White Noise Chapter 18 Summary

  • Jack heads to the airport to pick up his daughter Bee. When he gets there, he runs into his ex-wife (Bee's mother) Tweedy Browner. He finds out that Bee is traveling alone from Indonesia to the U.S., and thinks it's a little unsafe. Tweedy says Bee can take care of herself.
  • While Jack and Tweedy wait, Tweedy starts talking about how her new husband is never around and how she's lonely. She wishes that Jack would love her forever. Jack doesn't respond well to this, since Tweedy pretty much left him and took half his money to marry another man.
  • Jack starts to talk to her about another one of his ex-wives named Janet Savory. Janet was in the CIA and was never home. They keep chatting until Bee's plane arrives.
  • When people come through the plane gate, they look like ghosts. Jack knows something is wrong. It turns out that during the flight, the plane lost power in all three of its engines and plummeted four miles before it regained power. No one was injured, but everyone thought they were going to die.
  • While a man tells Jack the whole story, other passengers crowd around him to listen. Bee jumps out from the crowd and hugs Jack. She wants to know where the media is. But Jack says there's no media where they are. Bee feels disappointed at having gone through such a terrible experience for nothing.