The Paper Palace

63 pages • 2 hours read

The Paper Palace

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Parts 4-5

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Part 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “Jonas”

Part 2, Chapter 13 Summary

At the Back Woods in June of 1981, Elle gets her period for the first time. While she goes to the bathroom to put a tampon in, Conrad knocks on the door. Elle tells him not to come in and locks it. Then, Elle hears something and sees Conrad’s face pushed against the upper window, staring at Elle between her legs. She screams, and Conrad runs off. She decides to get as far away as possible from him and paddles a canoe far from the shore, deciding that the simplest option to avoid being humiliated further is to kill herself. When she heads toward a swamp side of the pond, she hears a voice, and it is Jonas.

Jonas is working on catching a snapping turtle so notorious for its size that everyone refers to it as “The Big One” in the Back Woods. Jonas tells Elle not to move and then he uses her paddle to lure the snapping turtle. It’s biting at Elle’s paddle as Jonas captures it. When he does, Elle sees the turtle look “back at me with a dead-eyed anger—humiliation at being caught; fury at having been exposed to the world, stripped of his dignity [...] He was coming for me now, coming for his pound of flesh, and I understood what he was feeling completely” (146).

She tells Jonas to let the turtle go, and he complains that his brothers won’t believe him, but Elle convinces him. The two of them drag the canoe and what’s left of the oar back to camp. Jonas takes Elle’s hand, just as he’d done when she first led him out of the woods. Conrad is laughing at them when they get back. Elle explains to Jonas that Conrad is her stepbrother that she hates. She tells him that Conrad was spying on her in the bathroom. Jonas says hate is a strong emotion, and it’s better to take the high road.

For the rest of the summer, Jonas follows Elle everywhere. Elle reflects on their unconventional friendship:

I knew our friendship made no sense. I wasn’t a loner, or even lonely. Becky was down the road, and I had Anna. I was fourteen and a half, he was twelve. But for some reason that summer, when so many things were falling away, when I began to feel like prey, Jonas made me feel safe (149).

She feels protective over him, though he insists he’s not a boy. Together, they find an abandoned house deep in the woods where they lie down together and talk. Jonas says that they can live there when they get married, and then their age difference won’t matter.

Another day, as they walk home, Jonas admits that his brothers make fun of him for hanging out with her. He thinks that his older brother Hopper has a crush on her, and so he views Jonas as a threat. Elle comments that she doubts he’s seen as a threat, causing Jonas to stop suddenly and decide to walk home by himself. He doesn’t come to the beach the next day.

Conrad continues to make fun of Elle for being a “cradle snatcher” because she hangs out with Jonas. They are on the porch with Leo and Anna, and Anna suggests that maybe Conrad has a crush on Elle. This repulses Elle, but she realizes Anna must be right. When Anna continues to bait him, Conrad punches her in the face, and his father grabs him and shoves him out the door. Anna just continues to read. Leo doesn’t allow Conrad to come to an end-of-season beach picnic, and even Wallace begs him to change his mind since this decision will only alienate Conrad more.

When Elle complains about Conrad, Wallace says that maybe if she and Anna were nice to him, he would behave better. Elle says she will invite Conrad down to the beach with her, and as they walk there, Conrad asks about the beach party. Elle forces herself to say that she’s sorry he couldn’t come. While she lays on her towel, Conrad finds a used condom, puts it on her back, and laughs. Elle shrieks and goes into the water. She gets swiped by a large wave and takes a tumble. She forces herself to the surface gasping for air while Conrad laughs at her from the shore. As she leaves, Elle says he should go for a swim because it’s a perfect day to drown.

The next day, Jonas comes by the house to say goodbye. He and his family are leaving early. He wants to take one last swim with Elle across the pond. Conrad makes fun of them and says Elle should give Jonas a big kiss. Elle says shut up and takes Jonas’s hand to go outside. In the water, Jonas says thank you for a great summer, and they have a breath-holding contest. Then, without thinking, Elle gives Jonas a kiss underwater.

