Make Your Home Among Strangers: Chapter 34 Summary & Analysis

Though Lizet is dazed and physically and emotionally exhausted on her first day back at Rawlings, she still has a shift to work at the library. She sits behind the desk most of her shift, and simply waves through anybody who sets off the security sensor. After one very long set of beeps, Lizet looks up to see Ethan standing right in front of her, waving a special-collections text through the sensors to get her attention. Lizet hasn’t seen Ethan since their fight; since then, he’s gotten a haircut and acquired a Berkeley sweatshirt, both of which make him seem like he is already “on his way to being gone.”

Lizet tells Ethan that he looks like a different person—she is having trouble keeping the emotion out of her voice. They point out that they’ve been avoiding each other, but Lizet is listless and disengaged whereas Ethan is his old, jokey self. When Ethan asks Lizet to focus and talk to him, Lizet tells him she’s exhausted as she’s just returned from a trip to Miami. Ethan points out that she isn’t wearing her ring, and asks if something happened back home. Lizet tells Ethan to go away.

Instead of leaving, though, Ethan leans over Lizet’s desk and accuses her of being cruel to him. He has been trying to be respectful of her desire for space and kind to her all year, and all she’s done is try to make him feel like an “asshole.” When Lizet deflects and asks if Berkeley sent Ethan his sweatshirt, he clams up and tells her they are “done.” Lizet wishes she could tell Ethan everything—about Ariel, about her family, about Santa Barbara—but knows it is too late, and too much has happened between them.

As Ethan hovers on the other side of the desk, Lizet thinks about the first day they met, right here in this spot. Ethan drums once on the table before announcing that he’s going to go. Lizet is seized by a desire to grab his hand, but instead tells him he should indeed leave. As Ethan walks out through the door, Lizet tells him to “have a nice life,” but he does not turn around and answer her.

In her next lab class, Lizet is surprised when Professor Kaufmann approaches her and asks her to stay after class. Lizet gets nervous, and struggles with handling her lab equipment properly all through class. After the session is over, Professor Kaufmann asks Lizet if she has her forms for the internship ready—she asks why she never mailed them in. Lizet confesses that she doesn’t have it, and asks Professor Kaufmann if she’s been watching the news and seen what’s happening in Miami. Kaufmann says that she has, and Lizet explains that she needs to be home in Miami this summer, as her mother is involved in the protests, and the whole thing has been tough on her family.

Professor Kaufmann blinks, and says she doesn’t understand—she wants to know what Lizet will be doing in Miami all summer. Lizet says she’ll be supporting her family. Kaufmann misinterprets this to mean that Lizet has found another lab opportunity with better funding, but Lizet explains she’ll be offering them “other kinds of support.” Kaufmann says it’s a shame that Lizet’s family won’t let her participate. Lizet says it’s nothing like that, she just feels obligated to be with her family—Kaufmann suggests Lizet explain the situation to them and see if they will support her going to Santa Barbara.

Lizet tries once and for all to get out of the internship, but Kaufmann insists Lizet keep an open mind, and continue to consider the offer. Lizet does not blame Kaufmann for her failure to understand Lizet’s situation—Kaufmann is living a “bigger life” than Lizet ever will. Lizet is sad that she deluded herself into thinking she could live that kind of life, too.

Lizet hears from Ethan only once more that semester, towards the end, when he writes her an email to ask if she’s “OK.” Lizet does not reply, knowing she doesn’t deserve whatever goodbye Ethan wants to give to her. She feels “proud” of herself for releasing Ethan from his obligation to say farewell to her. In the last few weeks of the term, school feels like a job, a distraction Lizet must dispense with before she can return to Miami, where she is really needed. Lizet feels a sense of calm and relief in “recogniz[ing her] place,” and admitting that there is only so far she can rise above where she comes from.