Ask Again, Yes

Shortly after Francis and Lena marry, Francis tells Lena they are moving out of her parents’ home in the city to the tree-lined quiet of suburban Gillam, where he has already picked out a house. When they move, Lena initially misses the city and her family, but when she finds out she is pregnant, she quits her job and commits to being a suburban housewife and mother. 

The following summer, the Stanhopes move in next door (Francis steered Brian to the property). Lena, already pregnant with their second, sympathizes with Anne, whose child, two years earlier, was stillborn. More than a year later, Lena delivers her third child, a daughter named Kate, and, a few months later, Anne delivers a son named Peter. Lena hopes the two wives will bond over their newborns, but Anne is unreceptive and even hostile to Lena’s overtures.

In February 1989, Peter and Kate are both in sixth grade. Growing up next door to each other, they have forged a deep friendship, in part because Peter’s mother, who is susceptible to wild mood swings, often spends long hours alone in her upstairs bedroom. When Peter tries to talk to her, she recoils: “She’d just close her eyes as if the sound of his voice was abrasive, and retreat again to the cave of her room until she was ready to emerge” (40).

One morning when school is dismissed early because of a sudden snowstorm, Peter and Kate walk home together. When Peter comes in from an impromptu snowball fight, he finds his mother livid. Because Peter hid an expensive model ship, which she gave him for Christmas, in the garage after scratching it, Anne has accidentally broken it. Anne slaps him, and Brian runs into the garage to protect Peter. He then attempts to drive Peter to the safety of his brother’s house in Queens, but the storm stops them.

Two years later, on New Year’s Eve, while Peter waits in the car, Anne, perturbed over waiting at the deli counter of the Food King, begins to rant at the customers. The police are called, and Anne is taken away in an ambulance. During the drive to the hospital, the EMTs find Brian’s loaded service revolver in Anne’s purse. When the police later confront Brian at his house, they agree not to file official charges but caution Brian that he needs to be more careful. The incident is never mentioned again. Anne is put on medication, but her behavior remains erratic.

Two years later, on the night before their graduation from junior high, Kate and Peter, whose relationship has blossomed into a fledgling romance, are hanging out with friends when Kate takes an accidental fall. Peter tries to help, but Kate’s mouth is bloody. Anne storms out of the house and demands Peter go inside. She has grown to dislike Kate and questions her intentions with Peter. Peter protests their innocence, but Anne is adamant. In the kitchen, she threatens Peter with a meat mallet and demands he never see Kate again.

Later that night, Peter sneaks out. Desperate, he folds a paper airplane with a message to Kate to meet him the next night at midnight and lofts the plane over into the Stanhopes’ lawn. The next night, Kate pulls a sweater over her pajamas and heads out to meet Peter. They kiss. Peter tells Kate her father plans to go to Queens to stay with his brother. Peter refuses to go. He cannot abandon his mother. “I don’t think she’d be okay if I went” (85).

When Kate returns home, she is confronted by her mother. Angry over the deception, Lena storms over to the Stanhopes’ home and waves the paper airplane note she had found in the house and tells a stunned Brian that Peter is “no angel” (87). She returns home, but a few minutes later, a frantic Peter comes to their door. He needs to call the police: his mother has a gun. Francis decides to go next door, certain that Brian has his off-duty gun locked and that the gun is harmless. Anne answers the door. She collapses to her knees and, before Francis can react, pulls the gun from the couch cushions and fires at him: a single shot, point blank.