How It All Goes Down
- Just as we closed with an envelope in Chapter 2, we open here with a strangely elaborate description of one.
- Moments later, we learn that this is the same (or a similar) Christmas letter from Ash and Ethan.
- Evidently Ash and Ethan bought a ranch in Colorado at some point, though they rarely live there.
- We're introduced to Dennis, who is (judging by the "Jacobson-Boyd'" reference) Jules's husband.
- Adult Jules is seemingly far bitterer about her friends than the young Jules that fell in love with them—to this end, Dennis and Jules have a ritual for reading the Christmas letter, and it involves wine.
- The card that comes with the letter has a new "Ethan Figman drawing," which is said with such seriousness that it has to mean something important.
- We learn that the Christmas letter is a long tradition of occasionally hokey letters from Ethan and Ash.
- Jules and Dennis never write their own Christmas letter because they have nothing to tell (also, turns out their daughter, Rory, is sort of unimpressive).
- Jules imagines the writing process for the letter and clearly has no idea how Ash and Ethan spend their money.
- There's a strange bit here where Jules takes guesses about the level of friendship required to get a letter, and places herself among the closest.
- The novel gives you the whole letter, which is pretty average as far as Christmas letters go.
- In fast-forward: Ash directs plays, they have two kids, Ethan's show Figland has been on air for almost twenty-five years, and the couple is pretty insufferably perfect in general.
- Jules drinks the whole bottle of wine and talks about how much more envious and grouchy she used to be when she heard about Ash and Ethan's life; Dennis appears to have been understanding about her jealousy for a very long time.
- Jules eats what sounds like a really good chicken Dennis made, and thinks about how much better food would be at Ash and Ethan's place.
- Jules then inwardly gripes about her kitchen floor with its grubby tiles.
- Ever so graciously, Jules concedes that Ethan and Ash don't have everything, since they have a son with an autism-spectrum disorder.
- Flashback to the time Jules went on a trip with Ash to get her son, Mo, diagnosed because Ethan couldn't go with her.
- Ethan calls them while in the car and ends up asking Jules to stay with Ash as a kind of stand-in support while he's away.
- Jules reassures Ash that everything will be okay because it's always okay in Ash's life.
- Turns out that Mo has a specific diagnosis that still manages to be incredibly vague: a "pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified" (3.69).
- There's another mysterious mention of Goodman's epic screw-up, which has yet to be explained.
- The flashback ends, leaving Jules and Dennis curled up in bed in a poorly heated apartment while Jules imagines a perfect warm fire on Ethan and Ash's perfect ranch.