36 pages • 1 hour read
Patricia LockwoodNo One is Talking About This
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapter 10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Chapter 10, Section 1 (Pages 161-183) Summary
After spending months living with her sister, the protagonist returns home to her husband. She experiences “a different kind of disconnect” (161) from that of the portal when her cat doesn’t recognize her, and her husband has become used to sleeping without another person beside him. He purchases a second bed so that he can sleep by himself.
As summer begins, the protagonist experiences a lull in her work. She notices how different her voice sounds to her now that she has used it to recite stories to the baby. It is the first time she has thought of her voice as purposeful. Though she tries to reengage with the portal, the topics that its users are focused on seem trivial compared to the baby. The sister keeps the protagonist up to date with the baby’s development through text messages. While at the park, the protagonist watches a mother changing her child on a bench and asking the child: “Can I keep you? Just for a little while?” (166).
When the baby is 14 weeks old, the family takes her to Disney World. The protagonist notices a teenager taking pictures of the baby in her specially designed stroller; both the protagonist and the sister worry about him posting the pictures, as the sister does not want anyone to be “scared” of the baby’s appearance.
The protagonist begins regularly flying back to Ohio to give the baby as much of her time as possible. The sister composes a letter to their senator asking for help with their healthcare expenses since the sister can’t work, but the letter is never sent. The protagonist returns to her sister’s home for the holidays and helps take care of the baby. The baby experiences seizures, which the protagonist seeks to alleviate by holding her and comforting her.
The husband remains at their home but often calls the protagonist. Their conversations are jarring to the protagonist, as her husband talks of current events and a culture that the protagonist no longer engages with. Though the baby’s neurons were not expected to develop, the family notices that she is beginning to learn and interact with them. They buy the baby a small dog for companionship. The baby’s health starts to decline. She is admitted to the hospital.
Part 2, Chapter 10, Section 2 (Pages 184-208) Summary
The day following the baby’s hospital admission is her six-month birthday. The family throws a party in her hospital room, inviting friends and relatives to visit her. The protagonist stays with the baby the next morning while the rest of the family goes to breakfast and lays in bed next to her. She tries to console herself by scrolling through the portal but stops when she realizes that the portal is distracting her from her last moments with the baby. The family returns and the sister asks the protagonist to play music as the baby passes away.
The family has a priest come to perform final rites. The nurses help the family wash and prepare the baby for burial, and the family leaves the hospital. At the funeral, the family focuses on celebrating the baby’s life instead of mourning. They bring the baby’s dog and are surprised to find that the dog recognizes the baby even though she has passed away. The protagonist wonders, “what was it about her that the little dog still loved?” (194).
In the weeks following the baby’s passing, the protagonist finds herself breaking down in tears in public places. She wonders if her experience with the baby will change her. At the same time, she begins slowly to reenter the world of the portal. Though she believes that all of humanity seems to be represented in the portal, the baby is not there.
The protagonist watches the film Elephant Man, which depicts a man diagnosed with Proteus syndrome. Rather than being depressed by the movie, the protagonist finds herself comforted. The family exchanges photos and videos of the baby through group text messages. The sister sends the protagonist grass from atop the baby’s grave so that the protagonist can spread the blades across the world as she travels for work.
The protagonist returns to work and regards this change as inevitable. She is invited to speak at the British Museum about the portal but finds that she must pretend that she still “lives” within it. Her theme of a collective mind on the portal no longer resonates with her: “She said the words communal mind and saw the room her family had sat in together, looking at that singular gray brain on an MRI” (205).
Following the speech, the protagonist is brought to a club. It is crowded and, at one point, the protagonist feels someone take her phone from her pocket. She doesn’t stop them but instead imagines the person unlocking her phone and finding her pictures and videos of the baby.
Part 2, Chapter 10 Analysis
The protagonist experiences a disconnection when she comes home to her husband, cat, and previous life in the portal. The time she spent with the baby at her sister’s home made such an impression on her, and her dedication to her family there became so complete, that she struggles to resume her old life. Her husband senses this disconnection, purchases his own bed, and continues to sleep in it though it is too small for him. Despite this disconnection from her old life, the protagonist feels more connected to herself. She notices how her connection with her voice has changed since she used it to recite stories to the baby. Previously, her voice was used professionally to talk about the portal. With the baby’s presence in her life, the protagonist feels that her voice has finally found meaning, “sunshine,” and is being used for a good reason. Similarly, she desires to give as much of her time as possible to the baby. Her husband is described as not understanding why she would fly back to Ohio so frequently, representing the disconnection between the protagonist’s past and current life. For her, giving the baby her time is more meaningful than giving it to the portal.
Shortly before her passing, the baby exhibited signs of learning—a miraculous development of subjectivity from the protagonist’s perspective. The protagonist is interested in the baby’s perception of the world and her sense of individuality, her “I.” The protagonist returns to this consideration of subjectivity and personhood at the baby’s funeral when she is surprised that the baby’s dog recognizes the baby in the casket. The protagonist considers that there must be something distinctive about the baby’s spirit that allowed the dog to recognize her, in direct contrast to the novel’s theme of disappearances. The baby, though she has physically died, persists in their lives.
The protagonist worries whether she and her family should have posted more photos and videos of the baby in the portal while she was still alive. Their disinclination to share the baby’s story now seems like a loss to the protagonist, as her presence in the portal could keep her alive for the family. The family sends photos and videos of the baby back and forth to each other, but they still hesitate to post about her in the portal. This choice further expands the novel’s theme of disappearance. The baby has always existed outside of the portal and therefore can never “disappear” for the protagonist. When the protagonist’s phone is stolen and her photos of the baby are lost, the protagonist does not regret it. Rather, she imagines the baby’s image traveling to other people and inspiring their lives in a kind of reverse-disappearance in the portal.
The protagonist’s attitude toward the portal and her relationship with it have been forever altered. Once, when she worried about its ability to trap her in a kind of communal mind dependent on the majority’s opinion. Since the baby’s birth, however, the protagonist’s idea of collectivity has changed. When talking about communal minds at the British Museum, the image these words spark in her is one of her family and the baby’s MRI brain scan. It is not a threatening image, nor does it cause her anxiety, as the thought of sharing a communal mind in the portal once did. Rather, the protagonist has recognized that the intimacy of her family, its connectedness and shared experience, is deeply important to her.
