Dear Zoe

“But nothing changes everything by itself. Even things that seem like they do. Like me missing the bus on what looked like any other September morning until those planes flew into the tallest buildings in the world. Even you dying, that same day, when I was supposed to be watching you. Or go back to the beginning, around the kitchen table. We could have named you anything and it would have all come out the same.

On the news they say that history is going to be separated by what happened before that day and what will happen after it. But they don’t know what they’re saying to me.”

In the first part of this quote, Tess suggests that Zoe’s death was fated from the beginning, even before she was born. She believes that small events aren’t random but create a domino effect that cannot be altered. Over the course of the book, however, she comes to question and challenge this belief. In the final part of this quote, Tess articulates the tension between the global tragedy of September 11 and the personal tragedy of Zoe’s death. The relationship between these two coincidental events causes Tess a great deal of internal conflict and guilt, complicating her experience of grief.

“David I think is one of those people who’s been wise since he was a little kid. He seems like he’s always known how to live his life just so. I don’t think I’ll ever be like that. We both try real hard, David and me, but it just misses somehow, sort of like the story he wrote about me.”

Tess’s relationship with her stepfather, David, is complex, especially because Tess believes she’s unlike him, without an idea of how to live her life “just so.” The irony, however, is that she and David have more in common than she realizes: They’re both writers, for example, and they both are searching for ways to connect more fully with each other. Nevertheless, they often “just miss” each other, and the failure to be fully understood causes Tess a great deal of pain and emotional isolation.

“Even though it’s almost been a year, sometimes I still miss you so much it feels like someone is pushing their finger into the base of my throat and I cry like it just happened yesterday. But now when I cry like that it kind of feels like it cleans me out, and each time it feels like I’m going to have a little longer until it happens again and I usually do. It’s not that I’m missing you less. It’s more like I’m finding a place to keep you.”

This vivid description of grief is rich with physical sensory imagery and metaphor, demonstrating the profound depth of Tess’s grief: It effects not just her mind but also her body. She doesn’t miss Zoe any less, but she finds a way to hold on to her longer each time she cries, suggesting an evolution in her relationship with grief. Her relationship to her experience of grief and loss changes over the course of the book as she moves further away from the events of September 11 and reexamines them more closely.

“Every living person, even ones who lost no one, will be thinking of all those people who fell out of the sky and no one except Mom and David and Em and me will be thinking of you. And I will have to feel all the guilt again. Not just the guilt that goes along with remembering that day and you, which is always there, but the guilt that tightens around my chest because I don’t care about all those others, because I even resent them for dying on the day that should been yours alone.”

Here, Tess articulates the struggle of having lost Zoe on the same day as a national tragedy. The coincidence means that Tess’s family feels isolated in their grief, as others think of the victims of September 11 rather than Zoe. Tess, who already feels responsible for Zoe’s death, feels guilt for not caring about the victims of September 11 and for resenting them for shifting the focus of her personal tragedy to the national tragedy. Tess’s honesty here allows readers to understand her dual trauma—the trauma of September 11 and the trauma of watching her sister’s death—in its full complexity and rawness.

“I should have been pissed at David but instead it was like I felt myself loving him a little bit for the first time on my own terms—not because he was my stepdad or because Mom loved him or because he took care of us and kept us safe, not for the things he did, but for once because I could see who he was. Maybe he showed himself that way to me all the time and that was the first day I was old enough to see it, I don’t know.”

Tess’s relationship with her stepfather is complex, and here we see that Tess doesn’t always understand who he truly is. In this small moment, however, Tess “sees” David clearly for the first time, a moment she equates with growing up and growing older. Throughout the novel, Tess struggles with feeling simultaneously like she wants to be seen and wants to remain invisible, and this quotation reveals the power in being seen—that seeing someone properly can lead to love them.

“I had put Em to bed and I was watching TV and I heard her start to cry. I went into her room and asked her what the matter and she said, ‘I’m lonely.’ But it was spooky because it wasn’t like she meant she was lonely just then but all the time. Like she lived her days that way, got through them, but then it all caught up to her at night that she was this little solitary being.”

