Summary

Chapter 5 returns to 1976. After Fern kicks him out, Edgar begins walking to a hotel but Glory assures him that Fern will forgive him, “but in the meantime there’s no sense in being alone” (89-90). Edgar sleeps in the guest room and thinks about the day his family had moved into their house from the army base. Cricket had been awed at its grandeur, because “she had not realized that she was a child of privilege” and that excess would be standard for her (90). Glory joins him in the guest room, but the sex is not nearly as enthralling. Edgar struggles with guilt, knowing Fern’s anger is justified but also blaming her for sending him back to Glory. Edgar and Glory go to the grocery store the next day, and Edgar is bemused at this domesticity when he had never gone with Fern...