The Latecomer

“Art was an established tradition within the Oppenheimer family, and that was enough to justify an early-morning survey course, and one on the Modernists, and one on Pollock and his circle. Art was also an acknowledged part of the apparatus of wealth, indeed, a not unuseful vector for acquiring wealth.”

Salo’s relationship to art shifts dramatically with his discovery of the Twombly painting in a German museum. Art has always been part of his life, but now he feels passion and an emotional connection. However, he explores this new passion while still following his expected trajectory—he joins the family firm upon graduation, as expected, and keeps his passion for art to himself. This is characteristic of Salo—to do what others expect of him, while keeping his inner life a secret.

“The goal was to get to eight months, but eight months undulated before her like a hula dancer in a desert mirage—so far, so unreachably far. Seven and a half months felt just as impossible. Seven months was a daydream, like someday, somehow, loping toward the ribbon at the New York Marathon.”

Johanna has gotten pregnant and, because she is carrying triplets, she is on bed rest for the final months. She spends her time staring at a triptych that Salo has acquired, a “grotesque” chaotic painting that Johanna inevitably begins to connect to the three babies in her womb. She hopes to find the belonging she craves but cannot get from Salo through her babies. This experience only increases Johanna’s need for her family to be successful, which will shape her life for most of the novel.

“It meant everything to Johanna that her children be powerfully attached to one another, even more attached than some random sequential assemblage of ‘normal’ siblings might have been, but the illusion took every bit of her will and strength to maintain.”

From the moment of their birth, Johanna is deeply invested in Making a Family, and this manifests in her intense interest in the triplets’ relationships. However, this pressure from Johanna seems to only widen the gap between them. She will struggle, throughout the novel, to get to a place where she can accept the reality of her family instead of her fantasy, and in doing so she allows them to find authentic connections to each other rather than the forced connection of blood.

“Our mother, on the contrary, contemplated the future with deep and growing dread, and Salo had good reason to worry about how she’s navigated this treacherous passage to whatever came next. Her life recoiled, even as his sped toward an opening.”

The triplets are moving forward at Walden, and the time when they will leave home is imminent. It is starting to become real to both Johanna and Salo, who react very differently—while Johanna sees an ending, Salo sees a beginning. With the children leaving, he has the opportunity to further pursue both his passion for art and his love for Stella, while for Johanna the world she strove so hard to build is slipping between her fingers.

“This back, narrow but muscled, delineated by a visible spine, warm brown in color, was on display between the slim white straps of a linen dress all the way down to where it curved into hidden places, and its impact on Sally was immediate. She felt this not just in the form of conscious admiration, but in a breathlessness and a bolt of weakness, and, perhaps most distressing of all, in the sharp, hollow feeling between her legs, so powerful and so impossible to dismiss that it mocked every one of her efforts to deny the obvious.”

At the Outsider Art Fair, Sally meets Stella for the first time, before she realizes that Stella is the “girlfriend” that her classmate told her about. However, before they even meet in the bathroom, Sally is stunned by the sight of Stella’s back. She struggles with her sexual orientation throughout the novel, and has these moments throughout, where she is struck by the undeniable fact, but still backs away from the realization.

“And it should be noted that Rochelle Steiner (though under some considerable strain of her own, particularly with regard to her mother) had chosen to act, at this delicate moment, in deference to her own new life, which would bind her so deeply to the fractured heart of the Oppenheimers. In other words, it would all work out far better than Sally had dared to hope, though with far stranger implications than she, on that first day of her long-awaited new life, was capable of imagining.”

Sally and Rochelle have just met in their new dorm room and because of her persistent questions, Rochelle has escorted her mother out. Rochelle will be an important part of the Oppenheimer family in the years ahead, a fact that the narrative alludes to. This is characteristic of Phoebe’s narration—she often foreshadows, in a very oblique manner, the way that events will play out later in the novel. As well, seemingly innocuous occurrences often lead to monumental results, such as Salo’s choice not to dissuade Johanna from loving him.

“But that was to deny not only their religion or tribe; it was to deny the crime against that person, a hundred years earlier. Even now, even an ocean’s distance away, even at the edge of a continent Joseph Süss Oppenheimer had likely never even heard of.”

The legacy of Joseph Süss Oppenheimer is an important part of the family’s history. Here, the first Oppenheimer to emigrate to the United States considers whether to leave his notorious surname behind—this is the chance for a new start. However, in the end, he chooses to keep the name, recognizing the importance of loyalty to his family and history. In this way, while everyone in the novel must forge the threads of their own life’s narrative, to cut those threads from the narrative of their family of origin would rob them of context and a richness of identity that can only be had through history.

“Harrison himself was thrumming with excitement. For the very first time in Walden’s self-described Fulcrum of Enlightenment, he was being enlightened, and by a towering stranger who was also, by his clear reception here, a loathed iconoclast.”

