The Pillow Wall: A Barrier Between Hearts

What Is the Pillow Wall?

In B.K. Borison's And Now, Back to You, the pillow wall is exactly what it sounds like: a physical divider constructed from pillows down the center of a shared mattress. Delilah Stewart builds it the first night she and Jackson Clark must share a bed, stacking pillows in a line to separate her sleeping space from his. The gesture appears practical—she claims she doesn't want to "assume Jackson's comfort" or "wake up splayed over the top of him like a starfish"—but the wall quickly accrues layers of emotional meaning that define the progression of their relationship.

The wall first appears in Chapter 13, appears implicitly throughout the storm assignment chapters, and meets its definitive end in Chapter 24 when Delilah herself dismantles it. It is not merely a set piece but a barometer of intimacy, a measure of how close Delilah allows anyone to get to her unguarded self.

Where the Pillow Wall Appears

The pillow wall makes its debut as a conscious act of boundary-setting. After Jackson discovers Delilah has been snooping through his toiletry bag and finding a worn Father's Day card repurposed by his sisters, he retreats to the balcony to call his family. Alone in the room, Delilah climbs under the heavy quilt and reaches for the massive stack of pillows, arranging a divide. She falls asleep to the sound of Jackson's voice through the frost-edged window, already half-comforted by his presence before either of them acknowledges what that comfort means.

The wall reappears in Chapter 24, but by then it has changed meaning. Jackson lies awake after his sister Adeline's difficult phone call, avoiding returning to bed, afraid of facing Delilah. He notices the pillow wall is still there—and it stings. He reflects: "That damn pillow wall is another thing that's twisting at me. Last night we didn't bother, but tonight Delilah thought she needed it." His private admission reveals that the wall has become a rejection, a withdrawal of the intimacy they shared the previous night when they slept without a barrier.

Then Delilah wakes. She does not comment. She simply dismantles the pillow wall. She orders Jackson to bring her laptop and insists they watch Casablanca. The act of tearing down the wall herself, without discussion, signals her choice to stop barricading her heart.

How the Symbol's Meaning Changes

The pillow wall shifts through three distinct stages of symbolic meaning across the narrative:

Stage One: Self-Protection and Politeness

When Delilah first builds the wall, she frames it as consideration for Jackson. "I don't want to assume Jackson's comfort," she thinks. But the text undercuts this interpretation immediately. She has just violated his privacy by snooping through his toiletry bag, finding the card that reads "Best Dad Big Brother Ever" with stick figures drawn at the bottom, dated almost a decade ago. The wall, then, is not primarily about Jackson's boundaries. It is about Delilah's retreat. She has glimpsed a vulnerable piece of him—proof of his caretaking role, his tenderness, his long-held responsibilities—and the wall goes up to restore emotional distance.

The stage-one pillow wall is built in the dark, alone, while Jackson is outside on the cold balcony talking to his sisters. It is an act as solitary as it is defensive. She tells herself she does not want to make assumptions. She does not want to presume. But the broader context shows a woman who has learned to expect disappointment, who guards herself against wanting too much from people who might not stay.

Stage Two: A Wound Disguised as a Barrier

By Chapter 24, the pillow wall has transformed from a neutral boundary into an active wound. Jackson knows the wall was absent the previous night. He knows its reappearance is a response to something—perhaps his withdrawal after Adeline's phone call, perhaps his choice to take that call alone in the lobby while Delilah stood in the hotel room feeling "thoroughly and entirely exhausted," fearing he only offers her "things that are fun and easy and bright" while keeping his real burdens private.

The wall now functions as a silent protest. Delilah is not merely protecting herself. She is signaling hurt. Jackson recognizes this instinctively, which is why the wall twists at him. He made himself absent during a difficult moment, and the wall is the physical consequence: a barrier where closeness had been.

Stage Three: Deliberate Dismantling

The most significant symbolic shift comes when Delilah wakes and takes the wall down herself. She does not wait for Jackson to initiate reconciliation. She does not negotiate terms. She simply removes the barrier and orders him into her space with her laptop and her movie. The gesture is both mundane and profound. By dismantling the pillow wall, Delilah chooses vulnerability over self-protection. She chooses to let him back in.

The symbolism is reinforced by everything that follows: the sleepy debate about whether love stories matter as much as war movies, Delilah's insistence that "soft things are important too," and Jackson's realization that with her, "night doesn't feel so lonely anymore." The dismantled wall makes space for that conversation. Without it, they are not merely sharing a bed—they are sharing their fears, their histories, and their slowly merging lives.

Character Connections

Delilah Stewart

The pillow wall is primarily Delilah's symbol, an external representation of her internal architecture of self-protection. She is a woman who has spent years being humiliated by her boss, dismissed by HR, and reduced to turtle costumes and degrading segments. At home, she cares for a grandfather with Alzheimer's, managing phone calls where he slips into the past and asks why she isn't home from school. Delilah's life demands resilience, and resilience has taught her to compartmentalize, to "pack it all away," to anticipate when people might fail her and preemptively withdraw.

The pillow wall is this preemptive withdrawal made literal. It sits on the bed like a chaste border, a way of saying I expect you to keep your distance, and I'm going to enforce mine first. When she dismantles it in Chapter 24, the act carries the weight of everything she is learning to unlearn—the assumption that she must carry her burdens alone, that softness is a liability, that wanting more from people is dangerous.

Jackson Clark

Jackson's relationship to the pillow wall is reactive but revealing. He never builds it. He never comments on it directly. He only notices its presence or absence and feels the difference keenly. When the wall is absent, he holds Delilah's hand beneath it. When it returns, he lies awake staring at ceiling beams, tracing wood grain, and feeling the wall's presence as an accusation.

