Summary
Around the age of four or five, Theo's biggest fear was that his mother wouldn't come home. Theo would often sit for hours, and memorize the position of the hands on his clock, even though he couldn't tell the time, so he could anticipate his mother's arrival.
This fear is exacerbated by his father’s frequent absence and unreliability. Theo’s dad often lost his paychecks or fell asleep with the door open after a drunken night out. His father also blamed his unhappiness on Theo and Audrey and especially disliked Theo, making their morning interactions awkward and mostly silent.
On paydays, Theo’s father would often get drunk and come home late. As a child, Theo feared that his father was an invader, but would fall asleep after recognizing his father's Frankenstein-like steps. On Saturday mornings, Theo and his mother would leave the house early to escape his father’s hangovers.
Given these circumstances, Theo and his mother are not surprised when his father doesn’t return one Saturday morning. But, after several days of silence, Theo’s father sends a note explaining his plan to start a new life.
After Theo’s father leaves, Theo and his mother struggle with bills and have to let their housekeeper go. They can barely afford their New York apartment, and Theo’s father does not send child support or maintain contact.
This lack of contact means that no one is checking in on Theo and his mother to make sure they’re ok. Indeed, it’s likely that Theo’s father saw the news story about the bombing and didn’t think twice about it.
After the bombing, Theo walks home in the rain and observes the chaos around him, as crowds of people and police swarm the surrounding buildings. On his walk back, he hopes his mother is waiting for him and thinks about Pippa, crediting her with saving his life.
When Theo finally arrives at his building, the lobby is deserted. He makes his way into his apartment and realizes his mother isn’t there. Theo tries to find his phone, as his mother hid it after his suspension, but can’t find it. He walks around the apartment slightly disoriented, and eventually receives a call from one of his mother’s coworkers. As the hours pass, Theo starts to realize his mother may never come home. After several unsuccessful phone calls, Theo phones an emergency number that tells him his mother is not among the listed dead or injured, but that no further information is available.
After a few hours, a representative from the Department of Child and Family Services calls Theo and asks to speak with his father, but doesn’t provide any information about Theo’s mother. Overwhelmed by the bombing and his mother's absence, Theo sits as still as he can, hoping that everything will resolve if he stays in place.
Finally, the doorbell rings, and Theo opens the door to two social workers.
Analysis
As Theo stumbles home from the bombing, his setting evokes the confusion and sadness of his situation. He is enveloped by rain, a symbol of his despair and his inability to see clearly as it blurs his vision and brings him down. Chaos surrounds him, as the crowds of people storming the museum make the tragedy into a spectacle, and he returns home to an empty lobby, as he is left alone after this traumatic event. He sneaks out with the painting, a symbol of the pain and trauma of his mother's death. The tragedy of the bombing masks the personal tragedy of his pain, as the spectacle overshadows his internal struggle, and allows him, and the extremely valuable painting, to get away without being noticed.
From a young age, Theo is incredibly attached to his mother and fears abandonment. This persistent fear intensifies the tragedy of his mother's death and of his trauma and pain. He mimics his early childhood actions after the bombing by sitting on the floor and waiting for his mother to journey back, attempting to stop the clock. In that moment, he regresses, hoping desperately that his mother will return if he stops time. But the world continues, and Theo cannot stop his mother's death or his own future.
Theo's narration creates dramatic irony, as the audience knows, based on Theo's narrative commentary, that his mother has died, but the young Theo does not. This dramatic irony and foreshadowing create a mood of hopelessness, and the fear and restlessness that Theo feels amplify the tragedy of the situation.
In contrast, Theo seems to fear the return of his father, and his father's cold and violent manner. By comparing his father to Frankenstein, and explaining his constant drunkenness, deceit, and theft, Theo presents his father as a villain and an antagonistic force. Juxtaposing his father's tyranny and neglect with his mother's warmth raises the stakes for his mother's return and makes her death even more tragic.
When Theo tries to find out whether she died in the bombing, his information is shared with child services. The phone calls he receives from child services are the opposite of what he wants, as he realizes that he will be taken from his home and from the only family member he has that truly cared for him. He realizes that he will be sent to a new home without that same love and support, and that he will never be able to recreate the love and joy that he shared with his mother.