Tess thinks deeply about the inner lives of the other characters, as she does here, considering her sister Em’s relationship to loneliness. Because Em is a child, others might not consider her capable of having a rich inner life and experiencing profound emotional pain; Tess understands intuitively that just because Em is young doesn’t mean she doesn’t have thoughts about loneliness. Tess honors Em’s emotional experience in the same way that she honors Zoe’s: Though young, she understands both Em and Zoe as characters with vivid inner worlds.

“I was only eleven years old but it was like this gap close between us. Even though mom wasn’t quite twenty when she had me she still always seemed like all the other moms until that day. It was like all of a sudden our lives got squeezed together. I could have a baby now and be to somebody else what she was to me. It brought us together like nothing else could have and I remember her looking at me across the table that day and starting to cry with this big smile on her face.”

Tess’s experience of getting her period is an emotional one with profound psychological implications, allowing her to see her mother and her relationship with her with fresh eyes. They are brought closer by the possibility that Tess could have a baby and become a mother one day; Tess understands her mother in a new way, as someone much closer to her in age than she originally thought. Ironically, Tess often occupies a maternal role in her family, caring for Em and even Zoe in the way a mother might, and this added responsibility causes conflict between her and her mother.

“It’s a picture of Mom’s hair and your face. But without knowing it everyone sees Mom’s face in yours. That’s the kind of face you had. The kind that reflected the world and made it beautiful.”

Tess often notes that her mother is beautiful, and here she says that everyone sees “Mom’s face” in Zoe’s, implying that Zoe, too, is beautiful. She takes the description one step further, however; she doesn’t merely describe Zoe’s face as beautiful, but rather describes her face as something capable of making beauty. The distinction is small but important, turning Zoe from a passive object of beauty into an active agent of beauty, a force who creates the beauty of the world rather than simply existing within it. It is a powerful analysis of Zoe’s face that reveals the profound love Tess feels for her sister.

“That could have been the beginning of something maybe, if David and I were different people. Instead, it was the beginning of him getting Em up for school every day, getting to work late, and coming home even later. So that meant it was also the beginning of me putting Em to bed most nights. In a way we were taking care of Em together, but we were doing it apart. And no one was really taking care of either of us, so we had that in common. But it wasn’t the beginning of what it could have been because David and I weren’t very good at being what we could be, just what we were. And after you died, I mean, after what happened that day, it felt like we had no chance anymore.”

Tess’s mother is too overcome with grief to act as a caregiver to David or Tess. David, likewise, doesn’t act as a true parent figure to Tess, busy as he is with work, Em, and processing his own grief. Tess’s experience is one of profound isolation: She is unable to share in her grief with David, Em, or her mother, even though, as she points out, she and David share things “in common.” Still, Tess blames her and David equally for their failure to connect. Though she is a teenager and David is an adult, Tess ascribes equal blame for their failure to connect. This blame, in part, is related to the feelings of guilt she has over her role in Zoe’s death: David and Tess have “no chance anymore,” not just because of Zoe’s death, but because of “what happened that day,” alluding vaguely to Tess’s perceived failure to adequately watch her sister.

“That’s one of the strangest parts about being a stepchild. You get to actually watch your parents fall in love and then get comfortable with each other. And what’s even weirder is that there isn’t any security in that, especially as you get older and see how things can change. People who fall in love can fall out of it.”

Tess finds herself worrying over the implications of her mother’s flirtation with Justin, the grocery store clerk. While she’s not sure what’s happened between them, the apprehensive and grave tone underlying “people who fall in love can fall out it” suggests her immense fear that her David and her mother’s marriage might be undergoing some sort of rupture. Interestingly, Tess refers to her mother and David here as her “parents,” betraying a closeness and intimacy with David that she usually denies.

“Part of me had never given up feeling like my Dad still had the same powers he had when I was eight. I guess that’s what I was expecting, or at least hoping, when I called him after Mom tore up that letter from Justin. For him to pick me up in whatever rusted-out chariot he was driving and rescue me, make me invisible again.”

Tess engages in some magical thinking here, believing that her father will rescue her, even though she knows it’s not possible. Significantly, Tess equates her father rescuing her with “making her invisible.” As much as Tess longs for connection with her father (and others), she also longs to go unnoticed, an internal conflict that she struggles with over the course of the book. The use of the word “chariot” is significant in that it likens her father to a Greek god; however, even Tess acknowledges that the chariot will be rusted out, revealing that she knows, to some extent, she’s deluding herself into believing her father can whisk her away and solve her problems.

