64 pages • 2 hours read
Goodbye, Vitamin
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Chapters 58-80Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 58-64 Summary: “April 1”, “April 2”, “April 3”, “April 4”, “April 5”, “April 6”, “April 7”
On April Fool’s Day, Howard paints the bar of soap with clear nail polish so that it will not lather. Ruth asks him how he and her mother met. Howard recalls how she showed up on the first day of class and he was drawn to her. They went to a student art gallery opening together, stole a bottle of wine, and drank it in a park together. Ruth realizes that this is not the story of how he met Ruth’s mother, but of how he met Joan. Ruth recalls the real story of how her parents met: They had dinner at a Mexican restaurant, and her mother brought a jar of homemade salsa to the restaurant.
Uncle John calls Ruth panicked because he locked his keys in the car and thinks that this must be a sign that he too has dementia. Ruth tempers her instinct to ask him about her parents’ divorce and instead asks about her maternal grandparents, whom she never met. John tells her that her mother was too young when she lost her adoptive parents, but that “She doesn’t take any shit. It was all about you, after that” (98).
Ruth notices that her father left the door to his study open, which she takes as an invitation to enter. She sees a big aquarium that holds no fish, so she and her father go to the pet store. Unimpressed with the store’s fish offerings, Ruth buys a bag of birdseed, and Howard buys six plastic scuba diver figurines.
Uncle John has been stopping by more often. While John and Howard are at the gym, Ruth goes into her father’s office again. In his desk drawers, she finds packets of oatmeal, business cards, and restaurant matchbooks. She wonders if the oatmeal might be a gift from Joan or the physics professor, knowing that often “significance, more often than not, is invisible, imbued on things” (101). Feeling defeated, Ruth leaves the room.
On April 5th, Ruth goes into her father’s office again and reads a page from his journal that he left open on his desk. In the entry, Ruth cried after losing a tooth, Howard worried that he was putting too much baby powder on Linus during a diaper change. He wrote about Ruth: “Today you were so readily impressed by me” (102).
At class, taking place at a Mexican restaurant, Ruth sits between Joan and her father. Everyone shifts uncomfortably in their seats when Howard begins his lecture–the same one about the Chinese in California from the week before.
Ruth packs lunch for her mother every day, writing jokes on the napkins. Her mother is now making 3D paper collages when she gets home from work in the time that she used to spend making dinner.
Chapters 65-75 Summary: “April 8”, “April 9”, “April 10”, “April 11”, “April 12”, “April 13”, “April 14”, “April 15”, “April 16”, “April 17”, “April 18”
Bonnie and Ruth meet up, and Bonnie warns her about getting too involved in her parents’ business. Bonnie tells Ruth that she read her horoscope and that “The stars say: it’s not a good time to tackle deep issues; it’s a time for pleasant interactions” (104).
At the store looking for macaroni, Ruth runs into a high school friend, Deb. Ruth recalls that Deb was the first person she ever knew with an eating disorder and that Deb has filled out and looks much better. One of Deb’s daughters begins motioning that she has to pee, and Deb hands her baby daughter to Ruth to hold. The next day, Deb contacts Ruth on Facebook and begins inundating her inbox with chain emails with titles such as “THE MOST DANGEROUS CHOCOLATE CAKE IN THE WORLD” (107), which then follows with a recipe for mug cakes.
Ruth reads in an old National Geographic that jellyfish can synthesize a special protein that helps with dementia. Ruth begins calling all the local stores, but none of them carry jellyfish. Ruth joins her father on the couch to watch television and finds herself wanting to ask what he was thinking when he hurt her mother. Instead, Ruth makes them chocolate mug cakes and sends a picture to Deb.
Out of ideas for places to host the class, Theo and Ruth convince Howard to host the class at Disneyland. Afterward, Ruth tells Theo it was a good idea, and he admits that the idea was actually Joan’s. At home, a urinal cake falls out of Howard’s pocket, and when Ruth asks him why he has it, he cannot remember.
Ruth runs into the mailman while collecting the mail, a fear of hers. Ruth is pleasantly surprised to find that the interaction goes well, and the mailman explains that he has a bandage around his calf because a dog bit him. Ruth buys four goldfish and notes that they look unhappy. Howard tells her that a group of goldfish is called “a troubling” (110).
