Chapter Nine Summary

Jack's hands begin to smell like rotten meat. He stops masturbating and starts washing his hands but the smell will not go away. Then Jack cleans himself up more, taking baths, cutting his nails and wearing clean clothes but the smell is still there, still distant. Jack's newfound cleanliness causes Julie to warm up to him. He worries that he has cancer and bathes in the rain.

At supper, Jack argues that it has rained for the first time since Mother passed, but Sue and Julie deny this. Yet they cannot remember when. This makes them angry and annoyed; the conflict escalates, and Jack nearly hits Sue in the back of the head and Jack smells the smell again.

Tom is still acting like a baby, wearing a bib and sometimes crawling around under the table. When Julie treats him like...