Chapter 34 — Miri: Summary and Analysis

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

The chapter opens with Miri trying to remind Leah of small, inconsequential memories: the way Leah used to say SMILE aloud whenever someone photographed her, and the way they used to argue about thoughtless things one or the other had done in a dream. Because Leah is finding it hard to breathe outside the water now, Miri isn't sure how much of this she hears, and she considers dipping her head beneath the surface to speak these recollections into Leah's ear. She tells Leah the story of how they met: in a bar where a different song was playing, and when Leah came up to speak to her, the music changed to a track by Mousse T.—a detail Miri says she can't change now, that's just the story of how they met.

Miri has taken to filling glass ramekins with table salt and ferrying them into the bathroom, pouring the salt into the water and allowing it to dissolve. She isn't sure what prompted this, though she's fairly certain Leah appreciates it; occasionally Leah flicks a hand up from the bathwater in a gesture Miri decides to take as thanks.

Carmen calls to report on her eye surgery. The aftereffects are peculiar: everything is tinted a pale tangerine, with shades of figures that cannot be real rotating in the corners of her vision. Carmen says she was told to expect this and isn't worried; what matters is that everything seems clearer than before, and it should improve daily for a week. Miri feels winded by Carmen's happiness and doesn't know how to express this. Carmen mentions she has odd glasses, different colored on each side, and assures Miri she'll recognize her. Miri wants to ask whether Carmen will recognize her in return—how she will look in Carmen's new unencumbered vision, whether she will show up at all—but stays silent.

Carmen then confronts Miri: Miri never told her anything was wrong with Leah. Miri had said Leah was delayed, then that she came back and it was fine. The message Miri left was the first Carmen had heard of anything being wrong.

Miri recalls a weekend alone at her mother's house after her mother was taken to the hospice. She packed things away, not selling the house but dust-sheeting it for some unspecified future point. Disposing of things was less cathartic than it might otherwise have been because this was not an endpoint so much as a suspension. She took out the rubbish, threw away anything perishable, locked up the valuables, and left everything else as she'd found it. There were Tupperware boxes in the fridge—steamed broccoli and an untouched chicken Kiev her mother's nurse must have heated but failed to convince her to eat. Miri thought about eating these herself but found the idea distasteful and threw them away.

Later she sat in her mother's chair near the windows and thought about how her mother sometimes spoke more freely in bad weather, as though the rattle of sleet against the windowpanes served as cover for her confidences. Miri thought of it this way: with the rain, conversation. The atmosphere attempting openness and never quite achieving it, her mother returning to reticence before Miri ever had a chance to get a complete foothold. When Miri later brought up something her mother had said—her feelings on the divorce, her thoughts on something she'd read—her mother would look at her with confusion, as though the very act of sharing was expunged from her mind as soon as it happened. Her mother would say that doesn't sound right when Miri quoted herself back, then carry on discussing something impersonal like the weather or a neighbor's parking.

Below the house runs a partially eroded charcoal road down to the beach. Once down, you clamber across quartz-veined rocks to reach the sand. The beach floods at high tide, leaving tide pools alive with green crabs making for the relative safety of higher ground, jellyfish smashed to bits and uncoupled from themselves against the rocks. Sitting in her mother's chair that weekend, Miri watched the tide and did not consider making her way down. Leah messaged hoping Miri was OK and sent a picture of a cat she'd seen on the pavement outside her building, a video of her making kissing noises at it and being ignored. Miri replied asking what it felt like when Leah's dad died, then immediately retracted the question, saying her mother isn't dead so it's a stupid thing to ask.

Key Events

• Miri tries to remind Leah of small memories, including the story of how they met in a bar when the music changed to a Mousse T. track.

• Miri begins pouring table salt from glass ramekins into Leah's bathwater; Leah acknowledges this with a hand gesture.

• Carmen calls about her eye surgery, reporting everything appears tinted pale tangerine with strange rotating figures in her peripheral vision, though clearer.

• Miri wants to ask Carmen if she will recognize her but stays silent.

• Carmen confronts Miri about never telling her anything was wrong with Leah.

• Miri recalls a weekend at her mother's house after her mother entered hospice, packing away perishables and dust-sheeting the home.

• Miri remembers how her mother confided during bad weather but denied it later.

• Leah messaged hoping Miri was OK and sent a cat picture; Miri asked how Leah's father's death felt, then retracted the question.

Character Development

Miri: This chapter deepens Miri's portrait as someone caught between caretaking and avoidance. Her ritual of salting Leah's bathwater is a practical, almost devotional act, yet she can't articulate what prompted it. Her silence with Carmen—wanting to ask whether Carmen will recognize her but not doing so—mirrors her broader pattern of not asking the questions that matter. The memory of her mother's house shows the roots of this reticence: a mother who confided only under cover of bad weather and then denied having spoken, teaching Miri that openness is fragile and often retracted.

Leah: Though largely silent in this chapter, Leah's condition is starkly rendered. She struggles to breathe outside the water, and her only communication is a hand gesture from the bath. The fact that Miri considers dipping her head underwater to speak into Leah's ear suggests Leah is becoming more creature than person, inhabiting a medium where ordinary speech no longer reaches her.

