The Age Of Miracles

As days approach 48 hours long, “certain clock days began and ended before the sun ever rose—or else began and ended before the sun ever set” (129). Julia speculates that the long days and nights drove her father to infidelity, something having to do with desires being unchecked because of “the slowing.”

Once Julia knows that her father has been cheating, she feels as though he is a stranger to her. She is in shock: “For days afterward, a series of magical thoughts flew through my mind. For instance, it seemed somehow surprising that the hours continued to pass in spite of what I knew. It was almost shocking that time did not, in fact, stop” (131). Despite what is going on in their home and in the world, Julia and her family hold on to shreds of normalcy and celebrate Christmas as they would any other year—by hanging lights and baking cookies.

On New Year’s Eve, Julia’s parents plan to attend a New Year’s Eve party while Julia stays at her grandfather’s house. En route to Julia’s grandfather’s house, with just Julia and her mother in the car, Julia’s mother reports that one of her New Year’s resolutions is to get back into acting. While she is still driving along, Julia’s mother suddenly feels woozy and momentarily passes out. The car strikes a “bearded man, dressed in robes, howling Scripture” (134) at 45 miles per hour. Julia and her mother are mostly okay after the crash, but the bearded man is badly injured. When Julia’s mother realizes that she may have fatally wounded the man, she is completely distraught.

Julia goes to her grandfather’s house while her mother and father remain at the hospital. They have a grim New Year’s celebration, considering the circumstances. When Julia’s parents finally return the following morning to collect her from her grandfather’s, the fate of the pedestrian, if he will live or die, is still uncertain.

Julia’s mother discontinues driving after the accident, as she had unknowingly passed out due to gravity sickness, a condition referred to as “the syndrome” (144).Helen deteriorates from the symptoms: her insomnia worsens, her appetite decreases, and her clandestine consumption of alcohol increases.

Meanwhile, Seth Moreno returns to school after the leave of absence he took when his mother died. Julia is as smitten with him as ever. Gabby mentions to Julia that she plans to run away to Circadia with her 16-year-old boyfriend. Circadia, Gabby explains, is a real-timer compound: “I’d heard that similar settlements had been popping up in every state, built by eccentrics who had rejected the clock. In the homes and streets of these communities, the sun governed the day and the night, and I suppose the pace of life really was slower, the time only inching along, a gradually advancing tide” (147). Gabby, with her newly shaved head, is deep in a rebellious phase.

In the neighborhood, the power is abruptly disconnected from the Kaplans’, Tom and Carlotta’s, and Sylvia’s homes:“[t]he real-timers had been targeted” (150). Policemen determine that the power outage was no accident and that someone “had cut through the lines” (150) intentionally. 

Julia does not want to go to soccer anymore. With everything going on in the world, she asks herself: “What was the point anymore? What did it matter?” (151). While driving her to the field, Joel asks her why she is suddenly disinterested in soccer, but she will not give him a reason. She insists that she wants to quit, but her father will not let her. When she is finally let go at the field, a thought occurs to her: “I didn’t have to go to practice—I could just walk away” (152). Julia wonders if “the slowing” is influencing her to behave this way: “Maybe the slowing was affecting my emotions, too: I felt brave and impulsive that day” (153).

Julia walks away from the soccer field and wanders into a shopping center, where she moves toward a rack of bras. She chooses one, using the ten-dollar bill her grandfather gave her to pay. When Julia returns home and tries it on, she is dissatisfied with the bra: “I had brought home a cheap and girlish bra. The satin ribbons were too blue and too shiny. One of the seams was already coming loose. Even worse was the way the cups rippled unsexily across my chest, like two empty water balloons waiting to be filled” (155). Julia throws the bra away.

February arrives, and Helen’s illness fluctuates wildly. Sometimes she’d go to work, run errands, and conduct other usual tasks; other times she would be comatose in a blanket shivering. Julia explains that “in those days, some suspected the syndrome was psychological in nature, that the effects might be cause not by a shift in gravity but by an even more powerful force: fear” (156). Julia’s mother lives in perpetual fear that the pedestrian she struck with her vehicle over New Year’s is dead.

The marital tension between Julia’s parents quietly grows. Julia worries that maybe her father will leave one day for good. On Saturday, Joel gets a phone call from the hospital with an update on the bearded man who was struck by Helen’s car. Unbeknownst to her father, Julia listens in on the call and learns that the man is already dead and had, in fact, died on arrival. Julia goes to visit her friend Gabby, but she is not home. When she returns home, Julia sees her mother and father, chatting and laughing on the porch. Much to Julia’s dismay, her father has flatly lied and told her mother that the pedestrian survived the accident. While Julia hates that her father lied, she does acknowledge that the lie “improved everything” (162). Julia rationalizes: “It didn’t feel right at first. I felt guilty. And I hope my father did, too. But the shift in mood was impossible to resist” (162).