Nine Days: Chapter 9: Connie Summary & Analysis

Connie lies awake at night. The mild winter air is humid and still, and it feels as if it will rain. Connie peeks at Jean and sees her fast asleep, which is fortunate for both of them. She rises, sees her brothers asleep in their room as well, and creeps to the front door to look out at Richmond in the dark. She closes the door. She knows she should go back to sleep; she has to work in the morning, only a few hours from now. Instead, Connie takes off her nightgown and puts on her daytime dress.

When Connie opens the door and steps out again she sees Jack watching her, waiting for her. She steps out to meet him in the night and they are both silent for a long time. Jack is on leave, but he’s returning to combat tomorrow. Connie feels as if they are in a separate world, in a private world that only reaches as far as the small light from the streetlight reveals. They talk about his returning—it’s hard on his parents. They won’t even come to the train station to see him off. The rain begins to fall, but Connie does not want to go inside yet. They’re both soaked within seconds, and Jack grabs her by the hand and leads her to his parents’ stable, where it is warmer and dry.

Jack and Connie talk and pet Charlie. Jack says he wished he’d come home from the station years earlier, but he didn’t realize how good the neighbors were. Connie he remarks soon he’ll be off again, this time farther away. When Jack mentions that Mrs. Husting thinks Connie will be engaged to Mr. Ward any day now, Connie decides she’ll make a run for home through the rain. She needs to get back to her own bed, to Jean and her family. Jack stands close to her and asks her not to go. He slides her dress sleeve up her arm and runs his hand down the length of it, wicking away the water.

Jack puts his hands on her waist and tells Connie that he thinks about her every night when he walks the city, and tonight she is here. She looks into his eyes, dark and beautiful, and steps toward him, pressing the full length of her body against him. Jack whispers that if she lets him kiss her, he can die “a happy man.” He kisses her and she kisses him back, until they almost fall over and find themselves sitting on the floor, Connie across Jack’s lap.

As they continue kissing, Jack takes Connie’s breast in his hand. They both try to stop themselves but unable. Connie thinks that she has kept herself from ever desiring anything in her life until now. In this moment she understands what desire truly is and gives herself over to it. It gives her a sense power. They undress each other and have sex in the stable, and for those brief minutes they are “utterly together.”

As Connie dresses, thinking about how she needs to get home and bathe before the sun comes up, Jack tells her that he doesn’t expect her to wait for him while he’s at war—he knows that she has a life planned out for her and he has “nothing to offer.” Connie says that it’s only the life that Jean planned, and she’ll make her own decisions. Jack only has one request.

Connie and Kip are at the train station, under the pretense of meeting a photographer there for the newspaper to photograph the departing soldiers who are packing the trains. Connie brought a spare camera in case the photographer, who hasn’t arrived, runs out of film. She’s amazed that although she feels entirely different, transformed from the inside, even Kip does not notice a difference in her.

Kip spots Jack leaning out of a train car window and points him out to Connie, calling out to him. The photographer still hasn’t arrived, so Connie gives Kip the camera and tells him not to hit the button since it’s already loaded with film. She pushes through the crowd to see Jack one last time. Another soldier sees Jack leaning down and Connie reach up, so he hoists Connie onto his shoulder and lifts her into the air. Connie kisses Jack as the train begins to roll away, carrying her love away from her. The other soldier sets her down and disappears into the crowd. As the soldiers and the crowd leave, Connie fears that she’ll forget that kiss, forget Jack’s face. Kip appears at her side, hands her the camera, and claims he didn’t touch any buttons, just as she said.

Connie lies in bed, night after night, grateful for life even though she doesn’t know what the future will be. She thinks about her brothers, about Jean stuck with no husband and three children, and about her own grandmother, practically enslaved to her husband. In all of it, Connie thinks, the secret to being happy is to be grateful. She has had one night with the man she loves and, “just this once, I have had something that my heart wanted.”