After Jonas leaves, Elle goes back inside. Conrad says she’s embarrassing the family by hanging out with a 12 year old. Elle replies that he’s the family embarrassment, and even his mom doesn’t want him. Elle says they should call his mom to see if she wants him and goes to the phone and dials. Conrad starts crying and runs outside. Someone answers the phone, but Elle hangs up without saying anything.

The next day, Elle starts getting an itchy feeling under her eyelids, and her throat swells. Her face starts oozing with blisters. The doctor determines that someone must have thrown a poison ivy covered branch into the bonfire, and Elle was in the path of the smoke. She has to stay in bed and put bandages over her face. Elle tries to call her mom to help change the bandages, but Conrad comes instead. He apologizes for putting the condom on her back, and Elle comments that he wants everyone to hate him. Conrad replies he doesn’t want her to hate him. Anna comes in and says to stop staring so creepily at her sister, but Elle says that he’s not bothering her. Anna says fine, it’s her funeral. Elle apologizes for what she said about his mom.

Part 2, Chapter 14 Summary

In January of 1982, Elle waits until she hears her mother turn off the lights in the apartment and go to her room for bed. Elle tiptoes out and turns the hall light back on, then shuts her door tight and pulls the covers over her. One night, a few months after getting back from the Cape, Elle woke up to find her nightgown scrunched up, exposing her breasts. There was a wetness all over her underwear, but her period hadn’t started. Then, she saw something move in her closet. Elle stays in her bed, thinking in her head, “Please get out. I won’t yell. I won’t tell anyone. In the quiet inside me, I was screaming so loud that sound filled the void, a terror I could barely control” (167). Eventually, the man sneaks out of the closet and leaves the room. Elle opens her eyes just enough to see Conrad turn around.

In February, Conrad comes back to Elle’s room and whispers her name to see if she’s awake. Elle pretends to be asleep, and he pulls her nightgown up and starts touching himself. Conrad thinks she has no idea he comes to her room at night and masturbates over her. Elle doesn’t want anyone to know. This way, she can pretend that nothing has changed and everything is normal. She knows that if she had screamed that first night, everyone in the family would be tainted forever. She adds, “I would be tainted forever—an object of pity. So, I will carry the weight of this shame rather than tell on him. I know my silence protects him. But it also protects me” (168).

In March, Conrad and Leo are fighting. Leo yells at Conrad for his grades as Elle walks past his room. Leo says that his sister Elle should tutor Conrad, and Conrad says she’s not his sister with venom in his eyes. That night, Conrad comes to her room and whispers that one day he’s going to really penetrate her so he can get her pregnant, and she won’t be the perfect child. Elle goes by herself to the medical clinic to get a prescription for birth control.

Part 2, Chapter 15 Summary

Conrad stops coming to Elle’s room at night the same week she starts taking birth control pills. Then, Conrad leaves to spend spring break in Memphis with his mother and weird sister Rosemary. When he returns, Elle notices he seems different. He’s nicer, cleaner, and even dating a girl from school named Leslie. Things are normal to Elle, and six months pass without a visit from Conrad.

In December 1982, Rosemary visits them for the holidays. She doesn’t want to come, but Leo insists and is happy to have both of his kids with him. Anna and Elle think she is odd because Rosemary acts like she’s never grown up. Leo wants her to come up for a proper summer visit, but she says she can’t because of a trip with her mom. Conrad isn’t invited.

When Elle gets home from school one day, she hears Leo screaming at Conrad because he found pot in Conrad’s room. Leo grounds Conrad for a month, and Conrad whines about having tickets to a sports event with Leslie. Leo says to give them to Elle. Conrad throws the tickets at Elle while she’s doing homework, calling her a bitch. The next month, Elle gets awakened at night by Conrad sneaking into her room. She pretends to wake up, asking if her mum is there, causing him to sneak back down the hall.

