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Chapter 21
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Walk Two Moons, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Judgment, Perspective, and Storytelling
Parents, Children, and Growing Up
Grief
Nature
Summary
Analysis
At Phoebe’s house the next night, Sal barely sleeps. Phoebe jumps in and out of bed at every noise. She’s sure the lunatic will return for her, and she spots Mrs. Cadaver in her garden at one point. Sal dozes off and wakes up to Phoebe crying, though Phoebe denies it. In the morning, Phoebe refuses to get up and tells Mr. Winterbottom she’s very sick, possibly with cancer. Mr. Winterbottom says they have to live their lives and can’t “malinger.” He tosses her the dictionary before he runs away. Phoebe discovers that to malinger is to pretend to be sick to get out of work.
As Phoebe tries to orient herself after Mrs. Winterbottom disappears, she searches for anything that might explain what’s happening to her and to her family. Her first instinct is to stop everything so that nothing will have changed when Mrs. Winterbottom returns. But Mr. Winterbottom proposes that they should confront their fears and remain strong by continuing on with life as usual. In this way, Phoebe and her father have entirely different ways of coping with loss, and the novel doesn’t indicate that either of these reactions is better or more valid than the other.
Themes
Prudence races around the house getting ready, while Phoebe slowly dresses in wrinkled clothes. Downstairs, she laments that there’s no muesli, toast, or orange juice on the table. Then, she touches Mrs. Winterbottom’s favorite cardigan and asks if her mother would really leave it behind. Mr. Winterbottom insists it’s old, but Phoebe puts it on.
With Mrs. Winterbottom gone, Phoebe has to acknowledge all the things that her mother did for her. She may not have appreciated these things much before, but now they seem extremely important.
Themes
Sal is uneasy. This all reminds her of the first few weeks after Momma left. Sal and Dad fumbled around, and the animals were skittish. When Dad said Momma wasn’t coming home, Sal refused to believe it. She presented her postcards to Dad, as well as Momma’s favorite chicken. Sal knows that both she and Phoebe were asking the same thing by showing their mothers’ favorite things to their fathers: “How can she not come back to me? She loves me.”
The situation at the Winterbottoms’ house is unsettling for many reasons, but for Sal, it’s especially hard because she went through the same thing when Momma left. Phoebe, she realizes, fears that Mrs. Winterbottom has been kidnapped because in her mind, it’s unthinkable that Mrs. Winterbottom would leave her beloved daughters—just as Sal initially refused to believe that Momma wasn’t coming back.
Themes
When a classmate comments on Phoebe’s wrinkled blouse at school, Phoebe says Mrs. Winterbottom is away. The classmate says she already does all her own ironing, and Phoebe whispers to Sal that she’s having a heart attack. Sal remembers a time that her family’s dog, Moody Blue, caught a baby rabbit and carried it around. When Sal convinced Moody Blue to hand over the rabbit, she could feel the rabbit’s heart beating fast—until it stopped. Momma said the rabbit was dead. Now, Sal wonders what would happen if Phoebe’s heart stopped. Mrs. Winterbottom wouldn’t have any idea.
Phoebe is afraid of what’s happening with her mother, but she also doesn’t want to have to admit to her classmates that her family is going through this crisis. Phoebe prides herself on being normal and having a seemingly perfect family that, so it would be difficult to acknowledge that that’s not actually the case. Sal, though, has been in Phoebe’s position, so she’s focused on how Mrs. Winterbottoms’ disappearance is affecting Phoebe (much like Momma’s absence has affected Sal). She’s clearly worried about the prospect of suffering (or even dying) without one’s mother around to intervene.
Themes
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Later in the morning, Christy and Megan ask if Mrs. Winterbottom is on a business trip. Phoebe says her mother is in London and then gives Sal a puzzled look. Sal understands: it’s easier to lie sometimes. She did the same thing when Momma left. She tells Phoebe not to worry, and Phoebe snaps back that she’s not worried. Sal also remembers snapping at people when they tried to empathize with her or soothe her. In reality, she felt terrible. Kids continue to pepper Phoebe with questions throughout the day. Walking home after school, Ben tells Phoebe to talk. But instead, Sal says, “everyone has his own agenda.”
