Summary

The novel begins with the narrator, an unnamed pre-adolescent boy, in the car with his father, driving through a storm. The narrator’s mother and father are separated, and the father is taking the narrator away from his mother’s house. The boy and his mother had gotten into a fight after he made plans to go to a movie in spite of a tornado watch, and she would not let him. When he tried to leave, she beat him, and he called his father to come take him and his brother away.

Back at his father’s house, the narrator describes the home, specifically the way in which his father, who values privacy, reassigned the bathrooms after his mother left. His father still gets the master bathroom, while his brother gets the bathroom down the upstairs hall because his bedroom is closer. Meanwhile...