In April, Anna and Elle are spending two weeks with their grandparents. Elle feels relieved to be away from Conrad, saying, “I’m just happy to be here where I’m safe […] where I can fall asleep without dread, where I know that my grandmother, no matter how frail, will love me fiercely” (182). Elle wanted to tell her sister about Conrad when it first started happening, but she says Anna would never understand why she let it go on so long; that in order to protect herself from humiliation, she had to deny any knowledge of the situation. Now that Conrad’s visits have started again, Elle wishes she told Anna everything when she had the chance.

Part 2, Chapter 16 Summary

It’s 1983 of June in New York, and the family is getting ready to drive to Cape Cod and the Back Woods. Elle is excited to see Jonas again and wonders if he will have changed, or if she’s outgrown him. During the car ride, Leo asks Conrad to get him the jug of water from the trunk, and Conrad complains. Elle says she’ll get it before they can start fighting, and Conrad mutters kiss ass under his breath.

They reach the Back Woods at midnight. Anna is spending the summer in California, so Elle has their cabin to herself. She is so happy to be there. Then, Elle decides to go for a naked night swim in the pond. When she goes back to her cabin, Conrad is there waiting for her. He covers her mouth, preventing her from screaming. He pushes her onto the bed, and Elle begs him to stop. Conrad says he knows she only pretends to be asleep when he comes to her room at night, that she lets him touch her, and that he tells all his friends about it. Then he rapes her, and she weeps.

After Conrad leaves, she washes herself in the bathroom, but it does nothing for Elle. She says, “I am no longer myself. [...] My flesh revolts me. I have to go home. I can never go home” (189). She spends the night outside. When she returns to the camp, she lies to her mother that she walked into town. Wallace tells her Jonas came by looking for her. She stays in her room for four days, and her mom thinks she has a stomach virus. Jonas comes by every day, but Wallace sends him away.

Elle decides she is better when it’s time for sailing lessons with Jonas. Elle is happy to see him and is shocked by how much older he looks. She feels oddly shy around him. Jonas says Elle has also changed and that she is lovelier than ever. On the water, Jonas gets the hang of sailing quickly. Elle says, “I’m happy to be breathing. Happy to be here with Jonas. Safe from Conrad. I can do this, I think as we sail out farther and farther. I can survive this. No one needs to know. [...] If he touches me again, I’ll kill him. The thought of that uplifts me” (193).

Part 2, Chapter 17 Summary

Jonas and Elle have plans to take a picnic to the beach. They are packing their basket when Conrad comes in and says he wants to join. Elle snaps at Jonas, saying he should have asked her before saying it was okay. Jonas walks with Conrad while Elle trails behind them, realizing how hard it is for her to be around him and pretend everything is normal.

Elle and Jonas are getting good as a sailing duo. They are out on the water together when Jonas asks Elle if she and Conrad have ever done anything together. Elle is shocked by the question and asks why he would even ask that. Jonas says Conrad said something to him on the beach about how Elle lets Conrad feel her up and Jonas shouldn’t get his hopes up. Elle says that’s disgusting and she would die before letting Conrad touch her. She starts sobbing, and Jonas apologizes for even bringing it up. Elle thinks, “I want to tell him everything, to unshoulder this burden, but I can’t. He’s barely fourteen, and this murder of crows in my belly is mine alone to carry. The wounds inside me will scab over and heal, however lopsidedly” (201). She can’t stop crying, and Jonas says he doesn’t understand what’s wrong if it’s not true. He asks if Conrad has ever hurt her, and she shakes her head no, but her face reveals that she’s lying. She tells Jonas everything.

Part 2, Chapter 18 Summary

In August, Wallace comes to Elle’s cabin and tells her they are going for a family sailing trip to the Point at the end of the Cape. Elle will only go if Jonas can come, and Wallace agrees, since Jonas can help with the sailing. The boat they have isn’t big enough for everyone, so they will have to sail in separate groups. During the drive to the beach, Jonas looks out the window to avoid looking at Conrad. Elle thinks, “I know it is because I have tethered him [...] forced him to collude, to carry my lie. It’s as if I have stolen his virginity” (204).

