Chapter 86: Gloves – Summary & 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 Iris describing early April rain and the oblivious vigour of spring plants. She notes that a young woman from Toronto has drowned in the Louveteau Gorge, the first corpse of the year, and that the victim’s relatives are already being treated with suspicion. Later, Walter arrives for his annual spring home-maintenance visit. He inspects the property and decides to replace a step. During coffee, Iris notices his brand-new yellow leather work gloves, which Myra forced him to wear after a neighbour’s accident. Iris jokingly suggests he leave the gloves at her house to avoid wearing them. She reveals her heart is failing: her doctor has changed her medication and hinted at a transplant. Iris dreads the possibility of carrying a stolen child’s heart. As Walter leaves, Iris imagines him eventually hoisting one end of her coffin.
Key Events
- Spring setting and a drowned woman – Iris observes the weather and notes that a young female drug user from Toronto has died in the river; her local relatives are already viewed with suspicion.
- Walter’s seasonal tune-up – He arrives with his tools and inspects the house and grounds, fixing the garden gate and planning to replace a front step.
- Coffee and gloves – During their ritual coffee break, Iris comments on Walter’s new yellow leather gloves. He explains Myra made him take them after a neighbour cut off his fingers with a fretsaw.
- Iris’s heart condition – She admits her heart has been “acting up.” Her doctor has changed her pills, hinted at surgery, and mentioned a transplant, which Iris finds morally troubling.
- Walter’s departure – After coffee, Walter leaves his boots on the porch and tiptoes across the kitchen. Iris foresees him helping to carry her coffin.
Character Development
- Iris – Reveals her vulnerability and fatalism about aging and death. She uses dark humour (the organ “unit” as a dishwasher) and wrestles with the ethics of accepting a heart from a dead child. Her voice is lonely, conscious of her own decay.
- Walter – Loyal, practical, and quietly caring. He ignores Iris’s protests and performs the maintenance anyway. His new gloves show Myra’s concern for his safety, but he would rather not wear them—yet he complies. His tiptoe walk across the polished floor and his imagined role as pallbearer underline his steadfastness.
- Myra – Remains offstage but is a forceful presence: she stocks Iris’s fridge, enforces the “no dirt” rule, and insists Walter take the gloves. Her overprotectiveness both annoys and protects.
- Reenie and Laura – Mentioned only in memory (“Don’t touch that money” / false-god accusation), but their voices still shape Iris’s guilty conscience.
Themes, Symbols, or Motifs
- Mortality and bodily decay – Iris’s heart “acting up” and the doctor’s talk of a “whole new unit” make age and death central. The “vaporous novelistic heroine” image compares her fading presence to a forgotten book.
- Care and obligation – Walter’s annual fix-up, Myra’s stocking of the fridge, and the gloves themselves are acts of reluctant care. The gloves symbolise both protection and an imposed burden.
- Guilt and the living – The drowned woman’s relatives are blamed unjustly; Iris notes that “whoever’s left alive gets blamed.” This echoes Iris’s own guilt about her sister Laura’s death.
- The ethics of transplant – Iris imagines black-market hearts stolen from street children, linking her survival to another’s violent death. She asks, “Could I live with myself, knowing I was carrying the heart of a dead child?”
- The persistence of nature – Spring plants “have no memories” and repeat their cycles indifferently. The river’s “alluring” sound contrasts with human loss.
Why This Chapter Matters
This chapter deepens Iris’s physical and moral decline. It brings the novel’s running concern with trust, care, and the body—fragile, borrowed, or violated—to an intimate focus. Walter’s gloves, a small domestic detail, become a cipher for the obligations that tie people together, even when they resist. The river corpse links the personal to the communal: no death occurs in isolation, and the living are always suspect. Iris’s heart trouble foreshadows her eventual end and crystallises the ethical dilemmas she has faced throughout her life—namely, whether she can accept something good (love, a transplant) that may have come from harm.
Study Questions and Answers
1. Why does Iris suggest Walter leave his gloves at her house, and what does this reveal about her state of mind?
Iris wants Walter to abandon the gloves as a small act of rebellion against Myra’s fussing. The suggestion shows her loneliness—she later imagines holding the gloves as a companion—and her dark humour. It also reveals her helplessness: she cannot alter her own failing health, but she can collude in a minor deception.
2. How does the drowned woman’s story echo Iris’s own situation?
Both women are “in a hurry” and both create a “waste of time.” The dead woman’s relatives face suspicion simply for being alive; Iris similarly lives under the shadow of Laura’s suicide, feeling guilt by association. The river, a “place of no return,” mirrors Iris’s sense of being drawn toward an inevitable end.
3. What does Iris mean when she says the doctor’s talk of a “new unit” treats her heart “as if it’s a dishwasher we’re talking about”?
She criticises the depersonalising medical language that reduces a vital organ to a replaceable machine. This dehumanization contrasts with her visceral horror at receiving a stolen heart. The metaphor underscores her internal conflict between wanting to live and refusing to benefit from someone else’s death.