Thula Rantz dies

Thula Rantz dies after an obstructed bowel causes septicemia, a loss that abruptly unsettles Joe Rantz’s return to the rowing season. The news forces him to reckon with a complicated bond he had never fully repaired, and draws him to the family he fears will be left to face grief alone.

The news at the shell house

On October 25, Joe returns to the shell house after a long, cold, wet workout and finds his brother Fred Rantz waiting on the floating dock in the rain. Fred, pale and grim beneath his fedora, has come from the family home after receiving a call from Harry Rantz at the hospital and telling the children what had happened: Thula is dead. The account identifies the cause as septicemia resulting from an obstructed bowel. The announcement lands amid Joe’s difficult adjustment to a new crew, turning his sense of loss from the separation of rowing companions toward a more intimate family bereavement.

A bond left unfinished

Joe is numb rather than certain what to feel. Thula had been the closest thing to a mother he had known since he was three, and his memories include the family sitting together on a backyard swing in Spokane’s sweet night air and gathering around the parlor piano to sing. Yet the relationship had deteriorated. Joe considers what he might have done differently once their troubles began: tried harder to get along, understood her constricted circumstances, or recognized more of what his father had seen in her. Her death closes off any chance for him to show her what he might become. His regret, however, has a limit; beyond it, he cannot summon much feeling for her. The scene holds affection, self-reproach, and emotional distance together rather than resolving them into a simple reconciliation.

Returning to the family

The next morning, Joe goes to the house on Bagley. After no one answers his light knock at the front door, he follows a brick path past hydrangeas and around to the back, where Harry and the children sit at a picnic table on the soggy lawn. Harry is making the children’s favorite cherry Kool-Aid. Rose, Polly, and Mike have red eyes; Harry Junior looks weary and distracted, while Harry appears deeply hurt and suddenly older. Joe sits with them, tells his father he is sorry, and joins a conversation about Thula’s life. Conscious of the children watching him over their Dixie cups, he elaborates on the memories he can recall fondly.

Harry begins to describe a recent trip to Medical Lake but chokes up and cannot continue. Even so, Joe sees him as relatively composed for a man who has now lost a second young wife. This time Harry shows no inclination to flee to Canada or elsewhere; instead, he seems to be forming an inner resolve. Joe’s presence at the table does not undo the family’s loss or erase his unresolved feelings about Thula, but it places him beside the children at a moment when he knows what it is to be motherless.