Chapter Twenty-One: The Aftermath
Part 2
Ryan
demands entrance into Nick’s apartment, pounding on the door, “his voice raw
from yelling” (141). Maybe I’m a coward. Maybe I’ve never been in love. But I
would not answer that door. Not with a giant angry man on the other side. Especially one where Jenna has already had thoughts about fearing what Ryan would do if he found out about her infidelity.
But
Jenna does, and Ryan slams into the room and states only “Nicholas Martin.”
Remember that Jenna didn’t get Nick’s message, so she’s surprised that Ryan
knows.
Apparently
this infidelity is even worse than were it someone else because Nick was “the
man who Ryan had always trusted Jenna with” (142). It seems to me that
relationships are built on trust. And that Ryan should be trusting Jenna, not
trusting his friends/teammates to police Jenna’s sexuality. Granted, Jenna
broke that trust. But that’s the point, Jenna
broke it. The only person who gets to police sexuality is the owner of that
sexuality. This goes in, with Ryan pondering “If he hadn’t let them hang out
together, would this have been prevented?” (142). Uh, and Brian’s the Chicago
Blackhawk they call “Caveman”? I’m sorry, Ryan, you don’t get to “let” or not
let your fiancée hang out with anyone. (Also, she’d still have been incredibly
unhappy and probably would have had something similar happen if not with Nick
then with someone else.)
Still,
even though there’s no textual reason for it, when Jenna tries to give the
engagement ring back to Ryan, he declares that he’s not sure what he wants and
that while he hates Jenna he also still loves her. So he puts the ring on her
right hand until he figures out what to do. When Jenna tells him she’s going
back to New Hampshire, he tells her not to bother, at least not yet, and that
he’s moved out of the house so she can stay there until he’s decided what he
wants. (So even thought they're not together at the moment, she can continue relying on him for shelter, food, clothes...)
On
one hand, that all of this is up to Ryan bothers me in its unilateralness. On
the other hand, Jenna did cheat on him so it is up to Ryan to decide if he can
get past that. (On the third hand—and yes, apparently I’m describing something
with many hands—while it’s not Ryan’s fault
that Jenna cheated on him, he did have
many faults that made it a more likely possibility. So if they decide to work
things out- and now the novel is pretty clear that they will- it seems like it
ought to be more than just Jenna doing the apologizing.)
So
Ryan leaves and Jenna packs her things (not that she has many, since she was
left at the Art Institute two days before-- not exactly packed for a mini-vay)
and Nick returns home and offers her a ride back to her place.
It was one last kind gesture to the
woman he had thought he loved, to take her back to the place she called home
(145).
Now
the text is rewriting Nick’s history as well. Suddenly Jenna has gone from
being the woman he loved more than any other in this world less than twenty pages ago to someone he had thought he loved.
…he had really fallen in love with
the idea of having a girl, like Jenna, the same way that Ryan had Jenna
(145).
No,
novel, no. Bad novel! No cookie! You don’t get to have it both ways! This
cannot be the love of Nick’s life and
just a case of mistaking the idea of love for the actual thing. This is just bad writing. I cannot justify this in any other way.
Jenna
called a cab, though, so Nick’s kind gesture is unnecessary.
Jenna had relied on Nick too much
during this entire ordeal when she should have been relying on Ryan, and that’s
what had set the ball rolling (146).
Oh
really? I thought the part where Ryan was unreliable was what set the ball
rolling. You don’t get to blame Jenna for this, Nick. Also, know what else got
the ball rolling? When you kissed your teammate’s fiancée.
A
few days later, Jenna is home, alone, and has been moping for days, much like
the rest of this book. She takes a shower, still wearing the wedding ring, and
partway through she’s interrupted by Ryan showing up. It’s awfully convenient
that he showed up while she was in the shower, since the first thing he has to
do is look her up and down for “any tainted markings on her body” (147).
Evidently he feared that Nick’s fingers secrete indelible ink?
He thought he’d be able to tell
that she was defiled or tarnished. Like there would be fingerprints on her skin
in all the places Nick had touched her (148).
I
really hope that this is a metaphor and not that Ryan actually thinks that he’d
be able to visually tell that she had been with another man. Also, I don’t
condone what Jenna did—within the confines of the relationship she had with
Ryan, what she did with Nick was wrong. However, this imagery strikes me as the
logical continuation of a deeply problematic purity culture and the double
standard.
I
do not mean to suggest that the author or the character subscribe to Purity
Culture (capital letters) with all its attendant balls and courtship and rings
(although the gender lines displayed in this novel do fall in line with the
kind of teachings usually present along with purity culture). But I do think
that the double standard is alive and well and that purity culture has rubbed
off on mainstream, abstinence-only, middle America. Obviously, Jenna was not a
virgin when she slept with Nick because she’s been sleeping with Ryan, although
the book does seem to suggest that he’s the only other man she’d been with. But
this idea that Ryan might be able to somehow visually tell that she’s been with
another man makes me think of the chewing-gum/dirty tape metaphor that girls
get told—and not just in religiously-affiliated home schooling, but in
mainstream public school, abstinence-only sex education. (If you’re unfamiliar,
it’s the idea that a woman ought to save herself for marriage because no one
wants used goods, and it’s taught using various metaphors [chewing gum,
wrapping paper, packing tape, cups of spit] that simultaneously objectifies
women, reduces them to their bodily selves, and yet places on them the
responsibility of keeping not only themselves ‘pure’ but the men around them
from thinking lustful thoughts about them.)
To
be fair, that’s a digression and I doubt that’s what the author was thinking
about when she wrote this, nor, in fact, what Ryan’s thinking about. But his
disgust about Jenna’s infidelity isn’t framed in terms of being unable to trust
her, it’s completely put in terms of someone
else touching her. And that’s a problem.
Ryan
hops into the shower with Jenna and proceeds to wash her.
It was a cleansing ritual; Ryan was
removing any traces that Nick may have left behind. He was washing her clean so
they could start all over. So her skin would be fresh and new and only remember
his touch and no one else’s (148
emphasis original).
I
guess I should be glad that, unlike chewing gum, Jenna’s body can become clean
and new.
So
this leads to foreplay and Ryan carries her to the bed and sex ensues.
The only thing Ryan could think
about was if this was how Jenna had looked at… He couldn’t even think his name. It made Ryan’s blood
boil, and he took it out on Jenna by making sure she would never, ever remember one minute she spent with him (149 emphasis
original).
Is
this supposed to be sexy? It reads like violence. Given that we’re still in the
(damp from the shower) foreplay section of the sex, I guess it’s not, but the
narrative is not clear on what precisely Ryan is doing when he “took it out on
Jenna,” so I find it problematic.
The
rest is just sex. Afterwards, Ryan takes the ring off of her right hand and
studies it. Jenna begs him to let her spend the rest of her life making sure he
knows how much she loves him. I know she was the one at fault (in actually
cheating), but given the inequality of their relationship before the infidelity,
I can’t say I approve of this reconciliation scene (he puts the ring back on
her left hand) because of how much power Ryan has in the relationship already
and how much more this gives him. It just seems so awkward.
But
I will also admit that every couple is different and differing dynamics appeal
to different people. Maybe this just isn’t my preferred dynamic.Or a healthy-seeming one.
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