Julie

Julie’s story turns on a difficult distinction: wanting a family to remain intact does not mean being able to remain safely or comfortably within it. As the daughter of William Henry Devereaux, Jr. and Lily, and the wife of Russell, she moves between loyalty to her parents’ marriage and a crisis in her own. Her departure from Russell is followed not by a simple resolution but by distance, a change of circumstances, and eventual reunion in Atlanta.

Identity and Family Background

Julie is one of William Henry Devereaux, Jr. and Lily’s daughters; her older sister, Karen, shapes Julie’s early understanding of their parents’ relationship. During Karen’s high-school years, several friends’ parents went through rancorous divorces. Shaken by what she saw, Karen began looking for signs that her own parents might separate, interpreting even petty disagreements and conversations she did not understand as warnings. She passed some of this anxiety to Julie, who came to share her fear of losing the family’s stability.

That fear surfaces when Julie tells her father she could not bear for her parents to divorce at that point in their lives. Her plea is striking partly because it is unguarded: William Henry Devereaux, Jr. reflects that Julie seems to take their marriage more personally than he would expect. The exchange also establishes a contrast between the father’s irony and his daughter’s directness. Julie is not only watching her parents’ marriage from the outside; she feels implicated in its survival.

Marriage in Crisis

Julie’s own marriage to Russell reaches a breaking point after a conflict at their home. When William Henry Devereaux, Jr. visits, Julie is still in her bathrobe in the early afternoon and remains seated rather than greeting him. She is preparing to leave Russell, and her left eye—the eye she injured as a child—is visibly affected. The old injury is part of how her father recognizes the seriousness of the moment, but the immediate dispute concerns her demand that Russell leave the house.

At first, Julie gives her father a guarded account of what happened. She says she fell, then clarifies that Russell shoved her and that she fell as a result. She wants him gone and has packed suitcases. Her father offers her a place to stay at his house while they work out what comes next. Julie does not resist the offer; instead, she gets to her feet, embraces him, and sobs. The movement from stillness to sudden dependence marks a change in the scene: her demand for separation from Russell is accompanied by a need for shelter and comfort from her father.

Later, Julie leaves a message that complicates this account. She tells her father that the incident was not entirely Russell’s fault and revises her description of the shove, while turning blame toward herself and suggesting that something has long felt wrong with her. The account does not settle the question of responsibility. Rather, the differing explanations show Julie struggling to describe a conflict in which injury, anger, and self-accusation have become entangled.

Separation and Its Pressures

Russell’s account supplies another part of the marital crisis. He recalls being unemployed while Julie was working and describes a moment when his frustration and self-hatred shifted into hatred of her. The immediate focus was a chair Julie had bought at a discount. Russell says he could not bear to remain in a house containing it and framed the conflict as an ultimatum between himself and the chair. His account presents the object as a trigger within a much wider distress over money, work, and dependence; it does not erase the consequences of his actions.

Julie’s old eye injury also complicates the way the conflict is narrated. Her father understands that the injury can alter the appearance of one side of her face, and he believes Russell avoids mentioning it while trying to explain the scene. The injury is thus both a concrete part of Julie’s history and a point around which the men’s explanations become cautious. The narrative does not reduce Julie to that physical detail: her own changing account, her decision to leave, and her later insistence on speaking directly to Russell remain central.

Julie changes the locks on the house and tells her father that she has become the person unable to get out. She also acknowledges a resemblance between herself and him in their preservation of a public posture. Her remark makes the locks more than a practical measure: they express the bind of maintaining a position after circumstances have changed. William Henry Devereaux, Jr. urges her to speak with Russell, who is prepared to shoulder much of the blame, but Julie’s message had been left for the wrong person. Her difficulty is not simply lack of information; she has to decide whether to address the marriage itself rather than its witnesses.

Father and Daughter

Julie’s relationship with her father is marked by affection, friction, and episodes in which one cannot easily repair the other’s distress. When she was a child, an accident on a bicycle left her father feeling helpless as she fell. Years later, he recognizes a similar helplessness while listening to her describe the marital crisis. The comparison leads him to think about his own mother comforting him during a childhood crisis, and about how a parent may be unable to control what a child feels even while offering refuge.

Julie’s eventual victory over her father at tennis gives their relationship a different kind of reversal. Before leaving for Atlanta, she defeats him in a two-set match lasting just under an hour. For nearly a decade, he had been able to unsettle her play by warning her not to double-fault; this time she tunes him out and wins. Her smile afterward is radiant, and she frames the victory as payback for what he did to Russell. Her father initially associates the remark with his decision to send Russell away, then recalls an earlier basketball game, leaving the reference playfully unsettled. The match nevertheless makes Julie’s independence unmistakable: she can hear her father without organizing her actions around his influence.

Change and Ending

After Julie and Russell’s house is rented, Julie stays temporarily with her parents. Russell visits twice during that period. Later, Julie joins him in Atlanta, where she finds work and he is promoted; they are reportedly doing well and considering buying a house. Their reunion does not erase the rupture or explain every part of the conflict, but it changes the direction of the story from separation toward a shared future.

Julie’s ending is also set against the earlier fear she inherited from Karen: that a family can be shattered by marital breakdown. Her parents remain together, while Julie and Russell undergo a rupture of their own and then reunite after living apart. The novel does not present either outcome as a simple guarantee of safety. Instead, Julie’s story follows the difficult passage from trying to preserve a family through fear to making choices within a marriage under strain, including leaving, changing the locks, and eventually deciding to join Russell again.