Lionel Wright

Lionel Wright, the father of Thom Wright, lives in New York after separating from Thom’s mother, Laurie Wright. Though he appears only through Thom’s recollections and a brief airport trip, his move reshapes Thom’s family life and brings Thom closer to both Susan Reynolds and the narrator. His relationship with Thom combines affection and distance: Thom wants to spend time with his father, but resists the college-search trip Lionel has arranged.

Family Background and Relocation

Lionel and Laurie Wright divorced while Thom was in ninth grade. Laurie remained in Beverly Hills, where Thom lived with her, while Lionel relocated to Manhattan. The move was an opportunity too financially rewarding for Lionel to ignore, and the divorce had become expensive. Thom was profoundly wounded by his father’s departure, though he continued to keep up with school and sports.

The separation also altered Thom’s other relationships. It brought him closer to Susan Reynolds and to the narrator, who admired Thom’s way of meeting difficulty without self-pity. In the narrator’s account, Thom’s steady effort to keep moving forward was partly a response to what he had learned about adults and marriage through his parents’ breakup.

The New York Trip

When Thom asked the narrator to drive him to the airport, the narrator learned that Lionel had bought him a first-class ticket to New York. Thom dismissed the upgrade as excessive and suggestive of guilt; he would have been content to fly coach, but Lionel insisted. The narrator picked him up at Laurie’s North Hillcrest Drive home and drove him to LAX for a noon American Airlines flight.

The trip was meant to let Lionel and Thom spend time together and look at colleges, but Thom already expected to attend UCLA and did not want to leave Los Angeles. On the drive, he told the narrator that he was making the trip for his father. He wanted to see Lionel, yet would rather simply spend a week with him in New York than visit the schools they were considering. Thom tried to reassure the narrator that the trip would be fine, even as he acknowledged its sadness.

Relationship and Significance

Thom’s relationship with Lionel is described as unusually close, almost brotherly, despite the distance created by the divorce. The narrator understands that Lionel’s move wounded Thom, but also sees how Thom weathered the separation and continued to function. That resilience is part of what the narrator loves about Thom, although he recognizes that wealth and privilege shield Thom from many other hardships.

Lionel remains mostly offstage, but his absence and the effort to reconnect with him give the airport journey its emotional weight. The narrator’s initial wonder about why Susan is not taking Thom to the airport gives way to attention to Thom’s presence and to what he reveals about his father. Lionel’s insistence on the college visits thus becomes a point of tension between parental hopes and Thom’s chosen future, while the trip offers father and son a limited chance to be together.