I See You Everywhere (3-44)

SUMMARY:


The novel begins with the death of Louisa and Clement's Great-Aunt Lucidite, or Lucy, who lives in Vermont.  Lucy was born into the Jardine family along with Verite or Vetty and Aristide, Clem and Louisa's great-grandfather, and they are two years older than Amitie or Amy who is twenty  years older than Lucy.  Amy had grown up to be a mother of five children and marry a grapefruit czar, Aristide spent most of his time in war and Vetty eloped and ran off with Josiah Monroe to Vermont all while Lucy was just starting to grow up.  Five years after Vetty's marriage, she writes to her family in New Orleans to tell them she has separated from Josiah and doesn't know whether to stay or to come back home so Lucy takes it upon herself to get her, with a servant, but a few months later the servant comes back alone without either daughter.  Many family members speculated that Lucy was gay and having her way with her sister and the others thought she was just respecting her elders, as many younger people did at that time.


The whole family was going to Vermont to collect the things Lucy left for them in her will and to pay respects.  For a month Clem had already been there while her boyfriend went to Alaska and Louisa did not want to come but when she heard Lucy left her and her sister all of her antique jewels she decided she better go because if she did not Clem would have claimed the cameo, an ivory on steel-blue Pacific coral with a woman  imprinted on it leaning into a hand holding an iris, necklace both girls longed for since they were kids.  Over the couple of weeks Clem had with Lucy she discovered a lot about the woman.  Things such as for a 98-year old woman she is very strong and open minded.  Clem took Lucy to the bar where she experienced new, to her, musicians like Bob Marley and Al Green, and dressed her in green mini-dresses.  After Lucy's first and last trip to the club with Clem and her two friends Ralph and Hector, whom are together as a couple, Clem asked why she stayed in Vermont with Vetty.  She told her the reason was that at the age of 19, she was smitten over a man that her parents would never approve of and she got pregnant, her parents, trying to cover the shame, said their daughter was going on a trip to Europe but instead went to Vermont to meet her 37-year old sister a woman she never laid her eyes on to deliver a baby so Vetty can have something to live for.  But ince her husband left before she could bear children and her sister Amy was already a couple of months pregnant, Lucy's father came when her baby boy was less than a month old and staged Amy's pregnancy as twins.  Clem was shocked because she is the only surviving member of the family that knows this (except for her father but that's not certain).  The next day, Lucy wanted to take all her jewelry but her cameo to the bank to keep it safe.  Lucy said she wants that to go to cousin Gaia and soon after, Clem realized that Gaia maybe Lucy's actual granddaughter since one of Amy's "twins" is Gaia's father.


QUOTE:


"Christ, I thought, all because of a stupid piece of jewelry and an adolescent grudge, I might die. Actually die. I thought, absurdly, of the clear "picture" Clem had mentioned about the life before her. I had no such picture of mine" (Glass, 42).


REACTION:


This quote is said by Louisa and the jewelry she is talking about is the cameo.  The only thing is that she doesn't know that when their Great-Aunt Lucy left her and her sister all her jewelry it does not include that one specific piece of jewelry she is after.  The childhood grudge is from the last summer she and Clem lived together in their parent's house and Louisa had a crush or fling with Mike but she learned that he was doing the same thing with her younger sister she was livid and has never let that go and even blames her future heartbreak and her drastic move on Clem, even though she never met him and it happened on the other side of the country when Louisa followed her "soulmate" to Santa Barbara, saying that if they did not have their own fling she would not have rebound and then would not have had to move to be with him.  Also, with this novel and the way it is written  is a little confusing because the reader is in both of the sister's head and their perspective on life and amount of knowledge is different so I get lost sometimes.