Friday Black

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 2018

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

“Lark Street”Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“Lark Street” Summary

The narrator is awoken by two unborn fetuses named Jackie Gunner and Jamie Lou, who identify him as their father. Having been aborted by his girlfriend, Jaclyn, the fetuses probe their father’s guilt and ask him about their mother. The narrator recalls how he accompanied Jaclyn to the drugstore to buy a pregnancy test after she missed her period. After the test returned positive, the narrator brought her to a clinic to get abortion pills and then back to his house to take them. He dropped her off at home shortly after. He tells the fetuses that although he and Jaclyn have been together since their senior year, they are likely to separate when they attend different colleges.

The fetuses ask their father to take them to the psychic on Lark Street. Jaclyn went to the psychic before the abortion, and although the narrator expressed his skepticism about psychics, Jaclyn’s reading brought her immense relief. Hiding the fetuses in his palm, he tries to stop Jackie Gunner from bullying Jamie Lou. When the narrator and the fetuses reach the psychic, he is surprised to find Jaclyn already there.

The psychic suspects the two are seeking a couple’s reading. Under pressure from Jaclyn, the narrator avails of a palm reading instead. The psychic interprets his dependency on security, detail, and planning. Before the reading is complete, the narrator abruptly pulls himself away, declaring the service a joke. When the psychic defends himself, the narrator reveals that he paid the psychic before Jaclyn’s first visit to encourage her to carry out the abortion. Jaclyn is furious about the manipulation, and the narrator exits when he hears the fetuses inside his jacket.

Jamie Lou reveals that she has killed Jackie Gunner in retribution for bullying her. When the narrator rebukes her, she retorts by citing his advice to stop being a pushover. The narrator starts to walk away when Jaclyn catches up and retrieves the fetuses. He admits that he was afraid of expressing his care for Jaclyn, thinking it would change her mind to follow through with her abortion. Jaclyn tells him that she’ll handle things, and when he offers to help, she dismisses him. Jaclyn leaves with the withering fetuses and the narrator goes home to sleep on his blood-stained pillow.

“Lark Street” Analysis

As the psychic explains during his reading, the unnamed narrator is the kind of person who values security above all things. When the narrator decides to tell Jaclyn about their agreement, he reveals why the psychic would know that about him, thus undermining the psychic’s ability to interpret the narrator’s character through mystical means. This represents the story’s central tension: The narrator cannot reconcile the relief Jaclyn finds from the idea of a mystical universe with the certainty that their shared plan offers. Fearing that the psychic would tell Jaclyn something that would change her mind, the narrator took matters into his own hands, creating a deception that guaranteed she had an abortion. He teaches Jamie Lou not to be a pushover because that reflects his own tendencies. His excessive desire to control things is his tragic flaw and the source of the tension that arises as the story moves toward resolution.

The presence of the fetus characters is a conceit that allows the narrator to explore Jaclyn’s outlook on the world and The Transformative Power of Magical Thinking. The narrator never questions the presence of Jackie Gunner and Jamie Lou because they are concrete and real, as opposed to being theoretical and uncertain. He also never feels compelled to visit the psychic except when the fetuses ask him to bring them to Lark Street. What they want to know, Jackie Gunner expresses, is “what woulda happened” (57). The fetuses’ desire to know about an alternative future provides a convenient excuse for the narrator to explore the same possibilities. Jaclyn’s presence complicates this chance for exploration as she turns the focus back on him. During the reading, the narrator collapses under the weight of his vulnerability. This echoes his assumption that showing that he cared might have changed Jaclyn’s mind.

When Jamie Lou explains that she killed Jackie Gunner because her father taught her not to be a pushover, it exposes the flaw in the narrator’s thinking. The narrator believes that letting the psychic read into his personality is another way of being a pushover, even if the reading is based on their interaction. After calling out the psychic, the narrator admits to feeling “weak, stupid, scared” (64). He assumed that asserting his position would validate his thinking, but it achieved the opposite. This, too, is echoed when he feels the need to chastise Jamie Lou for killing Jackie Gunner based on his advice. The narrator declares that he isn’t responsible for the violence between them; it is one last way the story shows that an overreliance on control merely reveals the lack of it.