A Review Series of Anonymous Tip, by Michael Farris<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\nPp. 391-397<\/em><\/p>\nAfter meeting with Lynn, Gwen has a sudden urge to get out of Spokane and go somewhere on a vacation. The only vacation\u00a0she can afford, she realizes, is to go visit her sister Pam, who lives in California. You know, the sister she hasn\u2019t once talked to about any of this. The sister I\u2019ve long suspected she must have\u00a0some sort of feud with, or irreconcilable differences. And because Gwen never goes anywhere without her parents, she invites them to come along with her and Casey. Her mom seems okay with the idea until she says she wants to leave tomorrow<\/em>.<\/p>\n\u201cMom, I\u2019m serious. With everything that has happened, especially now because of Gordon\u2019s death, everything has tumbled in on me, and I need to get out of here for a while. I don\u2019t want to do anything elaborate, just go to Pam\u2019s and sit on her patio. Go to the park. Walk around the mall. Maybe go into San Francisco one day. Just take it easy. I think it would be good for Casey, too.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
June acquiesces and says she\u2019ll talk to Stan.<\/p>\n
Gwen\u2019s supervisor and father both understood the circumstances surrounding Gordon\u2019s death.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Is it bad that I initially thought \u201csupervisor\u201d and \u201cfather\u201d were both meant to apply to Stan?<\/p>\n
The emergency vacation was approved. The nine-hundred-mile drive would begin in the morning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Gwen let Lynn know where they were going but told her not to tell Peter how to contact her unless there was a lawsuit emergency.<\/p>\n
Now we switch to Donna and her prospective in-laws. Stephen is arriving on a flight to Spokane, to be sworn in as a lawyer in Washington State. Donna has arranged for some one-on-one time with Stephen during his brief visit, which is important because she\u2019s planning to make Stephen her method of getting out of Spokane the moment the lawsuit is over. To do this, she\u00a0needs to shore up her somewhat rocky relationship with him. I find myself curious, though, why a whip-smart feminist woman like Donna needs to use a man as her escape route. Couldn\u2019t she just get a new job elsewhere and move? This really doesn\u2019t seem like consistent character development.<\/p>\n
We get a bit of travelogue after the flight arrives:<\/p>\n
They cuddled in the back seat of his dad\u2019s Mercedes as they drove down the Interstate, up the South Hill, past the modest houses south of Comstock Park where Gwen lived, and on to the modern imposing homes of rock and glass that hung on the edge of the cliff that abruptly defined that part of Spokane.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And with that, we\u2019re back to Gwen, Casey, Stan, and June.<\/p>\n
Gwen sat in the back seat with Casey and read books to her for the first hour or so until they left the Interstate at Ritzville, turning south of rate Tri-Cities on U.S. 395.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Gwen actually interacting<\/em> with Casey? What is this!<\/p>\nCasey settled in to play with her dolls for a while, which allowed Gwen the luxury to stare out the window.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Dolls would be Farris\u2019s go-to little girl toy, wouldn\u2019t they. Predictable.<\/p>\n
Once Casey falls asleep, Stan wants to know what\u2019s going on between Gwen and Peter. Gwen hadn\u2019t been telling her parents any of it, remember. But now she\u2019s trapped in the car with them. Bad move, Gwen. You\u2019re stuck. Gwen tells them that she likes him and he likes her, but it got \u201ccomplicated\u201d and \u201cmaybe it\u2019s over.\u201d She says they fought after Gordon died but doesn\u2019t give details. She says Peter is still very angry with her. Stan tells Gwen Peter still cares for her, that he could see that when he ran into him at the funeral. This is so awkward<\/em>.<\/p>\n\u201cI saw the way he looked at you in church. he may have run right out to avoid you, but his eyes told me a great deal. He still cares.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDad, I just don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGwen, listen to your Father. Peter wouldn\u2019t give up on you,\u201d June said. \u201cI think he\u2019s the greatest. He\u2019s got to come around.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
They correctly deduct that she wanted to go on the vacation to get away from Peter, and they tell her that means she cares too. Gwen is very uncomfortable. I mean, my god. She has basically just been told to marry Peter by her parents. And can someone tell me why the hell \u201cFather\u201d was capitalized there? I\u2019m not familiar with it being capitalized unless it refers to God<\/em>. And for the love of all that is holy, can we avoid mothers telling adult\u00a0daughters to \u201clisten to your father\u201d to begin with?! Jeez!<\/p>\nAnd now back to Donna and Stephen.<\/p>\n
Stephen is taking Donna for dinner at the Manito Country Club.<\/p>\n
They dressed in their very best. Donna\u2019s dress had been a gift from Stephen\u2019s parents at Christmas. It was Stephen\u2019s favorite.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Maybe it\u2019s just me, but I\u2019d think it was weird if my in-laws gave me a dress. That\u2019s just weird. I\u2019m not a barbie for others to dress. And remember, Donna and Stephen weren\u2019t even engaged, much less married, when Stephen\u2019s parents gave her this dress. Double weird.<\/p>\n
Donna and Stephen talk around the bush for a bit until Stephen realizes Donna is trying to get him to ask her to marry him (something he\u2019s done before, but she\u2019s always turned him down). \u201cYou are making this pretty awkward for me,\u201d she says. \u201cGenerally a girl gets asked these things.\u201d\u00a0Farris tells us that Stephen \u201chad enjoyed himself a great deal\u201d in D.C. and that he \u201chad dated a half-dozen girls or so\u201d and \u201chated to give all that up so soon.\u201d But he remembers that he\u2019s going to return to Spokane in two years, and that his parents like her, and that she\u2019s the sort of girl he\u2019s supposed to marry, so he obligingly asks her to marry him again, and she says yes, ecstatic to have an escape plan.<\/p>\n
I have to wonder, though. Donna knows Stephen is planning to move back to Spokane, right? Is she just wanting to get out of Spokane\u00a0until things have blown over, and two years will be enough? Where will she work once she\u2019s back? Or does Farris expect her to become a housewife? Anyway, they start haggling over wedding dates, and ultimately settle over getting married on Valentine\u2019s Day and having a honeymoon later.<\/p>\n
As he kissed her across the table, he wondered if he should cancel his date for next Friday night. Probably not, he concluded. After all, he wasn\u2019t engaged when he made it. It was his first loophole, and he still wasn\u2019t officially a lawyer until Monday.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This is just dandy. Nice catch, Donna.<\/p>\n
What lesson is Farris trying to tell here, exactly? Obviously Stephen is a playboy, and obviously that\u2019s a problem. But not so long ago, it wasn\u2019t considered a problem so long as the young man eventually settled down with a good, marriage-quality wife\u2014i.e. Donna. Sewing wild oats before marriage was expected. Stephen feels more like a typical old school gentleman than Farris may intend. Or is<\/em> that Farris\u2019 intention? But why? What is the purpose of all of this? It seems fairly clear that Stephen is going to eventually humiliate Donna by leaving her. Is Farris simply trying to bring\u00a0our villain\u00a0to an unhappy end, when the book concludes? Or is there a greater moral I\u2019m having trouble working out?<\/p>\nEither way, every woman in this book seems stuck in some man\u2019s story.\u00a0Except maybe Rita, although, to be fair, she was caught up in Blackburn\u2019s wrongdoing, and is still tied to his story, and his fate.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every woman in this book seems stuck in some man’s story. Except maybe Rita, although, to be fair, she was caught up in Blackburn’s wrongdoing, and is still tied to his story, and his fate. <\/p>\n
Click through to read more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":30460,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[469],"class_list":["post-30440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-anonymous-tip"],"yoast_head":"\n
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