Summary

Jamey drives Tom to Amherst, Massachusetts. Tom thinks of his mother, who is in mental decline. Jamey drops Tom off at the University of Massachusetts Health Center, where a nurse tells Tom that Drew has been transferred to a hospital. The nurse tells him that Drew “is very lucky” (195). Tom begins to walk the nine miles to the hospital. As he walks, he remembers Ronnie telling him that “living with you is like living with a robot” (198). At a bagel shop, an unknown woman buys Tom a bagel, which Tom shares with a homeless man outside. In Amherst, Tom sees a home that he worked on as a carpenter; the home had been owned by a kind widow, Elizabeth. This job occurred around the time Tom first met Ronnie; he states that “doing this job for that woman had felt like an anointing...