Welcome friend! For this fourth reading pause, I spent time with pages 135-186 of The Names. Let’s start with what happened in the book in these pages.
In the Book:
It’s 2008.
Bear is out exploring the world. He and Lily held on to each other through the years and they have an interesting dynamic of not wanting to weigh each other down. Bear finds the courage to ask Cora about the fateful night with Gordon and she doesn’t tell him the full truth. He has pieced some of it together in the annual rituals that his family has around his birth certificate issue date and he understands this is not his wound to open. Bear, like his name, is wild and majestic. He isn’t impacted by his father. He has no memories of him. It’s Maia who remains haunted.
Julian is finding a place in the local artist community. He is content with his life. He meets someone who is interested in him but he doesn’t move forward. In this timeline, his grandmother, Cian and Maia live together. They have become a family unit and I noticed how he looks up to Cian.
Gordon chose not to follow in his father’s footsteps into becoming a doctor. He chose computing science instead and though he feels like a God there, he knows his father and grandfather disapprove. His life is an endless party while his mother’s is oppression at its peak. Cora’s husband controls how she spends her time and who she talks to — which is only him. There is no landline at home. He takes the tv remote with him to work. She never gets mail but when someone hand delivers her some heartbreaking news, she has had enough. She tries to seek help from a friendly face from decades ago but finding their address lost, she goes to a vet and asks for refuge. The courage it took her to do this!
Reflection on the Story so Far:
Throughout this story, I have felt for Cora. Maia and her have been stable pieces of this story. I feel how untethered her children are without her. It was good to hear her voice again in Gordon’s timeline. It was so sad and melancholy and finally, the moment arrived when she left the house and sought help. I’m shaken by how easy it was for Gordon to hide the news from her and can imagine the lies he told about her grief to let people seeking her deal with him. I wonder if this vet is the one she went on a date with in another timeline. In Julian’s timeline, she sought refuge with the children and that didn’t end well for her. I hope for a better outcome in Gordon’s timeline.
My thoughts centre around Maia today. In Bear’s timeline, it was well established that Maia is deeply affected by Gordon. The nine years she spent with him had a significant impact on her, her self-worth and how she functions in the world. Seeing her mom abused left scars too. She still lives in terror of coming face to face with Gordon who was released from prison seven years ago and when that finally comes to pass, her unraveling begins.
In Julian’s timeline, she is stuck. She is in early thirties, not sure how to move forward. She spent a lot of her time trying to keep pieces that connected her to Cora but she hasn’t been able to find direction or purpose. In this version of her, she isn’t affected by Gordon the same way. She was but now time is passing by and she is seeing something needs to change.
In the timeline where her father is her brother’s namesake, she is starting to realize that her father is complex. He can be sincere and cruel. But most importantly, she has been a bystander in her mother’s abuse. She has hidden her love life from her parents and her history from her partner. An unraveling is coming here too.
It’s an interesting writing choice to leave the unraveling of each of these Maias to the reader’s imagination and jump ahead in time to the aftermath.
A Quote:
Cora shrinks with each week that passes, with each week she sits between her and whatever life she once had as a mother, a dancer, a schoolgirl, someone’s daughter, heart beating out of her chest as she learned to ride a bike or felt the happiness of biting into flapjack warm from the oven before the syrup had a chance to harden.
The Names, pg ?
Thoughts:
I love the imagery of this quote. It’s turning back time, unbecoming the roles and identities, going all the way back to the pure untainted feelings of exhilaration and joy experienced during childhood.
In My Life:
Today was a day in the life of a homemaker mama. Multiple wakings through the night for my teething hungry baby, working through the day on my to-do list, particularly preparing a lasagna for the weekend potluck.
It was night when I finally put my feet up and read the chapters. I flipped through the photos on my phone and feel time moving fast. My daughter used to a 6 lb baby, so small in my husband’s arm. And now she is a kicking, smiling, lively 15 lb baby who I cradle very differently. As I was making the lasagna, I told her I wanted her to see me as someone who could cook even if that meant following a recipe book. As someone who put delicious meals together. Most importantly, I would want her to feel me as her home base, solid, always there. I think about Maia and all that she internalized from being around Cora and Gordon, no matter how long that was. I think about the subtle things my daughter will catch that I don’t even know I am showing.
Closing off today with a hopeful heart for Maia and Cora. May things be better seven years from 2008.
See you at the next pause after reading pages 187-248. 🙂
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