The Leavers: Chapter 18 Summary & Analysis

Polly notes that Daniel looks troubled by her story, but he keeps asking questions. When she tells him that she saw Leon after returning to Fuzhou, he asks, “Didn’t he tell you I was adopted?” As she tries to think of an answer, he says, “You knew, and didn’t do anything?” Sidestepping this question, she narrates the moment she saw Leon for the first time since going to Ardsleyville. She was working in the nail salon, and he appeared and asked to speak with her, eventually telling her that Daniel was adopted by “a white couple.” “I should have never left,” he told Polly. “If I hadn’t left, [Deming] would still be with me. It’s my fault. I don’t know how to get in touch with him.”

Still narrating her reunification with Leon, Polly says he takes her to his friend’s apartment, which is empty. He can’t take her back to his own apartment because he’s married, though this doesn’t stop him from staying with her at his friend’s place for a handful of nights, which they spend having sex and talking. Each night, Polly wakes up screaming, dreaming about Ardsleyville. Eventually, Leon goes out and brings back a bottle of sleeping pills, and her nightmares recede into the blank darkness of night. When Leon’s friend is about to come back, Leon suggests that they could continue to “be together” in the outside world, but Polly says, “Go home to your wife.” She says this because “being with Leon” makes only reminds her of losing Deming.

After her time with Leon, Polly takes a business class, and her teacher is so impressed that she lived in the United States that he invites her to be an English teacher at the new school he’s opening. Planning to use her wages to return to New York to find Deming, she accepts the position. A year later, she meets Yong, who is one of her students. On the last day of class, he asks her on a date, and six months later, they get married, earning Polly “urban hukou” (permanent city residency).

In the Beijing hotel room with Daniel, Polly explains that she couldn’t go back to look for him in the United States because she had been deported. “I couldn’t go anywhere,” she says. “If I thought about you too much I wouldn’t be able to live.” In response, Daniel accuses her of forgetting him, pointing out that she didn’t even tell Yong about him. Ashamed, Polly admits that she thought Yong would leave her, though she notes that this is a lie. “I’d only told myself that,” she narrates. “I had never believed it.” Feeling bad, Polly says, “But you were safe, weren’t you? With your adoptive parents?” Listening to herself, she registers the “pleading desperation” in her own voice, realizing just how much she wants to “believe” that she didn’t ruin her son’s life.