When they get to the bay, Leo pushes the boat out for Elle, Jonas, and Conrad. The water is choppy, but Leo says they might as well try since they’ve come all this way. Jonas mutters to Elle that he can’t look at Conrad, and Elle tells him he has to pretend like everything is normal. He says that she shouldn’t let Conrad get away with it. Then, Jonas yells at Conrad to watch out for the boom, but Conrad gives him the finger. The boom hits Conrad, causing him to fall in the water. Jonas stops the boat, and Elle tries to untie the life preserver. Then, Jonas puts his hand over Elle’s, holding them still. The next wave takes Conrad under the water.

Part 2 Analysis

The second half of the novel builds on the theme of gender and male dominance, as we see more of Elle’s adolescence and evolving relationships with men. She and Jonas become closer friends, and Jonas begins to represent the only positive male relationship in her life. Jonas is a foil to Conrad, who is an instigating, predatory presence in Elle’s life. To illustrate, when Elle gets her period for the first time, Conrad spies on her and watches as she tries to put a tampon in. Furious at Conrad, she takes a canoe out on the pond and encounters Jonas trying to catch a snapping turtle. Elle looks at the angry turtle as it gnaws at her paddle, and she sees the turtle look “back at me with a dead-eyed anger—humiliation at being caught; fury at having been exposed to the world, stripped of his dignity [...]” (146). Elle relates to the feeling of being caught at the hand of someone trying to exploit you. Elle feels this way because of Conrad. He catches her in what should be a normal rite of passage for a young girl, and he robs her of a symbolic piece of her womanhood. Nevertheless, Jonas is there to be a friend to Elle, manifesting the foil between these two characters.

Elle does not receive the same comfort from her mother. When Elle complains about Conrad, Wallace tells her that maybe if she and Anna were nice to him, he would behave better. Wallace contributes to Elle’s fear of telling Wallace about Conrad’s sexual abuse through her tendency to blame women for male transgressions. Elle believes things are her fault and that she has control of the situation. This helps establish the context for when Conrad rapes Elle, and she assumes there is no one for her to turn to. She says, “I would be tainted forever—an object of pity. So, I will carry the weight of this shame rather than tell on him. I know my silence protects him. But it also protects me” (168). Wallace simultaneously places the blame and responsibility on Elle when Conrad is the one who should be held responsible for the harm he’s causing, continuing the abusive cycle.

A place Elle feels protected with her Grandmother Myrtle. When Elle and Anna spend a few days there, she says, “I’m just happy to be here where I’m safe, where I can spend time with my funny, brusque, sardonic sister; where I can fall asleep without dread, where I know that my grandmother, no matter how frail, will love me fiercely” (182). Connecting to the themes of protection and family influences in the novel, Granny Myrtle provides Elle with a sense of home and comfort at a time when she feels like prey. Granny Myrtle is one of the only positive maternal figures in the novel, and she gives Elle the attention that Wallace often squanders on husbands, boyfriends, and anyone else.

Elle tries to protect everyone by being silent. Even when Jonas asks her about Conrad directly, she doesn’t want to tell him because she knows it will also taint and steal Jonas’s innocence. She says, “I want to tell him everything, to unshoulder this burden, but I can’t. He’s barely fourteen, and this murder of crows in my belly is mine alone to carry. The wounds inside me will scab over and heal, however lopsidedly” (201). However, when he does know, he is able to protect her when given the opportunity. He stops Elle from finishing untying the knot on the life preserver, helping her make the decision to protect herself from Conrad’s abuse. While she doesn’t realize it, she receives protection from more than her Grandmother in this section through Jonas.

This major turning point in the novel sees Conrad becoming the ultimate antagonist and making good on his promise to rape Elle, then Heller quickly has her two protagonists kill him off. This climactic moment solidifies Jonas and Elle’s relationship. No longer are they simply close friends, they’re now accomplices. They alone share the burden of both Elle’s rape and Conrad’s death. This connection between the pair easily contributes to Elle’s romantic decisions, as she considers that Peter doesn’t know the “real her,” “[…] a secret perversion I have tried to hide from Peter. That I hope he will never see” (103), but Jonas knows everything and still loves her.