The Turning

These three stories make up their own, contained arc in the collection that can be read either as an independent triptych of stories focusing on Max or as a mirror to Vic Lang’s story. At the center of these stories is Max, who is a source of trauma and violence for both his brother and his wife. Even when he was young, “he had side teeth like a dog and a way of looking at you that you could feel in the dark” (165). Whereas Bob Lang, the source of trauma in other stories, is eventually shown to be a tragic figure, there’s no such revision to Max’s character over the course of these stories—he’s a villain in each of them, driven by petty selfishness and cruelty.

The title of “The Turning” refers to Christian spiritual awakenings, but for Raelene, it also refers to her coming to understand her situation as an abused woman and rejecting her lack of power. Her concept of masculinity plays a pivotal role in her character arc. At the beginning of the story, Raelene sees Sherry’s husband Dan as someone with “girly-smooth hands” who is too self-consciously handsome and kind (137). Max is a fisherman and an alcoholic who she used to find sexy but is starting to show his age.

It's the difference between these two men, and Raelene learning that Dan becoming a Christian and recovering alcoholic changed him profoundly, that leads her to start questioning her situation and Max’s power over her. When she sees an image of Christ, she can’t help but think, “He was all man,” and she uses this image against Max when he confronts her later, describing Christ’s body as the man he accuses her of cheating on him with (152). Though she does not definitively turn to Christianity at the end of the story, she does have an epiphany while thinking about the image of Christ: she’s not trapped in the way she always thought, and it is as if Max is already gone.

“Sand” is best understood as a companion piece to “Family,” as it depicts the young dynamic of Frank and Max in the moment when their family is breaking apart. Frank does not know that his mother is leaving their lives for good, but Max is old enough to know that something more is happening when they are dropped off at their father’s for the summer. The conflict of the story is one of jealousy between brothers: Max becomes mean and vicious with his younger brother specifically because of his brother’s talent as an athlete, and when Max buries Frank in the sand, it’s an attempt to reclaim his power as the older brother.

This resentment continues in “Family.” Max is baffled by Frank leaving his football team, and can only see Frank as a weak-willed fool. For Frank, football was unconsciously an escape from the struggles of his childhood and family life, and it was only when his father dies that he is forced to confront the things he was running from. From that point on, Frank can’t play football for its own sake anymore; it’s all about “trying” and “showing” instead of about the game.

When he walks off the team and meets up with Max, he doesn’t know that Max has lost his job and that he is a serial abuser, and both of these inform Max’s anger toward Frank. Frank toys with the idea that his relationship with Max is a lost cause, and this includes not acting when Max is attacked by a shark. In the end, though, Frank acts, and rescuing Max is a joining of both the unselfconscious act and the “trying” that Frank found he wasn’t able to do before this moment. The ambiguity of the ending makes this a story about the importance of trying for redemption, whether the redemption actually comes.