The Female Persuasion: Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

Cory Pinto is at the crowded Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila, crying as he shuffles through the never-ending lines. Once through security, an announcement about his flight causes him to rush to his gate. He moves nimbly through the crowds, as he has not brought any luggage. When Cory left his apartment in the middle of the night, his roommates were confused and disoriented, and though they asked him what was going on, Cory was vague. When his roommates asked if someone had died, he nodded his head yes. When they asked if it was his “grandma or something,” he shook his head no.

As Cory rushes to the gate, he recalls the phone call he received just a few hours ago. When he saw his parents’ number on his screen, he was irritated that they’d forgotten the time difference or ignored it. However, when he answered the call, his father was crying and saying, in Portuguese, “your mother killed your brother.” Cory thought that his father had to be translating something wrong, but Cory’s father explained that Cory’s mother, backing out of the driveway, had run over Alby and crushed his spine. A bone broke off and entered a major artery, and now Alby was dead.

After receiving the call from his father, Cory began calling Greer, over and over, disheartened by his inability to get her to pick up the phone. He did not want to leave the news of Alby’s death on a voicemail, so he simply left messages begging her to call him back because “something really bad happened.” When he remembered, suddenly, that Greer had told him she’d be at Faith Frank’s house for the weekend, Cory became upset that Greer was busy with her “superhero” in his hour of need.

Cory dressed and called a cab, and as he rode toward the airport, he reflected on what his life in Manila has looked like over the past several months. He had been treated like a veritable celebrity—he was given a first-class flight to Manila, an apartment in a fancy building, a cleaning lady, and a large salary that allowed him to enjoy and explore all that Manila had to offer. As Cory’s cab sped toward the airport, Cory told his driver that he should feel free to crash the car because he didn’t care if he died.

By the time Cory arrives in Macopee, Greer is already there waiting for him, along with several friends and family members. Greer embraces Cory immediately, and he asks her what he can do to make Alby’s death “not true.” In his younger years, Cory was annoyed by Alby. However, as his little brother grew, Cory came to marvel at Alby’s wit and intelligence, and now his grief over Alby’s death is beyond measure. Greer assures Cory she will help him, though she doesn’t yet know what to do or how to do it. Cory asks Greer if she has taken off work to come be with him, and then he remembers that this week is the long-awaited first Loci summit, “Women and Power.” Cory feels badly for taking Greer away from the summit, but Greer reassures him that it’s fine and urges him to go upstairs and see his mother.

When Cory goes upstairs, his mother, Benedita, is in bed with all the shades closed. She can barely even lift her head. Cory immediately lashes out at her, asking why she couldn’t have seen Alby in the driveway. She insists that he wasn’t in her rearview mirror, and that she doesn’t know what happened. Cory is ashamed to have so cruelly attacked his mother and leaves the room.

At Alby’s funeral, Benedita faints at the grave, and Duarte begrudgingly helps her to her feet. The two of them are not speaking. Two days after the service, Cory’s father announces that he is going back to Lisbon. Cory tries to stop him, but his father insists he needs to get away. Cory’s mother asks for her husband again and again, and everyone tells her that he has just gone on a short trip home. After several days, Cory calls his father and asks if he is ever coming back. Duarte tells Cory that he is staying in Portugal “for the foreseeable future.”

Greer comforts Cory and tells him that he can stay with her as long as he wants—she will stay in Macopee, too, for as long as he needs her to. Cory is worried that Greer’s job will be in trouble, but she insists that it’ll “keep.” Cory watches several clips from the summit, and when he sees Faith Frank’s keynote speech, he understands why Greer is so “into” her.

One morning, Benedita comes downstairs covered in scratch marks. She tells Cory that Alby’s spirit wants for her to “shed [her] skin.” Cory’s aunts and uncles decide that Benedita needs constant supervision, but none of them can stay in Macopee much longer, and even Greer needs to return to New York soon. Cory, then, decides to stick around his hometown and care for his mother. Though Greer tells Cory that the burden should not be falling on him, he insists on staying.

Cory has not been in Alby’s room since his brother’s death, but now that Cory has “officially” decided to move back home, he decides to explore it. He has recently called to quit his job, shocking his employers. Alone in Alby’s room, Cory examines his brother’s toys, drawings, and school notebooks, constructing a “fantasy” in which Alby is still alive. In one notebook, he finds “cryptic stats,” which describe “observations” of an object which Cory can’t discern. When he reads one log that refers to the object waving its arm, Cory realizes that Alby’s notes all refer to Slowy, his pet turtle.

