Rayford\u2019s saintly dead wife has been plucked away by the very hand of God, thus elevating her above even the chaste pedestal on which he had kept her. This makes our hero\u2019s madonna\/whore complex that much worse.<\/p>\n
He thinks back again to when he \u201cindulged in that make-out session at the Christmas party before Raymie was born.\u201d Earlier, he\u2019d thought of that incident dismissively, as an inconsequential lapse in his otherwise flawless fidelity. Now he has stopped rationalizing his abortive affairs and begun weaving them into a whip and hairshirt with which to punish himself.<\/p>\n
As Rayford ran all those memories through his throbbing head, he felt the deepest regret and remorse a man can feel. He felt like a failure. He was so unworthy of Irene.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Irene was purest good, a saint, and therefore chaste and sexless. Or perhaps she was chaste and sexless, and therefore a saint and the purest good. Those other women \u2014 Hattie, the nameless Christmas-party slut, the prostitutes that flitted about the edges of his subconscious \u2014 they were all \u201ctawdry\u201d and \u201cbeneath him.\u201d Rayford is reminding me more and more of John Leguizamo\u2019s character from Summer of Sam.<\/em> Leguizamo played a sex-obsessed lothario who cheated on his wife because she didn\u2019t do That Thing That Your Wife Won\u2019t Do. Then, when his poor wife offers, he is disgusted by her.<\/p>\nRayford decides it was Irene\u2019s prayers on his behalf that kept him from \u201cultimately defiling his marriage with Hattie Durham.\u201d The immaculate Irene offered intercession for him. Hattie represented an\u00a0ultimate<\/i>\u00a0defiling. Can a madonna\/whore complex get any more literal?<\/p>\n
The remainder of this chapter involves both Rayford and Buck feeling bad about treating Hattie badly, but still treating her badly.<\/p>\n
First we get Rayford, whose new-found self-loathing causes him to reevaluate Hattie\u2019s behavior during their long, warped flirtation:<\/p>\n
He had locked eyes with Hattie numerous times, and they had spent hours alone together over dinners in various cities. But she had never asked him to her room or tried to kiss him or even hold his hand. Maybe she would have responded had he been the aggressor, but maybe not. She might just as easily have been offended, insulted, disappointed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This is a breakthrough of sorts. For the first time he entertains the possibility that Hattie\u00a0isn\u2019t<\/i>\u00a0a tawdry slut. Yet she\u2019s not a saintly model of chastity either:<\/p>\nShe had never suggested anything inappropriate, at least for her age. Young people were more touchy and flirtatious, and she claimed no moral or religious code. \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So if Hattie is not a madonna and not a whore, what is she? Rayford doesn\u2019t have a category for such women. The only woman he can think of in other terms is his daughter, Chloe, so he goes back to obsessing about her for another page or so.<\/p>\n
And now he faced the darkest hours of his soul. He was nervous about Chloe. He wanted her home and safe in the worst way, hoping that having his own flesh and blood in the house would somehow assuage his grief and pain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The phone rings, but it\u2019s not his daughter, it\u2019s Hattie. She asks him if he\u2019s heard from Chloe. \u201cI\u2019m waiting for her call right now, so I really have to get off!\u201d he tells her, abruptly ending the call.<\/p>\n
She sounded hurt. He was sorry about that, but not sorry that he had gotten rid of her for the time being. He knew she was only trying to help and be kind, but she hadn\u2019t been listening. She was alone and afraid just like he was, and no doubt by now she had found out about her family. Oh, no! He hadn\u2019t even asked about them! She would hate him, and why shouldn\u2019t she?\u00a0How selfish could I be?<\/i>\u00a0he wondered.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Mark down the page number. Page 147. Rayford Steele acquires his first faint glimmer of self-knowledge. After more than a hundred pages of treating others\u2019 suffering as an obstacle and inconvenience, he begins to suspect that perhaps he is capable of selfishness. Sure, his main concern seems to be that Hattie doesn\u2019t hate him, so he\u2019s still thinking mainly of himself, just as his main concern over his daughter is that she return home to \u201cassuage his grief and pain.\u201d But still, it\u2019s\u00a0something.<\/i><\/p>\n
Rayford tries to call her back, but her line is busy. She\u2019s already on the phone with Buck Williams:<\/p>\n
She was crying. \u2026 She told Buck about her call to Captain Steele and brought him up to date on who Steele was, that he had lost his wife and son, and that she had been late calling him back after hearing her good news from Buck. \u201cAnd then he just brushed me off because he\u2019s waiting for a call from his daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI can understand that,\u201d Buck tried, rolling his eyes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Buck gets off the phone as quickly as he can, thinking, \u201cMaybe Hattie showed more depth and sense when she wasn\u2019t under stress. He hoped so.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s an odd little passage and it makes Buck seem like even more of a jerk. Yet it seems the authors want us to\u00a0agree<\/i>\u00a0with Buck \u2014 to view Hattie as shallow and lacking sense for getting emotional during the most devastating calamity in the history of the world. The authors also seem, like Buck, to regard Hattie\u2019s response as essentially\u00a0female.<\/i>\u00a0This is what women are like in a crisis, they seem to be saying. They cry and get all needy and become a burden to the menfolk. It\u2019s a kind of naked sexism unmitigated even by notions of chivalry.<\/p>\n
After Buck\u2019s chilly politeness, Hattie calls Rayford again for a final serving of condescension. This time he dutifully asks about her family. He doesn\u2019t really care, but he doesn\u2019t want to appear selfish. Rayford is back to keeping up appearances. So much for the darkest hours of his soul.<\/p>\n
When he hung up, Rayford sat next to the phone with a nagging feeling that he had for sure missed Chloe\u2019s call this time. It made him mad.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
See what pretending to be unselfish gets you? That clinging bitch kept him from talking to his daughter by tying up the phone lines. I don\u2019t know why the phone-obsessed Steele family doesn\u2019t have call-waiting, but it\u2019s probably, like everything bad in Rayford\u2019s life, some woman\u2019s fault.<\/p>\n
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Mark down the page number. Page 147. Rayford Steele acquires his first faint glimmer of self-knowledge. After more than a hundred pages of treating others’ suffering as an obstacle and inconvenience, he begins to suspect that perhaps he is capable of selfishness. Sure, his main concern seems to be that Hattie doesn’t hate him, so he’s still thinking mainly of himself. But still, it’s something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[238],"class_list":["post-30701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-left-behind"],"yoast_head":"\n
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