“It’s weird how it seems like even though people in my Dad’s neighborhood live close enough to touch each other through their window they don’t care who hears what they’re saying or doing. It’s like the whole street is a dysfunctional family and the houses aren’t really houses but different rooms in one big long house.”

Tess’s father’s neighborhood is a poorer neighborhood than Tess’s mother’s, and Tess notes that the houses are much closer together. Tess likens the houses to many rooms in one house, creating a sense of de facto community among the neighbors. While Tess was isolated at her mother and David’s house, here, the neighbors are in close proximity, creating opportunities for connection, as with Jimmy Freeze. Tess’s father belongs to a different socioeconomic class than David and her mother, furthering the contrast between Tess’s father and David.

“People like my dad a lot. Even David and people who think he’s wasted his life, because he either makes you think he’s doing exactly what he wants to be doing and wouldn’t trade places with you in a million years, or he makes you laugh.”

Tess’s reflections on her father reveal him to be charismatic and admirable, a likeable person even among “people who think he’s wasted his life.” Nick is indeed a complex character, simultaneously likeable and infuriating, a man of many contradictions. Tess also notes the power of her father’s sense of humor here, which Zoe in particular enjoyed. Tess, like her father, “makes you laugh” with her wry sense of humor throughout the book, used to undercut moments of darkness.

“When I was at home everything old was still there except you so I could never look anywhere or even be anywhere without feeling like you should be there too. Jimmy was something new in a new place and it helped take up the space where you were. I even started to understand about Mom and Justin and I felt bad for her that the one thing that maybe made her feel better for a little while was something just about the whole world would see as wrong.”

Tess notes the importance of leaving her home to process some of her grief surrounding Zoe’s death; at her father’s, she’s able to get away from the memory of Zoe and the feeling that Zoe should be there. While living with her father is an escape, it is also a crucial developmental choice for Tess, and the distance from her family allows her to grow in meaningful ways. Through her relationship with Jimmy, Tess is able to empathize more deeply with her mother, understanding her relationship with Justin.

“She yelled really loud, which never does, so it scared me. ‘Then why don’t I get to do anything about it? Mom gets to lay on the couch and sleep all the time. Daddy gets to stay at work all night. You get to leave like you’re not even in our family anymore. What am I supposed to do?’ She was crying hard now. ‘I do everything just like before, Tess! I do everything the same! I’m the littlest one left and no one’s telling me what to do!”

Here, Em has a justifiable outburst about the difficulties she experiences in Zoe’s absence. As a young child, Em is overlooked by the adults around her, Tess included. Her emotions rise to the surface, and she expresses her frustration with her family members for prioritizing their escapes over caring for her. Furthermore, Em feels she does “everything the same”; unlike her parents and Tess, Em has no escape. This moment prompts Tess to consider Em’s emotional experience more fully.

“I did get lonely for Mom sometimes though. She was so busy with you and Em that I got every teenage girl’s wish: I was left alone. I don’t mean I was neglected or anything […]. I was the one thing she didn’t have to worry about anymore. And for the most part that was okay with me. But sometimes I wanted her to myself again.”

In this quotation, Tess reflects on her relationship with her mother after Em and Zoe were born. While Tess feels isolated in her family after Zoe’s death, this quotation reveals she was lonely even before Zoe’s death while her mother tended to the younger girls. Tess is careful to draw a distinction between being jealous of her sisters and being hungry for her old relationship with her mother, betraying a strong allegiance to both her sisters and her mother. While Tess claims it was okay with her that her mother left her alone, her casual tone feels feigned, masking the pain she felt.

“He looked like a dead body that had been dug up. He had no shirt on and his jeans sagged real low under his little pot belly. Skin just sort of hung off the rest of him.”

Here, Tess describes Travis with striking visual imagery. Metaphorically, Travis is a personification of her father’s drug-dealing business; his return in this chapter foreshadows a resurfacing of danger related to her father’s drug business. Indeed, in the chapters that follow, Tess’s father is arrested for illegal activity. Furthermore, Travis’s lack of shirt and sagging jeans represent a sexual threat to Tess and her coworker Vicky.

