Nine Days: Chapter 2: Stanzi Summary & Analysis

Stanzi sits in her office, in a counseling session with a young rich woman with “daddy issues,” who’s having an affair with a man decades older than her, has kleptomania, and is suffering with an eating disorder. The client, Violet, kicks her shoes off and walks barefoot around the room, while Stanzi looks at one of the couches in her office and thinks about how expensive it was—she could’ve saved her money and taken a trip to the Maldives and met an exotic masseuse instead of buying that couch. She bought the couch 10 years before, when she’d moved into this office; she’d planned on having her PhD by now.

Stanzi’s mind wanders again to the Maldives, but she forces herself to focus on her session. Violet talks about having lunch with her father and the latest in her string of stepmoms. She asks Stanzi about her own father, which catches Stanzi off-guard, but she tells Violet that he’s a good man, funny, and worked as a professional photographer. Violet is uninterested, though, and reveals that she’s started stealing things again. Stanzi recognizes this is not necessarily a setback, since behavioral problems often need to be tackled indirectly. Confronting them can make them worse, like the manner in which deciding to diet often leads to an immediate weight gain.

Staring out the window, Violet remarks that whenever she looks at a tower, she “half expect[s] to see a plane fly into it.” Stanzi understands the feeling and reflects on how tense everyone has been in the weeks since the terrorist attack. Lots of her clients have increased anxiety and difficulty sleeping. Violet finds this slightly absurd, since the attacks happened in the U.S., on the other side of the world. No one in Australia has the right to feel anxious about it, she believes. Stanzi surmises that perhaps Violet’s renewed kleptomania has something to do with the looming threat of war, but Violet believes America isn’t stupid enough to start another war since the world in the 21st century is too enlightened to allow another big war to happen. Even if America does start a war, it can’t take more than six weeks.

As Violet traipses around the room, she notices a shilling sitting on Stanzi’s otherwise bare desk. Stanzi remarks that it’s her father’s prized possession, it reminds him of “silver linings.” She’s supposed to take it to a framer after work. Stanzi tries to make some meaningful headway with Violet for the rest of their hour, but Violet simply rambles about nothing until their time is up. Violet slips her shoes on and leaves, saying that she feels better after their session as she always does, but Stanzi does not know why Violet is even there, or why she herself is there, and every counseling session for months has made Stanzi feel like she is a student in school, waiting for the bell to ring so she can go home.

Stanzi writes up her notes and feels hungry as she always does after speaking with Violet. She bought the kind of biscuits that she hates, hoping that it would force her to eat them less frequently, but she realizes she’s eaten all of them already. She should have just eaten cake instead; at least she’d have enjoyed it instead of sacrificing flavor “without any reason or benefit.”

The day has been productive, though, filled with therapy sessions with middle-class white women filled with the inexplicable rage that although they’ve behaved themselves, they are not as pretty or rich or happy as they thought they deserved to be. So they have affairs or plastic surgery or curse their children, and when they complain about their lives they can preface every narcissistic statement with “my counselor says” so that their problems and self-centeredness sound legitimate. As Stanzi packs her things to leave, she realizes the shilling is missing.

Stanzi calls Charlotte from her car to ask what year the shilling was. Charlotte is too wary of cell phone radiation to own her own phone, so Stanzi has to call the “hippy” shop where Charlotte works. Charlotte is immediately suspicious of Stanzi’s question, and Stanzi breaks and tells her that her kleptomaniac patient must have stolen it. When Charlotte hears her name is Violet, she announces that the woman should change her name—Violet is “bad feng shui”—and then all her problems would be solved. Charlotte asks if maybe Stanzi just knocked the coin onto the floor, and Stanzi is quietly furious that her twin sister could consider her so clumsy and unaware of her own body. While she is furious at Charlotte, she becomes furious at everything in her life, such as her car, which always seems so “tiny and mean.”