Carmen: Carmen's eye surgery gives her a new clarity—literally and figuratively. She's cheerful, optimistic, and looking forward to improvement. But her confrontation with Miri reveals the cost of Miri's silence: Carmen had no idea anything was wrong with Leah until Miri's message. Carmen's question—you never told me anything—is the chapter's sharpest accusation.

Miri's mother: Though absent, Miri's mother looms over the chapter. Her pattern of confiding only in bad weather and then denying it, her refusal to eat, and the suspended state of her house all resonate with Leah's situation. The mother's house, dust-sheeted for an unspecified future, is a physical emblem of anticipatory grief.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

Memory and recollection: Miri's attempts to remind Leah of their shared past—the bar, the music, the arguments about dreams—are acts of preservation. But the chapter questions whether memory can hold a person who is transforming.

Salt as ritual substance: Miri's pouring of table salt into Leah's bathwater is a small, unexplained ritual. Salt preserves, purifies, and evokes the sea; it's an attempt to make Leah's environment more hospitable, even if Miri can't say why she started.

Vision and clarity: Carmen's surgery gives her clearer sight, but Miri's fear—whether Carmen will recognize her—inverts the idea of clarity. Seeing clearly doesn't guarantee being seen.

Suspension versus endpoint: Miri's mother's house is not sold but dust-sheeted for some unspecified future point. This is not an endpoint but a suspension—a state that also describes Leah's condition and Miri's own waiting.

Reticence and failed communication: The chapter is full of things unsaid: Miri doesn't ask Carmen about recognition, doesn't tell Carmen about Leah, and retracts her question about Leah's father. Carmen's confrontation names this pattern directly.

Weather as cover for confession: Miri's mother spoke freely only in bad weather, as though sleet against the windows served as cover. This motif connects confession with concealment—openness that can't survive the return of calm.

Tide and impermanence: The beach below the house floods at high tide, with green crabs seeking higher ground and jellyfish smashed against the rocks. The tide's movement is a figure for change, loss, and the uncoupling of things.

Anticipatory grief: Miri's weekend at her mother's house—packing, dust-sheeting, waiting—is grief in advance of death. It parallels her current situation with Leah, where she is also suspended between hope and loss.

Transformation of the body: Leah's difficulty breathing outside water, and the jellyfish uncoupled from themselves, both point to bodily transformation and the dissolution of the familiar self.

Recognition and being seen: Miri's unspoken question to Carmen—will you recognize me—echoes her larger fear about Leah: whether the person she loves will still see her, and whether she will still see the person she loves.

Why This Chapter Matters

Chapter 34 is a pivotal chapter for understanding Miri's psychology and the novel's central concerns. It connects Miri's present caretaking of Leah with her past caretaking of her mother, revealing a pattern of anticipatory grief and suspended endings. The chapter also introduces the crucial theme of recognition—Miri's fear that she won't show up in Carmen's new vision, and by extension, her fear about Leah's transformation. Carmen's confrontation is the first time Miri's silence about Leah's condition is directly challenged, and it sets up questions about what Miri has been hiding and why. The chapter's imagery—salt, tide, jellyfish, dust-sheeted rooms—coheres into a meditation on impermanence and the limits of love's ability to hold a changing person.

Study Questions

1. Why does Miri pour salt into Leah's bathwater, and what does this ritual suggest about her relationship to Leah's transformation?

Miri herself doesn't know what prompted the salt ritual. She's fairly certain Leah appreciates it, and Leah acknowledges it with a hand gesture. The salt evokes the sea—Leah's new element—and also preservation, as salt historically preserves what would otherwise decay. The ritual suggests Miri is trying to make Leah's environment more hospitable, to keep Leah present in the world, even as she can't articulate why. It's an act of devotion that bypasses language, much like the hand gesture that serves as Leah's thanks.

2. How does the memory of Miri's mother's house illuminate Miri's current situation with Leah?

The mother's house is dust-sheeted for an unspecified future point—not sold, not abandoned, but suspended. This is not an endpoint but a suspension, a state that mirrors Leah's condition and Miri's own waiting. The mother's pattern of confiding only in bad weather and then denying it taught Miri that openness is fragile and often retracted. Miri's weekend there, watching the tide and not going down to the beach, is a figure for her current paralysis: she watches change happen but doesn't act. The memory also shows Miri's history of anticipatory grief—she was grieving her mother before her mother died, just as she is now grieving Leah while Leah is still present.

3. What does Carmen's eye surgery and Miri's unspoken question reveal about the theme of recognition?

Carmen's surgery gives her clearer vision, and she's cheerful about the improvement. But Miri wants to ask whether Carmen will recognize her—how she will look in Carmen's new unencumbered vision, whether she will show up at all. This inverts the idea of clarity: seeing clearly doesn't guarantee being seen. The question also extends to Leah. If Leah is transforming into something other than human, will she still recognize Miri? And will Miri recognize Leah? The chapter suggests that recognition is not automatic but requires effort, attention, and the willingness to be seen.

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