Laurie Wright

Laurie Wright, Thom Wright’s mother, is a divorced parent whose private unhappiness becomes visible through her son’s concern for her and whose house shelters the narrator after the attack that leaves Thom gravely injured. Though she remains a secondary figure, Laurie’s presence connects the novel’s intimate portrait of teenage friendship to the family damage that persists after its violence: she receives her son at home, waits at the hospital, and becomes a guarded observer of Susan Reynolds, whom she believes has hurt him.

Family Background and Thom’s Concern

Laurie lives in Beverly Hills with Thom after her divorce from Lionel Wright, who relocates to New York. The separation and drawn-out divorce affect Thom profoundly, although he continues to meet the demands of school and sports. The narrator understands that Lionel’s move was financially motivated, but its emotional consequence for Thom is plain: his closeness with his father survives the distance, while the family’s life is reorganized around absence.

Thom’s account of Laurie suggests that her unhappiness predates the immediate strains of the divorce. When he discusses a man Laurie has been seeing, Thom says he wants his mother to be happy, then reflects that she has been miserable for the last ten years. He also questions whether she is capable of happiness, describing a condition he cannot solve for her. His response is characteristic of the optimism the narrator admires in him: he wants people to recover and make life better for themselves, yet Laurie’s persistent sadness lies beyond his ability to repair.

Home and Family Separation

The narrator’s clearest early encounter with Laurie comes when he drives Thom to the airport for a visit with Lionel in New York. Laurie, wearing a pink robe, hugs her son at the doorway of the white two-story colonial on North Hillcrest Drive. Thom leaves with a large gray Samsonite suitcase and a carry-on; Laurie waves as the narrator and Thom depart. The scene makes the ordinary logistics of a separated family concrete: a mother sends her son to spend time with the father who now lives across the country.

The narrator wonders why Susan is not taking Thom to the airport, but the question gives way to the fact of being alone with Thom. The trip is meaningful to the narrator because Thom has asked him to help, while for Thom it provides time with Lionel. Lionel has bought him a first-class ticket, which Thom regards as excessive, and the visit is part of a bond the narrator describes as unusually close. Laurie’s household therefore stands at one end of a family arrangement that continues to shape both Thom’s loyalties and the narrator’s longing to be useful to him.

The Canon Drive Attack and Its Aftermath

After an intruder attacks Thom and Susan Reynolds at the house on Canon Drive, Laurie arrives at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Robert Mallory has driven the injured Thom and Susan there; Donald Reynolds later calls the narrator with news of the attack and says Thom is in surgery and barely expected to survive. Laurie has arrived in shock. The narrator, already preparing to leave his own house, hears the news as confirmation that the people close to him may be in danger.

The narrator leaves the hospital against medical advice late Sunday afternoon, and Laurie takes him to the North Hillcrest house. She guides him to Thom’s room, where he sleeps in Thom’s bed while recovering from his own injuries. The narrator does not yet understand the full severity of Thom’s condition, but worries about his future. Laurie’s home becomes a place of care and waiting: she offers the injured narrator refuge while returning to the hospital as Thom undergoes another operation to repair his leg.

Susan and the Unresolved Family Wound

When Laurie returns from the hospital that evening, the narrator asks about Susan. Laurie says she supposes Susan will be all right, then mentions reconstructive surgery without explaining further. Her answer is brief and guarded; she says she has not seen Susan and that Susan will go home on Wednesday. The narrator, sedated and emotionally numb, can barely eat or lift his bandaged hand, while Laurie pours wine and speaks more directly about the rupture between Susan and Thom.

Laurie says she has sympathy for Susan but does not like her much anymore because Susan broke her son’s heart. The statement gives Laurie’s grief a relational edge: she is not simply watching over a hospitalized child but judging the person whose choices, in her view, wounded him. Yet the account offers no reconciliation or later conversation between them. Laurie’s position remains suspended between sympathy for Susan’s circumstances and loyalty to Thom.

A Family’s Waiting and the Public Story

Laurie continues waiting through the immediate aftermath. The narrator learns that his own parents cannot return to Los Angeles for two nights because they are traveling back from Europe by ship, then through London and New York. In their absence, Laurie takes him into her home, where he sleeps in Thom’s room and finds comfort in familiar objects there. Meanwhile she returns to the hospital as Thom undergoes further surgery; Lionel is expected to arrive from New York on Tuesday.

The family’s private crisis soon becomes part of a public account. Laurie and the narrator watch local television coverage describing Robert’s fatal fall from a Century City high-rise after he assaulted a classmate. The report links Robert to the attack on Susan and Thom and raises questions about his possible connection to the Trawler, without yet explaining those connections. The next morning, news reports that Audrey Barbour’s body has been discovered in a soundproofed room in an abandoned house in Benedict Canyon. Laurie begins crying as the report shows the body being removed. Her response marks the point at which the violence surrounding her son’s circle expands beyond the family’s immediate emergency, while the novel leaves Laurie herself without a resolution to the losses and suspicions gathering around it.