Charlotte realizes that Stanzi intends to just buy another coin, and though Stanzi can’t see what’s wrong with it, especially since shillings are so common, Charlotte is deeply disappointed and demands that Stanzi go find the real shilling. As Stanzi hangs up, she thinks about the web of satellites that carry messages among all the cell phones and people in the world, and how much work and ingenuity that system took to create. Yet all of the messages must be utterly pointless and banal: what’s for dinner, what’s on TV, and so on. She thinks about the supposed psychic connection between twins as well, and though Charlotte’s shown a weird ability to predict or feel Stanzi’s exact pains from long distances before, Stanzi still believes it’s all rubbish.

Stanzi goes to the address in Violet’s file to ask for the shilling. If she doesn’t find it, she’ll know her parents will figure out she lost it, be disappointed in her, and wish that they’d given in to Charlotte instead. Before she enters the apartment building, Stanzi eats a candy bar, and then catches the open door from a pizza delivery man so she doesn’t have to ring up to Violet’s apartment. She follows the pizza man all the way up to Violet’s apartment—Stanzi’s starving—though Violet and pizza don’t seem to fit together. A fit man in his early forties—too young to be Violet’s husband or lover—opens the door to take the pizza, and Stanzi enters, introducing herself as Violet’s friend.

Stanzi tells the man her name—revealing that Stanzi is short for Constance—which he seems to recognize, and the man tells her he is Violet’s father. Violet arrives, taking a slice of pizza as she walks in the door, but is surprised to see Stanzi there. Stanzi tells Violet about the missing shilling and asks if it might’ve fallen into Violet’s purse, but Violet’s reaction tells her that she has it all wrong. It must still be in her office somewhere; Charlotte was right. Violet’s father assures his daughter that he’ll buy her anything she wants, but questions if Stanzi is actually worth anything as a counselor. Violet insists that talking to Stanzi makes her feel better, seeming gracious until she reveals that it reminds her no matter how off her life feels, at least she’s “not fat” like Stanzi. Stanzi is petrified and feels “bulbous.” Violet walks her out.

Stanzi sits with her Mum, Annabel, late in the night in their kitchen, heartbroken. She returned to her office and found the shilling buried in the carpet—though kneeling down was quite difficult and painful for her. In Annabel’s kitchen she sees a picture of herself  and Charlotte when they were younger—she was thinner, though not as thin as Charlotte, and Charlotte wore Annabel’s amethyst pendant. Annabel hovers, asking Stanzi if she wants something to eat, anything at all. Stanzi just sits and looks at Annabel though, thinking about how beautiful she is, how Annabel’s life was one easy ride, raised by a “saint of a man” who loved her until he died and she married Stanzi’s Dad, Kip.

Kip emerges from his bedroom in his pajamas, greets Stanzi warmly, and hugs and kisses her. He kisses everyone, no matter how well or little he knows them. He wants to stay and chat, too, but Annabel insists he goes back to bed and leave them to their privacy. He relents, and bids his “beautiful girls” goodnight, but Stanzi says everyone else is beautiful, but she’s not. Kip tells her she looks just like Connie, beautiful, there are just no photos of her around to prove it. Kip goes back to bed, and Annabel listens while Stanzi laments the way she looks and feels being overweight. Annabel surmises that someone was mean to her earlier in the day, and Stanzi tells her she’s right, though it was no one who mattered.

Annabel offers to go sort it out, since Stanzi is still her child even if she’s 35, but Stanzi waves her off the idea. Thinking about her parents and how happy they are and how easy their love is, she thinks it must be a curse; neither she nor Charlotte can ever live up to that example. Stanzi does not even love herself enough to love anyone else at this point. Holding the shilling in her hand, Stanzi thinks that perhaps love is something like the coin, passed around all over the world, drawing connections among friends and family and strangers. As she is thinking this thought, though, she is struck by the fact that by visiting Violet’s home, she’s made a major violation of their professional relationship. She needs to quit her job—immediately.