Jackson's passivity around the wall mirrors his larger struggle: he is slow to recognize his own feelings, hesitant to name them, and deeply afraid of the wrongness he has internalized from his unreliable ex, Camille. The wall is not his creation, but it influences his behavior profoundly. Its dismantling coincides with his admission—first to himself, then to Delilah—that she makes long nights less lonely.

Grandpa Gus Stewart

Gus never directly interacts with the pillow wall, but his presence haunts its meaning. Delilah learned to build emotional barricades partly through the pain of watching him forget her. In Chapter 7, his phone call disorients her minutes before a broadcast: "You were supposed to be home from school an hour ago." She knows she cannot correct him without causing agitation. She has learned when to hold back truth, when to let someone's misperception stand, when to build a wall around her own hurt. The pillow wall in the hotel bed is a gentler version of the same instinct—a way of managing closeness on terms that feel controllable.

Theme Connections

Emotional Vulnerability as Strength

The pillow wall embodies the central tension of emotional vulnerability in the novel. The wall is a defense mechanism, but the novel treats its dismantling as a moment of quiet courage. Delilah does not tear it down in a dramatic gesture. She wakes, she removes the pillows, she orders Jackson to watch a movie with her. The ordinariness of the act is the point—vulnerability, here, is not a grand confession but a refusal to hide.

Opposites Attract and Forced Proximity

The forced proximity trope creates the literal conditions for the pillow wall. The blizzard strands Delilah and Jackson in a lodge with one bed. Without the storm, there is no shared mattress, no need for a divider, and no opportunity for the wall to appear, disappear, and be dismantled. The wall dramatizes what forced proximity always risks: that physical closeness will erode emotional distance whether the characters want it to or not.

Caregiving and Found Family

Jackson's caretaking role for his sisters surfaces through the object that triggers the first pillow wall—the Father's Day card Delilah finds in his toiletry pouch. The card, kept for a decade, is proof of Jackson's long-term devotion to the people he loves. Delilah's response to finding it is to build a barrier, as if the evidence of his deep capacity for love frightens her more than his earlier prickly reserve. The theme threads through the symbol: Delilah must learn that caretaking can be a form of love that includes her, not one she must defend against.

Fate and Meaningful Coincidence

By Chapter 40, Jackson reinterprets the entire arc of their collisions—including, implicitly, the night they shared a bed divided by pillows—through the lens of fate. His speech about "And now, back to you" reframes every mishap, every coffee spill, and every hallway collision as the universe delivering him to Delilah repeatedly. The pillow wall, in this retrospective spiritual framework, becomes one more obstacle that did not ultimately keep them apart. The barrier was there, and then it was gone, and the design of their story absorbed it.

Study Questions

1. What practical reason does Delilah give for building the pillow wall in Chapter 13, and how does her actual motivation differ?

Delilah tells herself she is building the wall out of respect for Jackson's boundaries—she doesn't want to assume his comfort or risk waking up sprawled across him. However, the immediate context undermines this. She has just violated his privacy by snooping through his toiletry bag, discovering an old Father's Day card his sisters gave him. The card reveals Jackson's deep caretaking identity. Building the wall is her reaction to glimpsing his tenderness, a retreat back into safe distance after an uninvited intimacy.

2. How does the pillow wall's meaning change between its construction in Chapter 13 and its reappearance in Chapter 24?

In Chapter 13, the wall is primarily defensive—Delilah protecting herself from the implications of what she learned about Jackson while snooping. By Chapter 24, the wall has become communicative. Jackson notes that they skipped it the previous night, so its reappearance is deliberate. Delilah rebuilt it after Jackson took his sister's phone call alone in the lobby, leaving her feeling shut out of his real struggles. The wall now signals hurt and withdrawal, an accusation as much as a shield. Jackson recognizes this immediately, which is why the wall "twists" at him.

3. What action does Delilah take regarding the pillow wall in Chapter 24, and what does it signal about her emotional state?

Delilah dismantles the pillow wall herself without discussion or fanfare. She wakes, removes the pillows dividing the mattress, and orders Jackson to bring her laptop so they can watch a movie together. This act signals a conscious choice to stop barricading herself from Jackson emotionally. By tearing down the physical barrier, she opens the door to the conversation that follows—a midnight debate about whether love stories matter, in which she argues that "soft things are important too." Her action precedes her words, but the intent is the same: she is choosing closeness over self-protection.

4. How does the pillow wall connect to Delilah's experiences with her grandfather and her workplace?

Delilah's life has taught her to expect disappointment and manage her expectations downward. Her boss Keith humiliates her on air and dismisses her complaints. Her grandfather's Alzheimer's forces her into painful, necessary evasions—she must agree when he thinks she's still in school, because contradicting him worsens his agitation. The pillow wall is a version of the same survival strategy applied to intimacy: it is easier to enforce a barrier herself than to risk someone else breaching it through rejection or absence. When she dismantles the wall, she is choosing a different strategy—hope—across multiple domains of her life.

The Wall's Legacy

The pillow wall is never mentioned again after Chapter 24, and its absence is the point. Once dismantled, it does not need to be rebuilt. The epilogue shows Delilah living fully inside Jackson's life: attending his daughters' cartwheel practice in the park, receiving his Post-it notes that say "I love you," discovering the engagement ring in his sock drawer—and choosing not to push, to let him propose when he's ready. The trust that once required a barrier of pillows to maintain now operates without props. The wall was never about the bed; it was about the distance Delilah believed she needed to survive. When she stops believing that, there is nothing left to build.