I See You Everywhere (44-108)

SUMMARY: 


It's now the summer of 1983 and Lou was house sitting for a friend's friend, Mars and Leah Katz.  Louisa and Clement keep in touch by writing because when they see each other in person, its awkward and when they call each other, they always end up fighting. Clem has been dating this guy Luke for a while and Lou says they are perfect together except that Clem does not like to be limited to one male in her life. She tells Lou about the other men in letters and Lou tells her sister, briefly, about her fisherman, Sam. Being in the country housesitting, Louisa invited Sam out to see her in June and it would not be until the middle of August that she would hear anything from him. He finally called to say that he was going to be around that area and would love to stop by to see her and this amazing, as she told him, house in the country. However, the day before Sam was going to come, Clem called and demanded direction to the house without much of any explanation. Clem arrived the next day at 2 pm and Sam followed 20 minutes later. When Clem finally did say anything about why she showed up randomly she said she and Luke needed to met on neutral grounds to talk. The four of them rode to the beach where they hung out then they went back to the house to enjoy dinner. By the time dessert cam around, Clem still had not talked with her sister about why she showed up at the house so Lou demanded it out of her. Clem said she was pregnant but it was not Luke's baby but the man that was bringing her mail at the Labrador she was previously at. He turned out to be a Catholic and when Clem told him she was pregnant he asked her to marry him and when she laughed he took it upon himself to punish her. Then Clem lifted up her shirt to expose bruises along her ribs and pulled her hair back to reveal more bruises behind her eye. All Clem said at this point was"Hey, no black eyes!" (Glass, 68). When Clem told Luke, Lou was certain that he would propose too but Lou was already planning, in her head, to allow the couple to stay in her apartment in Brooklyn for a couple of days so they could visit a clinic in the city, she imagined Luke beside Clem holding her hand, consoling her. 


In 1986, Clem is now living in California with a new boyfriend Zip. Clem is working 2 jobs and working on her thesis while Zip is a man that is "free of toxin" it makes Clem feel poisonous by comparison. He also is into meditation and karma that he is determined to "save" Clem. Lou came to Clem at this point in time because things were not going as she wanted with her husband Hugh, her boss from 3 years ago. They dated then broke up and out of the blue decided to get married, but not elope to save Clem from having "to wear one of those poufy satin dresses, get up at [her] parents' beach club and make a toast" (Glass, 76). Beside trying to help Lou through this rough patch in marriage, Clem is also trying to catch her mothers worker that is somewhere in California with her price possessions, dogs. Zip was saying that Clem always know what she wants and this made Clem think back to that summer before she left for University and Lou was coming back, the summer with Mike. Clem's version went like this: One day when Mike and Louisa were drinking on the porch she came home on her unicycle, like she always did, carrying a box that held a baby bird. Mike asked a lot of question to Clem about the birds and the unicycle. Two weeks passed and she invited him to the 4th of July cookout. She knew Lou had a dress she loved and borrowed it as she had before. Then Lou came and threw wine on them while they were harmlessly dancing because all she wanted was revenge. She did not even know they had a "thing" going on because neither one of them mentioned it. 


QUOTES:


"I could make her do anything. I was supreme, in charge. To be fair, I also took care of her, watched her on the swings, kept my sadistic in check. Then something shifted. She was stronger than me by the time she was seven, a born wrestler. Suddenly she no longer took my threats seriously," (Glass, 53). 


REACTION:


When I was reading, I had the idea that the sister had their falling out the summer when Clem was going to college and Lou was coming back, but when I read what Louisa was thinking in this quote it made me realize that their falling out or the reason why these sister act the way they do towards each other started when Clem was a child, when Clem started to stand up to being treated unfairly by her older sister. Also, seeing the two different version of one event makes it evident that one person's remembrance of that event is biased and that makes me realize that because the stories are told from one sister's eyes to the other's, that all the events are going to have an underlining resentment for the other sister.