“The further away they got from me the harder it was to tell where David stopped and Em began, like they were just one tall person. But not a whole person. There was still a part missing from both of them, a part I’d helped take away and couldn’t put back. And no matter how long I stayed away from them that would still be true.”

The image of David and Em seeming like “one tall person” helps to establish them as an extremely close father–daughter unit, while Tess remains isolated, on the outside of their relationship. She’s neither that close to David nor that close to her father, and her elegiac tone suggest longing for that sort of closeness. Furthermore, Tess notes that there is still a “part missing” that Tess “helped take away.” Tess here refers to Zoe and her perceived role in Zoe’s death; she does not realize, however, that by going to live with her father, she has become a “missing piece,” like Zoe.

“It seems like I never figure things out. Stuff just happens to me and then I see how I should have seen it coming. I hope that changes when you get to be an adult. I don’t want to live my whole life afraid of what’s going to happen next.”

Tess is self-critical, frustrated with her perceived inability to “figure things out” or see things coming. She confuses being an adult with being able to predict the future. By the end of the book, she reaches some peace around not being able to see everything coming, understanding that it’s impossible to predict every twist and turn in a life. Ironically, it is this understanding of life’s unpredictably that marks Tess’s increased maturity and transition into adulthood.

“Then Jimmy’s face disappeared under the covers, and let me tell you he knew how to do the little dance and I lost myself and I stayed in that place where nothing bad had ever happened and Jimmy’s mouth was I swear touching my soul because I had no body anymore and I don’t know if it was Jimmy or the weed but the rush that started to come over me was like nothing I’d ever felt […]. I started to cry from it because all of a sudden it also became something I didn’t deserve to be feeling.”

Tess lyrically describes Jimmy performing oral sex on her, emphasizing the profound emotional impact it has. The physical act is a moment of connection between them, with Jimmy’s mouth touching Tess’s “soul,” alluding to and making more profound their first conversation, in which Jimmy refers to himself as a soul man. While the experience is pleasurable for Tess, it also leaves her feeling overwhelmed, as indicated by the run-on sentences, which mimic her altered emotional and mental state. Indeed, Tess begins to cry because the feelings are so overwhelming and because she believes she doesn’t deserve to feel good, revealing the extent of her guilt over Zoe’s death.

“If I were really fighting the silence of your death I’d be telling your story, not mine. So now I need to tell you because if I don’t I know I’m going back into that hole again […] I need to tell you about that day that still feels like today.”

For Tess, the stakes of revealing the circumstances of Zoe’s death are extremely high: If she doesn’t tell the full story, she risks returning to “that hole,” a reference to her deep depression, during which she considered suicide. Her self-awareness here is a powerful coming-of-age moment: She realizes she has been avoiding telling the full story of Zoe’s death, and in so doing, she’s been more focused on her own story.

“Now my brain is saying, ‘I killed my sister,’ and I have no answer for that except for the wrong one which is that I hate you for it. I hate you. I love you. I hate you. God, sometimes I hate you so much. And I need for that to stop.”

Tess finally articulates the internal conflict she feels with regard to Zoe’s death. Her feelings are complex and indicative of the relentless inner turmoil she’s lived with since Zoe’s death. Her anger over Zoe dying is a natural extension of grief, but Tess cannot process her grief because she hasn’t revealed her feelings to anyone. Finally articulating the hardest, most difficult parts aloud allows the incessant inner conflict to subside, even if it doesn’t stop entirely.

“I have nightmares about all the blood […].Then roll across the floor, bump-bump, bump-bump, a repeating print of myself trailing behind like an unfolded fan of paper dolls, lighter and lighter, until I disappear.”

This quotation is an image from Tess’s nightmares about Zoe’s death and September 11, in which she dreams of blood. The repeating “bump-bump, bump-bump” reflects how the sound of Zoe’s accident haunts Tess and how it has made an indelible impact on her. Similarly, Tess imagines creating a “repeating print of myself” until she “disappears,” metaphorically suggesting the way in which the trauma eats away at Tess, corroding her and threatening to destroy her identity. Through his use of a sentence fragment rather than a full sentence, Beard also demonstrates the fractured nature of Tess’s thought processes in this moment.