58 pages • 1 hour read
Dear Zoe
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Chapters 8-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary: “Banana Slippers”
Tess thought about killing herself once, but she doesn’t feel she deserves pity. She describes her intense sadness after Zoe’s funeral and memorial service, which “wasn’t so much like falling into a deep dark hole as it was like being forced to climb down a ladder along the steep sides” (31). In her memory, Tess wants to feel “more darkness,” so she considers taking her mother’s prescription sleeping pills. The label with her mother’s name makes her pause. In her letter, Tess considers how life is both random and connected, predetermined and a matter of chance, in terms of both Zoe’s death and the September 11 attacks. She wonders what would have happened if she hadn’t missed the bus that day or if her mother had never met David while he was smelling a cantaloupe, likening each event to a “domino.”
Em appears in the doorway of the bathroom wearing yellow banana slippers that Zoe used to try to walk in, and Tess returns the pill bottle. Em asks Tess was she was doing, and Tess tells her to go back to bed, but Em tells Tess to go first. Tess realizes that Em knows something was going on and walks past her but decides not to touch her head.
Chapter 9 Summary: “New Paint”
When Zoe died, Tess says, there was a crib and a bed in her room. Sometimes Zoe slept in the crib and sometimes the bed, but she wasn’t allowed to change beds in the middle of the night. David complained about the bedtime negotiations, but her mother said, “Everything in time” (35).
Tess tells an anecdote about her mother repainting Zoe’s room after her death. In the story, on the last day of school before Christmas, Tess returns home to the smell of new paint. Zoe’s furniture is covered with sheets, and her mother has painted beige over the Peter Rabbit characters and is crying. Tess cries because her mother didn’t ask Tess what she thought about repainting. When David arrives home, he is upset by the new paint and leaves. Tess makes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for Em and herself and gives Em a bath. Em cries at night because the smell is bothering her and “makes a noise inside my head” (37). Tess sleeps in Em’s bed and agrees the paint smell makes a noise in her head; it reminds her of the sound of Zoe’s feet brushing grass from the swing on the day she died. Tess falls asleep to the sound, but it’s gone when she wakes.
Chapter 10 Summary: “David & Me”
The day after her mother repaints Zoe’s room, David wakes Tess for school. In the kitchen, she and David eat cereal, and she notices his clothes look big on him. David wants to let Tess’s mother sleep, so Tess tells David in detail what to pack Em for lunch. David comments he hasn’t packed lunches since he used to for Tess, which he did because her mother took a long time getting ready in the morning. Tess is surprised by both these facts. David starts to cry, which surprises Tess because she’s only seen him cry once, at Zoe’s funeral. He leaves a note in Em’s lunchbox that says, “Have a good day. I love you, Daddy” and goes upstairs to wake her up (41). Tess says that night and morning were the start of her putting Em to bed and David getting her ready for school in the morning.
Chapters 8-10 Analysis
Tess’s suicidal ideation is a symptom of her grief and guilt over her role in Zoe’s death, as is her rumination over what might have happened that day if events had been slightly different. In Chapter 8, “Banana Slippers,” her series of questions about what might have happened take on an anxious tone. The repetition of questions underscores Tess’s feelings of urgency and desperation as well as her scattered state of mind. Em’s banana slippers remind Tess of Zoe, and though the detail seems irrelevant, the connection between the two sisters gives Tess pause in that moment. Em’s banana slippers are reminiscent of the cantaloupe Tess associates with the first time she saw David. For Tess, these details are dominos that all seem to lead to Zoe’s death. Random-seeming details help Tess to create a pattern to interpret her life, though, paradoxically, this pattern often feels unstable to her because of its very randomness.
Tess’s surprise at the decision to repaint Zoe’s room is an example of the ways in which Tess’s mother excludes Tess from her grief: She makes the decision without consulting any other members of her family, and Tess interprets the repainting as “erasing part of [Zoe’s] life” (36). At night, the smell of paint triggers Tess to remember the day of Zoe’s death. Her preoccupation with the sound of Zoe’s feet brushing grass foreshadows Tess’s eventual cathartic moment in the grass at the end of the novel.
In the same way Tess feels maternal toward Zoe, she adopts a maternal role with regard to Em as well. While Tess’s mother is incapacitated by grief, Tess takes on the role of a parent to her sister, with David helping Em get ready in the mornings and Tess helping her at night. In fact, Tess actually teaches David how to prepare Em for the day, reversing their roles as child and parent. While the new arrangement seems like it might potentially bring them together, the division of labor further isolates Tess from her family and from David. Furthermore, Tess is no longer treated as a child in her family. The chapter concludes with the note David leaves in Em’s lunchbox, a note that reinforces David and Em’s father–daughter bond. That Tess does not interpret or elaborate on this note only serves to underscore its gravitas. It is hard to imagine Tess’s biological father leaving notes in her lunch box, and the note emphasizes the painful absence of this kind of father–daughter bond between them. Tess feels disconnected not only from David but also from her mother, whose grief manifests as crying, sleeping, and pushing Tess away. Tess’s new role in the family is complicated by the fact that she feels responsible for Zoe’s death and worries her family blames her, making it more difficult for her to feel or find love and warmth within her family. Notably, Tess does not see herself as a survivor of trauma, but rather the agent of the trauma itself.
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