Unsheltered

This chapter takes place during the story’s 19th-century timeline (the year 1875), as Vineland is becoming established, and the two storylines alternate in each chapter for the rest of the book. Thatcher Greenwood is a newly married science teacher who has just been hired at Vineland’s high school and comes home one day to find his wife, Rose, studying their next-door neighbor, Mary Treat. Mary’s husband, Dr. Treat, recently left her for another woman. Rose tells her husband that Mary has been counting ants or spiders, lying out on the lawn of her home. Narrative reveals that Thatcher took the Vineland job because Rose grew up there in the house that the family now lives in, which was designed by her father. Before Thatcher met Rose, her father suddenly died, leaving the family destitute with many debts and forcing his wife to relocate to Boston with her two daughters. Thatcher met and married Rose there.

Thatcher tells Rose that he has been to the local builder’s office because the roof of the family’s house needs repairs and discovered that the house is poorly built and that the structure will likely fail. He suggests that they relocate to another house or build one themselves, but Rose is offended by the idea that her father’s house is inadequate. The description of the Greenwoods’ house in relation to the Treats’ implies that Willa could be living in Thatcher’s house.

Upon her return from Boston with Zeke, Willa finds that Iano hired the contractor to make some short-term fixes to the house and wants her to try and get money for historic building preservation to make more expensive, substantial changes. Tig, who has spent her post-college years working short-term jobs and travelling, befriends the two brothers who live next door to Willa and Iano’s house, one of whom (Jorge) will eventually become her boyfriend. She works at a restaurant with Jorge. Zeke, who took Willa up on her offer of staying at the house, announces that he’ll be working from home trying to get an investing start-up going with two of his friends in Boston.

Over dinner, the family gets into a heated intellectual discussion about the state of the country, with Tig appalled at the environmental damage that the capitalist economy creates and Zeke and Iano defending the need for economic growth. Willa expresses concern over the way that people—thinking of her own family’s current financial plight—have less economic security than in past generations.

After Rose’s sister Polly’s dogs disappear into the Treats’ house one day, Thatcher goes over to retrieve them. It’s the first time he’s met Mary Treat, and he finds that she is an accomplished natural scientist and botanist. She shows him her collection of Tarantula spiders that she keeps in jars, and Thatcher discovers that she’s doing an experiment to see if a carnivorous pitcher plant will eat part of her finger, a task that requires her to sit with her finger on it for five hours. Intrigued and amused by Mary’s dedication, Thatcher makes tea for the two of them, and they converse. He learns that she’s corresponding with Charles Darwin. They discuss the scientist’s controversial beliefs about evolution and adaptation, which are causing a stir in their contemporary America and which both of them share. (Darwin’s theories were understood as negating religious teaching of the time, although Thatcher and Mary don’t think the two realms are incompatible.) Thatcher reveals to Mary that the principal at the school where he teaches refuses to entertain Darwin’s ideas and that the subject has caused division between them, causing him to worry about losing his position.

Willa drives Nick to a doctor’s appointment in Philadelphia. When she reaches the office, the receptionist informs her that the new family plan health insurance she and Iano signed up for isn’t accepted, forcing them to cancel the appointment. Because the hospital is on the same campus that Iano works at, the two go and visit him instead. Nick, who is a staunch conservative and outspoken about his beliefs, stays in the car while Willa visits Iano in his office. When she returns to the car, Willa finds that Nick has inadvertently blared conservative talk radio with the windows rolled down while students gathered for a political protest—one that expresses political beliefs that Nick disagrees with. Rather than being belligerent, her father-in-law is embarrassed by the spectacle he has caused, causing Willa to be more sympathetic toward Nick than she usually is.