Harrison has struggled at Walden for many years—the school’s progressive nature, and the fact that it does not give grades, has left him frustrated and unfulfilled. However, when Dr. Loring gives a speech at Walden that pushes back against everything the school stands for, Harrison feels vindicated. For the first time, he connects to another person, and Dr. Loring will lead him down the path he will follow for the rest of his life. This is the first inkling of the belonging that Harrison will feel when he gets to Roarke.

“‘Who’s that?’ Rochelle said one late afternoon in October. She had come back unexpectedly while Sally was in the bathroom and was pointing to a sour infant dressed as a pumpkin for Halloween. ‘Who’s what?’ said Sally, knowing full well. ‘Oh. Cousin’s baby. Chubster.’ She clicked it away as Rochelle stepped closer.”

Rochelle has come across a photograph of baby Phoebe and yet, when she asks, Sally is dishonest about the baby’s identity. She brushes Phoebe off as though she is barely connected to her. This denial is characteristic of all the triplets and is the same impulse that Sally and Lewyn will both have when they deny each other’s existence at Cornell.

“She only knew that this object, so unadorned and yet so clearly contained by its purpose, its basic and primitive purpose of enabling a human body to relieve itself of its own weight, was a pure expression of beauty. It outshone the sun.”

Sally has stumbled on a Shaker furniture exhibit at Cornell’s art museum, and the experience changes her life. Sally is drawn to its simplicity and clear purposefulness, both of which she lacks. She finds not only a passion for art, but also her future profession, because soon after, she will meet Harriet Greene. Sally’s discovery of her passion for art echoes Salo’s own experience earlier in the novel, and art will continue to be a strong motif in the novel.

“Which of the three of them could conceivably care for this? Which of the three of them would want to? It seemed incredible that Johanna didn’t recognize the state of her own family, which was that he and Sally and Harrison couldn’t get far enough away—first and foremost from one another, but equally from our parents, and it should go without saying from this unasked-for and utterly ill-advised extraneous Oppenheimer. Not one of the triplets was coming home again, not in any sustained way. Was she out of her mind?”

Johanna has just told Lewyn that she plans to give the triplets guardianship of Phoebe. He is shocked to realize that Johanna does not understand her family, especially given that it has always been her main concern, but he may misunderstand her effort here to force the triplets in concert with one another for the purpose of the fourth child. Johanna’s struggle toward Making a Family, and her seeming denial of the actual relationships in her family, continues to be a theme throughout.

“And that meant that Lewyn was allowed to be somebody else, and not whatever pre-set character Sally might have conjured for him and viciously communicated to her. (He could well imagine the deficiencies of that character.) It was an astonishing opportunity, and he would be a fool not to take it. And he wasn’t a fool, despite what his sister thought, and his brother.”

Lewyn has met Rochelle and discovered that, not only has Sally distanced herself from him, but she has also denied his existence. However, for the first time it occurs to him that, by letting Sally live her deception, he is freed from their relationship as well. This deception is typical and connects to the theme of the Legacy of Secrets. This secret keeping and distance will eventually destroy both Sally and Lewyn’s relationships with Rochelle.

“For the first time in Lewyn’s life, his physical body was utterly alive, its myriad parts wondrously connected, and he walked and climbed steps and lay down at night to rest with a feeling of deep health and a hum of energy he had never before experienced.”

Lewyn is in love for the first time in his life. This euphoria he feels is the result of being connected to Rochelle and Finding a Sense of Belonging for the first time. This theme of belonging is threaded through each of the siblings’ stories and will drive their decision-making throughout their lives.

“‘You know, it’s interesting,’ said Eli. ‘I think this is the first time you’ve self-identified as Jewish.’ It was an observation, not an insult, but Harrison cringed, nonetheless. ‘I don’t “identify.” It’s more of a genetic factor. Like being Aboriginal, or a Pict. You don’t go around feeling good about it or bad about it. It just is.’”

Harrison has drawn a parallel between the experiences of a Jewish man and a Black man. As when Lewyn refers to his family as “cultural Jews,” Harrison separates Judaism from religious faith. He conceives of his Jewishness as a part of his basic identity that he rarely thinks about or recognizes in a conscious way. Other people react to him based on their identification of his Jewishness, but he does not position himself in the world any differently because of it.

“By the second week, in the gloaming of a rich and fragrant evening among the Monticello fruit trees, he found himself ruminating on the notion of family, and how smoothly the word had begun to slide over these new relationships with these amiable and fascinating people, and how fractured and abrasive that same word had always seemed in connection with his actual relations: mother, father, sister, brother. (He did not, at that point, include his more recently acquired sister.)”

Harrison has traveled with Eli to the Hayek Institute in Virginia, and the sense of belonging that he felt at Roarke is only amplified here. He contrasts this feeling with the way his family has always been, and begins to think, for the first time, about what actually makes a family. The theme of Finding a Sense of Belonging appears here, as Harrison finally finds his true family.

“He could have gone on forever if not for the awful feeling that he was still in the wrong place, and everyone else had already arrived, experienced the magical thing, and then departed, and also that Rochelle was waiting for him and growing more disgusted with every passing moment. Finally, he found that he had come around to the lane again, and he could see the farm buildings beyond. A wave of deep disappointment went through him.”