Slowy is not in his box in the corner of the room, and Cory realizes with a sickening flash what Alby had been doing in the driveway on the morning of his death and why he had been so close to the ground. Cory runs outside to the driveway and finds Slowy in the grass. When he picks up the shell, it feels dry and cold, and Cory believes that the turtle has died. But slowly, the turtle wakes up and begins moving.

Cory calls his father to let him know that Alby’s death had not been Benedita’s fault—Alby had been lying on the ground studying Slowy. This news does not change Duarte’s demeanor at all, though, and over the next several weeks, Duarte calls infrequently to check in on Benedita and Cory. Meanwhile, Cory begins taking care of Slowy and spends his nights sleeping in Alby’s room. He makes sure his mother takes her medications and eats her meals, and occasionally, when she’s up to it, he plays card games with her.

One day, a woman calls the house asking for Benedita. The woman, one of Benedita’s clients, is a professor who has been out of town for a year on a sabbatical and wants her house cleaned. Cory goes in his mother’s place to clean the house—the two of them need the money, and Cory is surprised that the work actually makes him feel good and useful. Every Thursday morning, he returns to the professor’s house to clean, and as he does, he often thinks of his own cleaning lady back in the Philippines and how much unnecessary work he and his careless roommates created for her.

One day, Cory takes his mother to visit her sister and Cory’s cousin, Sab. Cory has always avoided Sab, who is a bad influence, but now, Cory goes upstairs to his cousin’s room and knocks, hoping to reconnect. Cory’s cousin almost immediately offers him heroin, and Cory accepts. After Cory snorts the drugs, he throws up onto the carpet. Despite getting sick, Cory soon begins to enjoy a pleasant high in which he forgets, for the first time in a long time, all about Alby’s death. 

In the morning, after sleeping for over thirteen hours, Cory is awoken by a phone call from Greer. Greer still speaks softly and carefully to Cory, skirting around his grief in a way that makes him feel pitied. Greer soon switches the subject to her own work, however, and tells Cory that she has some exciting news: Loci is planning a big multimedia event, and they need to hire a consultant. She offers to recommend Cory for the job, but he refuses.

Greer tells Cory that he’s been home for months now and needs to start thinking about picking his life back up again. Cory insists that the path he’s on now is his life, and that caring for his mother and grieving Alby’s death have much more meaning than a job at a consulting firm. Greer is upset. She knows that Cory is isolating himself and points out that they were meant to figure out the world together, side by side. The call ends on an unpleasant note, and Cory returns to his household duties, caring for his mother and feeding Slowy.

Months after his brother’s death, Cory is still overwhelmed by grief. He cannot believe that his brother is truly gone and laments how Alby has simply “evaporated” from the world. Cory begins using Alby’s old notebooks to record his own observations on his grief-processing, but even this does not help. Instead of working through his emotions, Cory decides to lose himself in Alby’s many video games, which he plays all day and night.

Greer arrives in Macopee for a visit. Her trips are infrequent, and Cory has noticed that when Greer is around, his mother seems even more agitated and isolated than usual. Greer has tried to convince Cory to come to New York for a visit, but Cory refuses to leave Benedita in anyone else’s care. As Greer sits with Cory in his living room, she asks what’s going on with him—she is on the verge of tears. Cory realizes how much he and Greer have grown apart. He feels that relationships are a luxury “for people whose lives [are] not in crisis.”

Greer asks Cory what she’s doing wrong—whether her calls and texts aren’t enough and if he wants her to move back to Macopee to be with him. Cory does not want to burden Greer but insists that he needs to stay where he is. Greer laments how Cory has become “completely uninterested in the outside world,” and urges him to see that she has begun setting up the life they always dreamed of together—the only thing missing is Cory. She begs him to come to New York, even for just a weekend, but Cory continues deflecting, insisting only that he is needed at home. Greer, agitated, suggests they get out the house for a little bit, so they head out to a local pizza place.

At the restaurant, Cory and Greer are served by one of their former classmates, Kristin Vells. Kristin asks Cory if he’s living at home now, as if to insinuate that for all his smarts he has turned out no better than her. As Cory and Greer eat, Cory apologizes for hurting Greer and distancing himself from her. He tells her about snorting heroin with his cousin, attempting to explain that he is in an emotional state unlike any state he has ever been in, and that he wants Greer to understand “where he is” right now. Cory urges Greer not to get caught up in pity or worry for him and instead live her life to the fullest.

Greer, exhausted and unhappy, tells Cory that she can’t continue their conversation any longer. She offers to drop him off at home before she drives up to Boston for a Loci event. Cory realizes that in Boston, Greer will find comfort, friendship, and relief in Faith Frank, and that Faith can provide Greer with the things that Cory no longer can. The two of them wrap up their meal, leave Kristin an enormous tip, and head out into the rain.