Laura brushes her teeth knowing that she won’t be able to read tonight: Dan is in the bedroom in boyish anticipation of sex, waiting like a coiled paper snake in a novelty can of peanuts (232). For an instant, she sees a sort of shadow self behind her in the mirror; she dismisses it as a trick of the light.

Laura handles a full bottle of sleeping pills, fantasizing about rendering all of her suffering insignificant. She wonders if it’s possible to be fulfilled in that lone moment of contentment she felt as she set the table.

She enters the bedroom, where Dan invites her to bed. Though she says she’ll come, she doesn’t move, even after he asks again. She dissociates: She feels she’s observing her life from a remove, as if she’s reading the book of her life. Dan asks again; she again says yes.

Clarissa returns to her apartment—where Julia has cleared the party preparations—with the elderly Laura Brown, Richard’s mother. Laura is tall and stooped with papery skin.

Julia offers to get tea and food for Laura while she and Clarissa sit on the couch. This gives Clarissa an intimation of what aging will be like: doing increasingly less as the people around her do increasingly more, doing their best as she becomes less and less important in the world.