This One Summer

When Rose’s father Evan leaves to get away from Alice for a few days, Rose starts to wonder if her family is falling apart, illustrating The Permeative Effects of Mental Illness. When she goes to spend time with Windy, Windy’s mother Evelyn tries to comfort and offer her support. This bothers Rose, as it only reminds her of her own mother’s emotional neglect. She runs home, and again thinks back to collecting rocks with her parents when she was younger. She recalls collecting about 200 rocks and piling them up on the porch with her parents: “It was like this thing we did together. The Wallace Family Rock Wall” (181). This rock wall was once a symbol of Rose’s family’s solidarity, but Rose is losing hope in it. Now that Alice is distant and Evan has left for the city, Rose believes their days of being a unified, loving family are over. She wonders if this tension is simply part of The Emergence of Adolescence and Accompanying Loss of Innocence. Furthermore, the image of an “email” overlaying water implies Evan will continue keeping his distance for the time being and that Alice might have experienced suicidal thoughts in the past—as the framing of the email could be mistaken as that of a suicide note. The latter interpretation makes sense if one interprets Alice’s near-drowning and Rose’s defensiveness (Pages 92-122 Summary) as hinting at a suicide attempt.

The conflict between Rose and her mother comes to a climax when she confronts Alice about wanting another baby: “It’s because you always have to have everything YOUR way. You’re making everything SAD” (228). In this moment, Rose finally makes herself heard and her feelings known, but does so in a way that hurts her mother. Rose’s jealousy and own hurt are exacerbated when she asks Windy about whether or not her mother wants another child, and Windy answers, “I’m all she wants. I’m PERFECT” (172-73). Windy is unaware of what Rose is going through, and is only being her honest self, but this is not the answer Rose was hoping for. Rose and Windy continue to clash as Rose becomes more upset about the state of her family and unable to cope with the resulting emotions. This conflict is eventually resolved as the girls’ long-time friendship overrules it.

Rose and Windy become more involved in eavesdropping on the teenagers, and Rose goes to Brewster’s as often as possible to talk to Duncan and find out what is going on with Jenny. Despite this, Rose and Windy are young and only hear snippets of the teenagers’ conversations; they do not actually know what is going on behind the scenes. Because Rose is only 12, she sees Jenny as much older and expects more out of her than is often reasonable with teenagers. Jenny is still young herself, and it is unsurprising that she makes mistakes. She also becomes the victim of bullying at her place of work when a boy starts jeering at her about birth control methods. Afterward, Jenny cries, and Rose sees her being comforted by a boy who is not Duncan. Jenny is experiencing the Accompanying Loss of Innocence that occurs with later adolescence, and this soon culminates in an attempt to end her own life. Out of ignorance, Rose judges Jenny harshly, calling her a “slut” (239) and adding “I think it’s stupid that girls can’t, like, take care of their stuff and then everything is fucked up. Maybe she deserves it” (240). Here, Rose shows that she has been led astray by The Socially Prescribed Obligations of Womanhood (which sometimes leads to internalized misogyny, as girls and women end up holding each other to strict standards without compromise). Windy acts like the older child in this moment, quietly accusing Rose of sexism. This only upsets Rose further, who swims off after yelling at Windy, “Okay, MOM. Guess I better not say SLUT in front of you or else you’ll be all offended” (242). Afterward, Rose seems to realize she needs to reflect, and tells herself that she could never be with Duncan as he is too old for her. Still, she continues to fixate on him, and this frustration comes out in the form of insulting Jenny—projecting her issues with her mother (Alice’s inability to “take care of her stuff”) onto the older girl (her “romantic rival”) and the girls in horror movies.