Who's Irish?

Pammie is hosting her first “children of color” lunch at the school her daughters attend. It is here that she meets Carter, a teacher’s aide, who comments to Pammie about how she is “a fellow yellow person” (138). This meeting loops Pammie back to the beginning of her relationship with Sven, her much older art professor from college whom she married and had three children with before he left her.

Pammie begins the story of her marriage and adult life by comparing Sven and Carter and their different behavioral habits, thus implying that she and Carter do eventually have a romantic relationship. The story then goes back to the beginning of Pammie’s adult life when she and “Professor Anderson” are leaving class and he invites her to his cabin in Maine for the weekend. Pammie inserts her present-day musings over this experience and wonders about the fate of that day and how she said yes without even going home to pack: “Where had she learned this narrative? And how could she have felt it to be new? One day that would be something to ponder. Also, whether things would have happened as they did if the weather had not been so tremendous” (145).