Again, Sal recognizes what’s going on with Phoebe here because she’s experienced the same thing herself. In this way, Sal can empathize with Phoebe in a way that many of their classmates probably can’t. Sal also suggests that what’s going to come next isn’t a mystery: Phoebe is going to continue to feel terrible but will insist that she feels fine. When Sal responds to Ben with one of the messages from the notes, she’s suggesting that Phoebe is far too caught up in her own misery to care about talking to Ben.
Themes
Phoebe asks Sal to stay with her after school, and to ask Dad if she can stay for dinner. Mrs. Winterbottom isn’t home, so Phoebe announces that she’s going to look for clues that will prove the lunatic dragged her mother away. Sal wants to tell Phoebe this is silly, but she knows Phoebe won’t want to hear it. When Momma left, Sal imagined that all sorts of things had happened to her. Dad assured Sal that Momma didn’t have cancer. She wonders if maybe Dad was trying to protect either her or Momma.
Because Sal has been through all of this and knows that Phoebe won’t want to her that she’s grasping at straws, Sal is able to be a more empathetic friend. But at the same time, seeing Phoebe go through this allows Sal to think more critically about what happened when Momma left. Wondering if Dad was trying to protect her or Momma by telling the truth is a much more generous view of Dad than Sal has given him thus far.
Themes
Phoebe searches the house for bloodstains and hair. She collects hairs and marks suspicious spots with tape. Prudence gets home a bit later, thrilled that she made the cheerleading squad. Phoebe reminds Prudence that Mrs. Winterbottom was kidnapped, but Prudence insists that isn’t true and asks about dinner. When Prudence opens the freezer and tells Phoebe to look, Sal is terrified—maybe there are body parts in there. But instead, there are frozen casseroles with cooking instructions taped to the top. Prudence shows Mr. Winterbottom the freezer when he gets home, but he just says, “Hm.”
One of the things that makes Mrs. Winterbottom’s disappearance especially difficult for Phoebe is that Prudence and Mr. Winterbottom don’t seem to care all that much. Prudence, for one, is too caught up in her own life to take Phoebe’s concern seriously. And although Mr. Winterbottom doesn’t react strongly to the frozen meals, they hint that his wife was planning her departure for some time. Sal is still dealing with the trauma of Momma’s departure, so she feels every twinge of fear that Phoebe does.
Themes
Over dinner, Mr. Winterbottom says he hasn’t heard from Mrs. Winterbottom. He refuses to call the police and then listens to Phoebe tell him about her evidence. Then, he pulls Phoebe to the freezer, makes her look at the casseroles, and asks if the kidnapping lunatic really would’ve allowed Mrs. Winterbottom to prepare casseroles before taking her. Phoebe accuses her father of not caring. When Sal leaves later, Mr. Winterbottom is busy calling all of Mrs. Winterbottom’s friends, which pleases Phoebe.
Mr. Winterbottom seems to be doing exactly what Dad did with Sal: telling her that all of the far-fetched ideas she’s considering are probably wrong. Sal is able to see that Mr. Winterbottom is trying to be kind by telling Phoebe the truth, but to Phoebe, this is insulting. It makes her feel as though Mr. Winterbottom doesn’t care about Phoebe or Mrs. Winterbottom.
Themes
As Sal steps onto Phoebe’s porch, Margaret calls to her—Dad is over, and they’re having dessert. Dad tells her to join them, but Sal says she needs to go finish her homework. Dad decides to walk home with Sal, and they discuss Phoebe and Mrs. Winterbottom. Dad insists that it’s far-fetched that a lunatic might’ve carried Mrs. Winterbottom off, but Sal asks how Dad knows that someone didn’t blackmail Momma into going to Idaho. Sighing, Dad insists that Momma wanted to go, and he says they couldn’t have stopped her. For that matter, Momma intended to return. Seeing how miserable Dad looks, Sal apologizes. They sit on the porch together, “pitiful and lost.”
Sal isn’t ready to forgive Margaret Cadaver yet, or Dad for that matter. But in this moment, Sal starts to see that Dad is hurting just as much as she is because of Momma’s absence—he’s just as “pitiful and lost” as she is. And Dad seems to suggest that while wild ideas (like the notion that the lunatic kidnapped Mrs. Winterbottom) might help a person cope with loss in the short term, it’s better to accept the truth in the long term. In this case, the truth is that Momma wanted to go, and she also wanted to return. This also implies that Momma didn’t choose whatever situation is preventing her from returning.
Themes
