AUTHOR’S NOTES AND READERS GUIDE

I WANTED TO WRITE a morally complicated story—a story about a good person who has succumbed to their worst impulse. What prompts someone to stray from the straight and narrow? What if they were convinced justice was on their side?

And when my mother entered an assisted living facility, I realized such a place could offer a perfect setting for that kind of story. I imagined a protagonist whose buried heartache and anger—which she thought she had dealt with—reemerged with new urgency. Throw in the paradoxical freedom of being near the end of life—and the sudden sense such a protagonist might have of being both above suspicion and beyond consequences—and the story glimmered into view.

Frannie’s story and the actions she pursues raise several themes.

Relationships Between Women, and Friendship

• Frannie’s friendship for Katherine is real, but as time goes on, she develops doubts about Katherine’s values and priorities. Have you experienced losing respect for a friend? Or had a friend whose partner you disliked or disrespected?
• Frannie recognizes that Iris needs to focus her anger on someone. She understands that, as her mother, she is the safest target. But at one point Iris’s anguish leads her to reject Frannie, even though she clearly needs her mother’s support. Iris’s grief also impacts her relationships with her brother, her nephews, and her friends. Have you observed tragedy driving people apart instead of bringing them together? Or someone’s grief being so intractable they are impossible to be with?

Justice, Revenge, and Complicity

• Once Frannie realized who Nathaniel was, what should she have done? Ignored him? Denounced him publicly? Avoided both him and Katherine, with no explanation? In a place like Ridgewood, how would that have played out?
• While the seeds of her action are taking root, Frannie does not look too closely at her own thinking. Have you ever done something (big or small, consequential or not) for which you realized (in retrospect) that you’d been preparing, even if, at the time, you would not have acknowledged it?
• In addition to the central action, there is another question that percolates in the background: What evils might a person deliberately overlook in someone they love (as Katherine overlooks Nathaniel’s misdeeds)? And what might other people in their lives make of that complicity?

Belief

Several times Frannie recalls her religious upbringing (quoting sister Marie-Clotilde, referencing going to church, her mother-in-law’s rosary.) But her faith has deserted her.

“I fingered the rosaries, remembering all the years of prayer. For a long time I’d hoped fervently that there was some sort of accounting on the other side of the divide … a pit of suffering and retribution. Now the idea that there might be such a place filled me with dread.… What a horrible irony: imagining a happy afterlife now that I’d lost the right of entry.”

She even seeks solace in the chapel:

“I kept trying to pray, even though it didn’t seem to be working. Some small spark of belief—or perhaps hope for comfort—instilled from all the years, still flickered.”

Think about the emotional stakes of losing one’s faith, especially late in life—after decades of belief.

Place and Situation

• Ridgewood is almost a character onto itself. When people move into senior housing, there is a cultural tendency to write them off as no longer in control of their own lives. How accurate or inaccurate is that? Frannie is not cute, doddering, quirky, or irascible—or warm and fuzzy. What are some other stereotypes of older women? Of older men?
• Have you ever been surprised by someone asserting themselves in unexpected ways? What prompted it? Why was it surprising? What assumptions or patterns did it disrupt?

Status, Hierarchies, and Class

• The first time Frannie goes to lunch with Katherine, she notices how easily Katherine gives direction to the staff.

  “She did it graciously, but she was definitely comfortable giving orders. I, on the other hand, was not used to these sorts of hierarchies. One of the biggest challenges I’d had in Ridgewood was talking with the staff. I didn’t know what was appropriate. The aides didn’t work directly for the residents, but still, they took care of us: personally, intimately. And I knew I would sometime need to make demands, but the lines felt blurry to me.”

Think about and discuss the interplay of dependence, privacy, autonomy and interactions with family the residents and staff negotiate in a place like Ridgewood.

• Early on, Nathaniel emphasizes the fact that he has a grand piano in his apartment. Frannie realizes “Just like every other community, Ridgewood had hierarchies some people were very invested in reinforcing.” Think about how markers of status, attitude, and class (wealth, kids, travel, clothes, careers, current health) are registered in various ways among the residents. Why might people cling to them? Perhaps more tantalizingly, why might people not?
• Graciela’s background and immigrant status, as well as Jannah’s race, might make them vulnerable to the attitudes and biases of some residents, a fact Frannie is sensitive to from her work as a nurse. How might issues in the outside world play out in places like Ridgewood?