Laura Brown Timeline and Summary

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• After waking up shortly after seven o'clock in the morning, Laura Brown decides to stay in bed for just a little while longer so that she can read a few pages of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and brace herself for the day.
• When Laura heads downstairs, she finds her husband, Dan, and three-year-old son, Richie, eating breakfast together at the table. Dan finishes up quickly, then gets ready to head to work.
• Together with Richie, Laura bakes a birthday cake for Dan. It doesn't turn out as beautifully as she'd hoped.
• As she contemplates her failure to make a wonderfully beautiful cake, Laura gets an unexpected visit from one of her neighbors.
• The neighbor, Kitty, has come to ask for a favor. As she tells Laura, she needs to check into the hospital for a couple of days, and she's hoping that Laura will look after her dog while she's away.
• Laura hugs Kitty, and the two women share an unexpected kiss. When the moment passes, Kitty shrugs it off in a way that leaves Laura feeling like a predator.
• After Kitty leaves, Laura dumps Dan's birthday cake in the garbage and gets ready to make a new one.
• Later that afternoon, Laura leaves Richie with a neighbor so that she can "run a few errands" (i.e., escape for a few hours and steal some time to herself).
• Laura decides to check into a hotel so that she can be completely alone. There, she curls up in bed and continues to read Mrs. Dalloway.
• Later, as she returns to her neighbor's home to collect Richie, Laura realizes that she's been thinking "longingly" of death (17.2). Richie seems to sense that something's up, and Laura tries to reassure him as they head back home together.
• After supper, Laura watches as Dan opens his birthday gifts and blows out the candles on his cake.
• When it's time to get ready for bed, Laura finds herself contemplating the sleeping pills that she keeps in the bathroom medicine cabinet. Once again, she imagines how easy it would be to slip away from her life.
• In her bedroom, Laura pauses when she reaches the edge of her bed, lost in thought.