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Chapter 32
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
Gram and Gramps still aren’t sleepy, so Sal agrees to tell one more part of the story before she goes to bed. In her story, Sal goes to Phoebe’s in the evening after Mr. Birkway reads the girls’ journals aloud. Sal marches up to Phoebe’s bedroom and says she has something to tell her about Mr. Birkway. But the doorbell rings, and Mr. Winterbottom tells Phoebe and Sal to come downstairs. Mr. Birkway is there, and Sal feels terrible—Phoebe doesn’t know that Mrs. Cadaver is Mr. Birkway’s sister. When Phoebe notices that Mr. Birkway has her journal, she says it’s private. Mr. Birkway apologizes for reading it aloud.
This is an instance of dramatic irony: Sal and the reader know that Mr. Birkway is Mrs. Cadaver’s sister, but Phoebe doesn’t know this yet, and this causes tension. Sal can see that this is a train wreck waiting to happen, and she wants to protect Phoebe at all costs from the embarrassment of learning that she’s suspicious of the wrong person. But when Mr. Birkway comes to the Winterbottoms’ house, to apologize and presumably to tell Phoebe the truth, it shows that he has internalized his own lesson about seeing things from other people’s perspectives.
Themes
Then, Mr. Birkway explains that Mrs. Cadaver is his sister, and that her husband is dead. Phoebe looks smug, but Mr. Birkway says he wasn’t murdered. Mr. Cadaver and Mrs. Partridge were hit by a drunk driver, and Mrs. Partridge lost her sight in the accident. Mrs. Cadaver was on duty in the emergency room when her husband and mother came in on stretchers. Sal watches Phoebe. Mr. Winterbottom’s hand is on her shoulder, and that seems like the only thing keeping Phoebe in her seat. Mr. Birkway says that Mr. Cadaver is not buried in her backyard, and he wants to assure Phoebe that he and Mrs. Cadaver haven’t kidnapped or murdered Mrs. Winterbottom.
While Sal already knew that Mr. Birkway and Mrs. Cadaver are siblings, the accident is news to both her and Phoebe. In this moment, Phoebe learns that she’s severely misjudged Mrs. Cadaver as an evil murderer—instead, Mrs. Cadaver watched her husband die and her mother lose her sight. This truth is hard to hear and is no doubt embarrassing for Phoebe—and knowing this, Phoebe will have to come up with a new theory as to where her mother went.
Themes
Once Mr. Birkway is gone, Sal and Phoebe sit on the front porch. Phoebe doesn’t know what to do now; without Mrs. Cadaver to suspect, she doesn’t know where to look for Mrs. Winterbottom. Sal shares that the lunatic is Sergeant Bickle’s son, and the girls make a plan.
Phoebe is lost without Mrs. Cadaver to suspect. But Sal by sharing the lunatic’s connection to Sergeant Bickle, Sal gives Phoebe something else to focus on, ensuring that Phoebe still doesn’t have to fully confront that her mother is gone.
Themes
That night, Sal can’t stop thinking about Mrs. Cadaver and imagining her looking down at the stretchers in the emergency room. Sal feels like she’s walking in Mrs. Cadaver’s moccasins, and she wonders how Mrs. Cadaver got rid of the “birds of sadness” after losing her husband and after Mrs. Partridge became blind. These are things that matter. Sal wonders if Mrs. Cadaver regrets anything, and if she knew “the worth of water before the well was dry.” Back in the present, Sal asks Gram if she’s sleepy yet. Gram isn’t, but she tells Sal to go to sleep and tells Gramps to say this isn’t their marriage bed. He complies.
Just like Phoebe, Sal can now start to empathize with Mrs. Cadaver, as she seems more human to Sal and less like an interloper trying to steal Dad away. As Sal thinks about Mrs. Cadaver, she touches on all the messages that she and Phoebe have found on the Winterbottoms’ porch—all of which are helping Sal ask different questions and look at things in a new way. And Sal also finds that she and Mrs. Cadaver might have something in common. Sal has implied that she didn’t know “the worth of water” (or Momma) before Momma left. Here, she wonders if Mrs. Cadaver appreciated her husband enough before he suddenly died, or if she now feels the same way Sal does.
Themes
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