Tom Lake: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

In the present, Emily expresses her disbelief that her mother’s name was once “Laura” instead of “Lara.” Lara informs her that there are many things about her past that her daughters don’t know. At Nell’s urging, Lara continues the story.

In the story, Lara brings her registration form out to the hallway and finds Veronica sitting with the first boy who auditioned for George. She’s blushing and laughing at something he’s saying. When Veronica looks up and sees Lara standing there, she immediately understands what she plans to do. Veronica introduces the boy with her as Jimmy Haywood (although Lara goes on to internally refer to him as “Jimmy-George”). She tells Lara that she can go last and that Jimmy-George will read with her. As Lara steps on stage, she has a fleeting feeling that she’s somehow saying goodbye to Veronica, who is too busy taking care of her little brothers to audition herself. In the audition, Lara delivers her lines naturally and without flourishes. She gets a standing ovation.

Back in the present, Lara tells her daughters she’s going to gloss over the boring parts of the story that follow her audition. Maisie asks her where Jimmy-George and Veronica are now, and Lara replies that they all fell out of touch. When her daughters prod her to tell them how the play went, Lara admits that it was a hit and extended its run to 10 performances. Jimmy-George, as expected, played George in the play. Emily asks whether he was as good a George as Peter Duke, and to the sisters’ shock, Lara clarifies that Peter Duke never played George at all. They were in the same production of Our Town at a small theater company in Tom Lake, but Peter played Mr. Webb, Emily’s father. As Lara’s daughters struggle to process this, Lara’s husband Joe passes through and reminds them all to go to bed soon.

Lara speeds through several years of her story in montage. In the story, she continues to act in plays throughout high school and decides to attend the University of New Hampshire. She continues to wonder what she should do with her life. In her junior year of college, she sees a poster for Our Town in the student center and decides to audition for Emily again. She gets the part. During the third night of the show, a Hollywood director named Bill Ripley is in the audience to see his niece perform. He finds Lara after the show and asks to speak with her alone. Fearing nothing, Lara leads him to an empty room. Ripley asks her to fly to Los Angeles the same week and take a screen test for a role in a new movie he’s working on. Lara resolves to become an actress.

In the present, Lara pauses her story again as her daughters laugh and chat. She thinks about the last few months, in which Maisie and Nell came home from college because of the coronavirus outbreak in March. Emily has been living and working on the cherry farm since graduating from college. The world is full of fear and uncertainty, but Lara can’t help but feel happy and grateful to have her family home and together again. Lara and Joe are thrilled to have their daughters close, but they’re also relieved to have more help on the sprawling farm.