Trust: Book 3, Part 1 Summary & Analysis

In 1981, following Andrew’s death, the Bevel house opens to the public as a museum. Ida has studiously avoided the building for years, but she decides to visit after she learns that the museum will now include Andrew and Mildred’s papers. Ida feels like she owes her career as a writer to the Bevels, though Mildred had been dead for years when she first met Andrew. She goes to the Bevel house and thinks about working there in the past. She remembers the service entrance she once used.

In June of 1938, Ida walks to Andrew’s office building after finding a notice in the newspaper advertising a job as a secretary. When she arrives, she takes note of a towering skyscraper under construction nearby. She waits in line with dozens of other applicants. She thinks becoming a secretary will enable her to find some independence. She currently lives with her father, and they’re behind in rent and in debt. Most of the people they know are in similar circumstances.

Ida published her first book, a collection of short stories, when she was nine years old. Her father printed it. Ida wrote an essay about her father that was included in her fourth book. In that essay, she discussed her father’s disdain for the work of an idealistic poet, Arturo Giovannitti. The best intentions lead to the worst literature, Ida’s father argued. Later in life, Ida realized that her father was jealous of Giovannitti. They were about the same age, and their life stories shared striking similarities. But Giovannitti achieved renown in life, while Ida’s father languished in obscurity.

Ida’s father’s account of how he came to the U.S. is never consistent. But from what Ida can glean, in Italy, her father had become active in anarchist circles and left-wing politics. He was blacklisted as a result, which led him to leave for the U.S. Once in the U.S., he rarely ventured outside of Brooklyn. Racism against Italians was rampant in those days. Now, he takes pride in his work as a printer and disapproves of Ida’s plan to become a secretary. He thinks the job might offer Ida financial independence, but it will also be another instance of a woman being subjugated to men.

Ida waits in line for an interview for the secretary job at Andrew’s office with several other women. Though there’s no sense of hostility, Ida is aware that they’re in competition with one another. She’s led inside and is amazed by the number of people who work there, all of whom are women. In the interview, Ida does a typing test and then a dictation exercise. Afterward, she’s taken back to the reception hall and waits while the tests are scored.

Ida’s father doesn’t call himself an immigrant; he says he’s an exile. He oscillates between disdain and nostalgia for Italy while finding everything about the U.S. dissatisfying. He abhors consumerism and hates finance capital, which he views as the source of injustice. He thinks money is a fiction that has no actual value. He isn’t open to hearing other opinions, and any arguments Ida tries to advance are futile. Ida feels some satisfaction in the idea that she might work for Andrew in the finance industry. When Ida tells her father that she’s going to the interview, he doesn’t respond.

Two days after the interview, Ida returns to Andrew’s office. Someone meets her and tells her to write a short autobiography. She makes up a story as she writes. She says that she hopes to live most of her life in the future and that each person must carve their present out of the “shapeless block of the future.” She thinks what she’s written is florid enough to attract attention but also shows some restraint. After she finishes, she’s taken to another room where four or five other applicants wait.

Ida waits for about a half hour before being taken to another room for an interview. The man who interviews her says her tests are impressive. He reads her autobiography and then asks if she genuinely wants the job or if she is applying solely out of need. Ida is surprised to hear herself echoing her father, though with a positive spin, when she responds. She says that she wants to work for a company that makes all things. And that’s exactly what money is: all things, the “god among commodities.” The man asks Ida to come back on Monday for a final interview. 

Ida only has one picture of her mother and only knows a few facts about her. She was born in Umbria and came to the U.S. with her brother. She met Ida’s father in the U.S. and the two had Ida. She then died giving birth to a second baby, who was stillborn. Ida was seven and stopped going to school for a year. Instead, she went to the library and read novels. Ida then gradually took over the cleaning in the house, and her father didn’t find anything wrong with using child labor to uphold the status quo of gender roles.

Ida returns to Andrew’s office on Monday for the final interview. For the interview, she speaks directly with Andrew. His face is blank throughout. He tells Ida that he’s glad she’s there and offers his condolences for the death of her mother. He says he knows the autobiography she wrote is fiction. He says that he wants Ida to help him manage his image, or, really, Mildred’s image. He can’t stand the rumors that have been swirling.

Andrew takes a book from his drawer and shows it to Ida. It’s a novel called Bonds by Harold Vanner. He says it was published last year ago and that Vanner was an acquaintance of Mildred. Andrew says the book has been a sensation because it’s about him and Mildred. And it doesn’t make them look good. It’s defamation and trash, he says, and everyone he knows has read it. He says the rumors have to be countered with facts and that he wants Ida to help him write his autobiography. He says they’ll start next week.

Jack, a family friend and Ida’s sometime boyfriend, is eating with Ida’s father when Ida returns home after the interview. Ida and Jack briefly dated as teenagers but then fell out of touch. Later, Jack left for college in Chicago, which impressed Ida. Now, he’s come back after two years. He says college wasn’t worth the trouble, and now he’s a journalist. He listens enraptured to a story Ida’s father tells about a close call he had with authorities while in Italy. When Ida’s father leaves, Jack kisses Ida and says he actually came to see her. Ida says she just got a job, and Jack says that a couple of newspapers liked the articles he sent them. Ida says there’s much to celebrate and that maybe they can go out to a fancy restaurant when she gets her first paycheck.

Ida first reads Bonds not as literature but as evidence. She tries to decipher the novel like a detective, searching for any knowledge she can find about Andrew. As she reads, though, she becomes taken with the author’s prose and the way he maps the difficult terrain between the intellectual and the emotional. Reading the book is one of the first things that makes Ida want to be a writer. She’s also taken with Helen, the stand-in for Mildred. Ida thinks that she and Helen have strikingly similar life stories. But she doesn’t understand why Vanner chose to submit Helen to such a gruesome fate at the end of the book. It’s a novel, after all, so Vanner could have written the story any way he pleased. After reading the book, though Ida knows it’s fiction, she feels like she has a glimpse into who Andrew really is.