- Dr. Fried meets with Esther Blau for a session when Esther comes to the mental hospital to visit. Fried wants to make sure Esther is on board with the treatment, and she wants to get some insight.
- Fried says that Esther and Deborah are both smart and stubborn. It must have become tough on both of them sometimes to live with each other.
- Esther tries too hard to make a good impression and to seem pleased that there aren't any bars on the windows in the doctor's office. Gradually, however, the doctor's candor and compassion help Esther open up. She tells the doc her side of Deborah's childhood events—and launches into her own family history, as well.
- Esther tells Dr. Fried how she and Jacob loved Deborah. She says that Deborah has to be different from others in the institution, who are screaming and need bars on the windows.
- Esther explains her own personal family history. Her father, Pop, came to the U.S. from Latvia when he was a young man. His clubfoot, stubbornness, and poverty defined him. Pop treated his new life "as if it were the enemy" (5.13). He was angry. A self-made businessman, he as a Jew moved into a non-Jewish wealthy neighborhood full of old money, and his neighbors hated him just for being Jewish. He made Esther take harp lessons, because that's what the noblemen in the old country made their daughters do in the old days.
- Esther internalized the idea that her family wasn't good enough. They might have had money, but "for a glimpse into their true value they had only to look into their neighbors' eyes or to hear Pop remark if the soup was too cold" (5.15). We've been told before that the neighbors were anti-Semitic, so we're guessing that the block parties were a little awkward.
- Esther wanted to marry Jacob, who Pop didn't think was rich or good enough in any way, really.
- Jacob was smart, though, and he put himself through school to become an accountant.
- Because Esther's sister, Natalie, had married so well, Pop finally gave in and agreed to let Esther marry Jacob.
- Then Deborah was born—she was blonde and treated like a princess.
- Pop made sure that the Blaus lived in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in town. He paid the bills for lavish things Jacob couldn't afford.
- When Jacob couldn't even afford groceries, however, the Blaus moved in with Esther's mom and dad. Living with your parents is hard enough when you're a kid.
- Esther regrets how she sided with her father on everything, when her loyalties should have been with Jacob. Esther was too afraid of her dad not to side with him.
- Deborah was the golden child. She was the thing that everyone in the family could agree was wonderful and perfect…until her health issues surfaced, and the family realized something might be wrong with her.
- Deborah had a tumor in her urethra, but before anyone discovered this, the first symptom was incontinence. Deborah was five, so she was already potty-trained. When she started having accidents, her strict German governess whipped her, and the family thought the accidents were the result of laziness.
- Great.
- Esther feels awful about all of that whipping over potty accidents now. She didn't know the accidents were because of a tumor.
- Dr. Fried tries to comfort Esther so that she won't feel too guilty.
- Esther keeps digging into her past and dishing it out for Dr. Fried. She remembers that after Deborah had surgery to remove the tumor, she was in intense pain.
- Esther was pregnant at the time with Suzy. She was worried about the pregnancy because she had had twin sons previously who were stillborn, but she tried to put on a happy face for Deborah.
- Deborah had a second operation that was successful.
- Jacob's business picked up, and the family moved out of Pop's house into their own house in the suburbs.
- Deborah started coming into her own and making friends.
- Jacob's business came apart when he discovered his main client's business was a fraud. The Blaus lost nearly everything and moved back into Pop's house, which Pop and Esther's mom then gave to them while they rented an apartment in Chicago.
- Deborah went to great schools, but her summer camp was anti-Semitic. Unfortunately, Jacob and Esther didn't know about the Jew-hating going on at camp, because Deborah didn't tell them about it for years.
- When Deborah turned nine, she'd been going to that camp for three summers in a row. Esther says that Deborah was unhappy from her last summer there on.
- When Deborah was ten, she answered questions on a test the school psychologist gave to all the kids, and Deborah's answers were strange.
- Deborah wasn't playing with other kids and wasn't sleeping normally. Esther never remembers seeing her sleep. Deborah also ate a lot and got fat.
- When the Blaus took Deb to a child psychiatrist, Deb got angry and bitter and accused them of thinking she wasn't good enough and needed to be fixed. They stopped taking her to the psychologist.
- When Deborah was around eleven, the Blaus sold the house and moved to an apartment in Chicago. Esther hoped Deb would blend in better there because strangeness doesn't stick out so much in the big city.
- When Deb was eleven and twelve, she drew thousands of pictures and showed real talent. Even the teachers at school said so.
- The family started to see Deb's artistic nature as the explanation for all her strangeness. That felt this way for a few years.
- And then there was the recent incident that led the Blaus to bring Deborah to the hospital. Esther woke up at four in the morning and instinctively went to the bathroom, where she found Deb sitting on the floor watching blood from her wrist "flow into a basin" (5.37).
- Dr. Fried explains that Deb's suicide attempt was a cry for help.
- Esther recounts another list of instances when she tried to intervene to help Deb fit in. She would talk to kids and their parents, explaining how shy Deborah was, and she would try personally to smooth over any social discomfort Deborah ever experienced. Esther says Deborah "never felt unprotected or alone" (5.45). Ah, yes, the smothering mothering.
- Dr. Fried gently suggests that Deborah might not have appreciated all the intervention.
- Esther gets defensive, arguing that Deborah's sickness is in spite of all the love she gave her, not because of it.
- Dr. Fried suggests that Deb did what she did because sometimes sick people would rather hurt themselves than continue to wait for the world to hurt them. Even though it's dysfunctional, it makes them feel they're at least in charge of their own hurt. Dr. Fried had seen another patient act like that.
- When Esther asks about that patient, Dr. Fried says that he got well but then died in a concentration camp. She's honest. She wants Esther to know you can't protect your children from everything, but that doesn't mean it's wrong to want to.
- Esther expresses regret again that she didn't put her husband before her father, and she relents that love isn't enough in any relationship.
- Fried tries to comfort Esther and tells her the best thing to do for Deborah is not to lie to her.
- Esther makes a promise to herself not to nag Deb when she sees her about why she's sick and what she did to make her that way.
- Deborah and Esther go to the movies and out to eat together. Jacob, who Deb didn't want there, follows them on their mother-daughter date but stays out of his daughter's sight—although Esther spots him.