Summary

In Chapter 2.3, the novel returns to timeline number three. Ferguson eventually must return to school; his mother enrolls him in a private school called Hilliard. Ferguson is one of very few Jewish students at the school. Embittered by his father’s death and a sense of displacement, Ferguson purposely performs poorly in school. In he wake of his father’s death, Ferguson feels that God may not exist, and he hopes that he will receive a divine punishment for his misbehavior, thus affirming the existence of God. Ferguson’s mother also struggles emotionally in the wake of Stanley’s death. She has no financial incentive to work at the moment, as the life insurance payment was quite large. Thus, she takes up photography again. She does commercial work and her own creative work. Mildred is a professor at Sarah Lawrence College and is married...