Behold the Dreamers: Chapter 32 Summary & Analysis

Twice a day, Jende writes down what Clark does, including times, locations, and names. He also adds descriptions of people, though their actions and behaviors contribute nothing to the narrative. Jende uses the opportunity to use words and phrases that he learned from reading the dictionary that he’s owned since secondary school, and expressions that he picked up for the newspaper. He offers this language as proof to Cindy that he’s thinking carefully as he writes. On Friday evening, however, after driving Clark from the Chelsea Hotel to his office, he writes that he has driven Mr. Edwards from Washington, DC to the gym and then back to work. As often as he can, he writes “gym” in the place of the Chelsea Hotel. During weeks in which Clark goes to the hotel more than twice, he invents another lie.

In moments in which Jende fears that Cindy may have tried to contact Clark while he’s at the hotel, Jende writes that they were stuck in the Holland Tunnel, where there’s poor phone reception, in bad traffic. Another time, he writes that Clark had to rush to a meeting in a taxi while Jende was on his way back from picking up Mighty, so Jende had no way to know where Clark was going or whom he was meeting. Jende carries the notebook with him at all times and hands it to Cindy to read every morning. She nods in satisfaction with his work. Jende notices no more phone calls to her friends about “what he’s doing to me.” She laughs a bit more, but she still looks unhealthily thin. She talks a lot about Vince, worrying that he hasn’t responded to her email.

Jende wants very much for Cindy to have fun and she seems to have it when she and Clark attend a gala at the Waldorf Astoria the Monday after Thanksgiving. The holiday had been a happy one because Clark’s parents, his sister, Ceci, and his nieces visit. Mighty tells Jende about what “an awesome Thanksgiving” the Edwardses had and that they had celebrated it with June’s family. Jende can see in Cindy’s new joy that the security of family is “her greatest source of happiness.” On the night of the gala, she and Clark enter the car beaming. She looks “lustrous” in a red strapless gown, and he looks suave in a well-tailored tuxedo. They reenter the car five hours later even happier, laughing at what “had transpired on the dance floor.” Back home, Jende tells Neni that he never thought a day would come would he would see the Edwardses so happy.