and Family Strain

Lily’s devotion to her father becomes especially difficult when he is arrested in Philadelphia. He has been in custody for more than a week before the family learns where he is. Lily spends much of a Friday trying to arrange his bail, but he remains in the county lockup over the weekend. The account available to William Henry Devereaux, Jr. is incomplete, pieced together by Lily from a police report and a neighbor’s account, and he recognizes that there is more to the story than he knows.

Her father’s arrest therefore adds practical burdens to an already complicated relationship. Lily is trying to help a parent whose prejudices wound her, while also keeping the subject from becoming a source of serious conflict in her marriage. She and William Henry Devereaux, Jr. had agreed not to let their respective fathers become the cause of a major rupture between them. That agreement rests on mutual affection for the older men, but it also requires tact: William Henry Devereaux, Jr. deliberately avoids pressing Lily for details that might deepen the conflict.

In the epilogue, Angelo has spent more than two months with the family before returning to Philadelphia for trial. His bail money is returned when he goes back to stand trial. The family’s continuing involvement is not portrayed as a resolution of Lily’s conflicting feelings; rather, it shows how love keeps demanding attention even when the relationship remains difficult.

Later Marriage and Household

By the epilogue, Lily and William Henry Devereaux, Jr. are still married, and he describes himself as deeply affectionate toward her, placing his feeling in the high nineties on his private scale. He believes she has been fonder of him that summer than she had been for some time, although she resists measuring her affection in percentages. He suspects that he passed some kind of test during her absence, despite having fulfilled many of the troubling predictions she had made about how he would fare without her. Lily does not explain the test to him, leaving his account tender but incomplete.

Her response to a forgotten photograph offers another measure of their intimacy. While taking William Henry Devereaux, Jr.’s tweed jacket to the dry cleaner, she finds a Polaroid taken by Tony Coniglia showing her husband in a hot tub with Missy Blaylock. Lily presents the picture for an explanation. What surprises him is that she seems more puzzled than distressed, recognizing Missy from a television segment. The episode does not erase the possibility of hurt or unease; it shows instead that Lily meets an awkward discovery with questions rather than a ready-made verdict.

The couple’s life together also takes a practical form. Lily says their investment portfolio remains intact, and explains that the money she used for Angelo’s bail was returned. She and her husband have lent Julie and Russell substantial sums, though Lily assures him that the amount is not dramatically greater than what she has told him and is no more than they spent on Karen’s education. His uncertainty about their finances underscores how much he depends on Lily’s knowledge; her assurances help him understand that they have enough money despite his own bewilderment.

During the summer, their house fills with family and friends. Angelo stays for more than two months; Julie lives with her parents temporarily after her house is rented, before joining Russell in Atlanta. At a Memorial Day gathering, two Weber kettles are needed to cook for the crowd, which includes William Henry Devereaux, Jr.’s parents, Lily’s father, Julie and Russell, Karen, and friends and colleagues. The gathering makes visible a life organized not only around the couple but around the people they continue to shelter and support. As summer ends, Lily and her husband sit together on the deck at night, listening to neighboring voices whose words they cannot make out. The scene leaves their marriage not perfectly explained, but intact: companionship persists even where certainty and complete understanding do not.