Ruth joins Bonnie for a babysitting job and after they put the kids to bed, they peruse the mother’s movie collection. Ruth spots a film called Eight O’Clock Coffee and tells Bonnie that her father was actually in the film as an extra. They spot him sitting in the background of a bar scene, and Ruth notices that he looks just like Linus.
On her way home, Ruth stops at a Chinese grocery store and buys twelve packets of frozen and dried jellyfish. The next night for dinner, Ruth prepares a “jellyfish feast” (113) featuring Thai-style jellyfish salad, jellyfish soup, jellyfish fritters, jellyfish pickles, and jellyfish spaghetti (featuring jellyfish noodles and jellyfish sauce). While no one is excited about the meal, everyone eats it.
On April 18th, Theo arrives at the house, bringing Howard a coral that his brother grew. Theo and Ruth put the coral in Howard’s tank. As they admire the new addition, Ruth asks Theo if he wants to go with her to Reggie’s performance art show in Los Angeles. Theo agrees, and they attend together.
Chapters 76-80 Summary: “April 20”, “April 22”, “April 25”, “April 27”, “April 28”
April 20th is Howard’s birthday, so Ruth bakes a cake and they host the class at their house. Ruth buys her father another goldfish, and Theo brings over another coral and a birthday card. Ruth notices that Joan, while polite, avoids her mother.
Ruth receives an unexpected call from Joel while at the dollar store. She does not answer but sees he left a voice message. Joel tells her that he just met a pygmy goat named Noah and that, while he does not know why he called, he thought she might like that. Ruth calls her friend Maxine and asks if it is true that people lose 100,000 brain cells every day. Maxine tells her that it is, in fact, true.
In class this week, Howard’s lecture is on the history of the Pony Express. The students convince him to take them horseback riding as a field trip. On the trail, another couple rides in front of them. The man turns around and they realize it is Dean Levin. He asks Howard what he and the students are doing there, and Howard explains that they are learning about the Pony Express for his California History class, oblivious as to why Levin would be questioning him. When Levin asks, “What California History class?” (118), Ruth unsuccessfully tries to intervene. Howard suddenly understands what is going on and dismounts his horse. He demands that Ruth follow him, not allowing Theo to try and explain, and he is silent the entire ride home. When they arrive home, he locks himself in his office.
Howard’s students try calling him repeatedly to apologize and explain their actions. He does not respond to anyone, including Theo, and when Ruth slides a tortilla underneath the office door, Howard returns it after writing “LEAVE ME ALONE” (119) on it.
Chapters 58-80 Analysis
The cracks in Ruth’s relationship with her father deepen in these chapters. Ruth’s growing anger toward her father collides with his worsening Alzheimer’s symptoms. During class one day, everyone looks at each other as Howard “proceeds to repeat last week’s lesson, unbeknownst to himself [...] My heart drops. He was doing well. We don’t mention it” (102). Despite her anger toward her father over his infidelity with Joan, Ruth struggles when confronted with the more obvious symptoms of her father’s illness.
Still, Ruth’s anger is becoming more concrete as her idealized concept of her father falls apart with new information: she can’t maintain her subjectivity for much longer. “Now and then I’m tempted to shake him. What were you thinking? I want to scream sometimes, on behalf of my mother. Or What is wrong with you?” (108). This is the first real anger Ruth expresses toward her father, even if it is only in her journal. Despite her anger, her devotion to him is unchanged, and she goes on a days-long search for an ingredient–jellyfish–because she read that “when elderly people are given jellyfish to eat twice a week, they are less likely to develop dementia or other age-related diseases” (108). Cooking reemerges as a motif here, with Ruth’s hunt for rare ingredients representing the lengths she is willing to go to to care for her father. Ruth continues to cook increasingly-elaborate meals even as she learns uncomfortable truths about her father, suggesting that even though subjectivity has characterized her relationship with him up until this point, her love is truly unconditional. These scenes illustrate the complexity of loving another person, flawed as they may be. Ruth carries both feelings inside of her, struggling to decide how to best proceed.
Ruth’s course of action is somewhat decided for her when, in a climactic moment, Howard realizes that his class is a fabrication. This revelation frays his relationship with Ruth and sets the stage for his Alzheimer’s symptoms to worsen further.
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