Rochelle has reluctantly gone to the Mormon pageant with Lewyn but does not go with him into the Sacred Grove. Lewyn’s experience in the Sacred Grove is a metaphor for his search for his purpose and passion. After this experience, he will continue to search for that passion that he sees in the audience during the pageant, which will eventually lead him out to Utah. This moment in the Sacred Grove, and the frustration he feels, foreshadows his continuing search.

“And then it came to her, that rare, perfect synthesis of calculation and raw emotion: the loss of her friend (because no matter what happened now, her friend was lost to her) and the repudiation of her brother, and the bleakness of what she saw when she looked into those packed and filthy houses, and the dying woman who lived downstairs, and the father back in Brooklyn she could not bear the sight of, and the mother, playing out her long-debunked theory of what our family was supposed to be.”

At this moment, Sally conceives of her plan to expose Lewyn’s lies to Rochelle. This decision is partly fueled by the endless competition between the siblings, and partly by heartbreak over her own love for Rochelle. Once again, however, underlying all of it is the need for Finding a Sense of Belonging, which she feels with Harriet, coupled with the frustration that Harriet is dying. This decision even ties back to expressing her anger over the state of her family and her relationships with her parents.

“‘Well, it’s not desirable,’ our mother said tersely, ‘but these aren’t things you leave to chance. You can’t do that with a baby. You have to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. I don’t know why I’m always the only one thinking ahead. The rest of you just waltz along without ever once considering our family. Just sign the fucking papers, Sally. For me.’ Sally looked at her. This Johanna was not the same Johanna she had left behind, only a year before.”

Both Sally and Lewyn recognize that Johanna is struggling, and also that she has changed while they’ve been gone. At no time is this more apparent than in this interaction between Sally and Johanna. Although Johanna is not the main focus of the story, her transformation comes with the gradual realization of the true nature of her family, and her parallel realization that she needs something from her children and husband that they have never been able to give her.

“And then they stood—Sally, Rochelle, Johanna—the three of them in a row, stock-still between the fire and the churning sea, as Lewyn turned and turned to stone. He gaped at them, his mother and his sister and Rochelle, trying to make pitiful sense of how they could possibly all be in the same place, all at the same time, all here, all now. Sally nearly felt sorry for him. She nearly felt devastated for him.”

This is the beginning of the climactic scene of the novel, at the end of which the family will be completely destroyed. Sally has engineered this moment and every time she experienced doubt, recommitted to the plan. Yet, at the end of this passage, she does experience remorse. She disguises it with the word “nearly,” but this word seems to be mainly a way to distance herself from what she is actually feeling.

“The crazy thing was that I all of a sudden didn’t want this. Whatever it was I’d suddenly crashed up against, it had to be bad, a game-changer, and did I really want a game-changer right now, in horrifying close-up? Was it too late to go back to the big house in Brooklyn, with the closed-off mom upstairs and the closed-off brother in the basement? Because how was any of it my responsibility? I’d hardly been an active participant.”

Phoebe has doubts about her mission to bring the family back together when Sally finally reveals some of the family’s history. Sally’s reluctance, and the recognition that this knowledge may be a burden to Phoebe, makes her realize for the first time how deep and tangled the family’s issues are. Her impulse is to retreat into silence, which is characteristic of all of the Oppenheimers, and the reason that the family finds themselves here in the first place.

“Sally sighed. ‘And that was that. Because the next day, as we all know, Dad got on a plane and died, and we were all, just, frozen right where we were. Where we still are, I guess.’”

Phoebe finally knows the story of the clambake, the climactic scene that destroyed the fragile fabric of the family. She has always romanticized what the family was like before she arrived, but now she knows the truth. Sally also points to the idea that the family has been in stasis ever since, and it is clear that Phoebe is going to be the catalyst to thaw them and bring them back together.

“Lewyn had wanted to come out. He had asked me more than once, and even called Sally to talk it over. Both of us told him no, but for different reasons. Sally was nervous enough about seeing Rochelle again and didn’t need the additional stress of Lewyn’s obvious emotions, so I sat him down and laid it out for him. It isn’t your time. This is about Sally.”

Sally is helping Rochelle clean out her mother’s house, and in the process, they are able to repair the relationship that Sally destroyed. Lewyn is eager to reconcile with Rochelle as well, but Phoebe is the voice of reason. Although she is the youngest, Phoebe brings this reconciliation about, and then manages the process so that each person can come to it in their own time.

“I looked at the three of them, absurdly different in spite of their common denominator, laughing, trying to laugh, finally together.”

Lewyn, Ephraim, and Harrison are laughing together, while Phoebe looks on, after lunch together. Once again, Phoebe has managed the reconciliation of their family, and even brought their brother Ephraim into the mix. Even Harrison, the most reticent of the siblings, offers a smile, and shows an immediate connection to Ephraim. With “trying to laugh,” Phoebe admits that there is still some awkwardness and distance, but the attempt at closeness is being made, for the first time.