Crossing to Safety

Chapter 2 returns to Larry’s recollections of 1941. War is on the horizon, although they believe that it is contained in Europe. In the summer of 1941, things seem to be getting better. Despite Sally’s polo, the Morgans’ professional situation improves, buoyed by Larry’s steady job as a publisher and Larry and Sid’s successful textbook. However, when the war comes, it indirectly unsettles their lives. Larry moves to Washington to become a journalist, and the Langs drop off the radar. Later, Charity is hospitalized for a nervous breakdown. In 1945, they meet again, convening in a special dinner party. At the dinner, Larry remembers now in his recollections, a small fight between Sid and Charity on a trivial subject—when the dishes would be done—suddenly takes on much greater significance, considering the current problems in the Langs' marriage: “I am sure now, and was pretty sure then, that she didn’t even know she was punishing Sid for disappointing all her hopes. Probably she had evolved the rationalizing theory that he needed a function, something useful to do—like dishes!—that would persuade him that he mattered in the scheme of things” (223). 

In Chapter 3, the story shifts back to the present as Sally joins Larry to talk with Moe and Hallie, recounting together their families’ lives. They discuss the moves from the East Coast back to the West and how the families have grown up together. Sally tells Hallie about how Charity and Sid held up their own lives to help Sally and Larry when Sally was first diagnosed with polio. Naturally, Hallie is taken aback, as her parents had never told her of these acts of love and selflessness. Now that Charity herself is near death, Sally is ashamed of what has happened to their friendship: “For years now we haven’t been as close as we used to be. I let myself get irritated at her way of taking charge of everything. But I shouldn’t have ever let myself forget what a wonderfully unselfish friend she has been” (236).