Commonwealth

Compared to the rest of the Keatings and Cousins, Beverly’s point of view is rarely given in the novel. The exception is during the summer of 1971 when Beverly is overwhelmed by the difficulties of caring for six children. Her desire to escape her family three years later may have caused her to feel blame for Cal’s death. The reader doesn’t get to hear about Cal’s death from her side of the story.

Fix characterizes his ex-wife as lacking a distinct personality, instead taking on the qualities of those around her: “What you have to remember about your mother is that she didn’t have her own character. She turned into whoever she was sitting next to” (39). The novel does little to contradict this generalization. Rather than describe Beverly’s interior thoughts, it focuses on her exterior beauty. This flat characterization denies the reader a chance to get her perspective on her relationships with Fix and Bert; instead, she is defined by her spouses and children. Franny’s husband Kumar only knows her as “Mrs. Jack Dine,” not “Mrs. Bert Cousins” or “Mrs. Francis Keating” or “Beverly.” She seems to exist as a beautiful object in the moment, without a past and without a perspective.

The story begins when Frances is a baby at her christening party and ends when she is in her 50s at a Christmas party. The novel returns to her point of view repeatedly. She is a narrator with a sympathetic view of the world and the people in her life. Despite various upheavals beginning with her parents’ divorce and ending with her father’s illness, she remains unflappable and kind to others. In some ways, she is innocent and naïve, deferring to her older sister Caroline. Her passivity in her life causes her to end up as a cocktail waitress for a long time as she continues an affair with Leo. Her time at the beach house when she is 29 is typical of her personality: She is treated as a servant by Leo’s guests, but she does not resist the characterization, evincing a servile attitude that echoes her job as a cocktail waitress. Even her eventual marriage to Kumar seems arranged in a moment by Kumar, and Franny appears to simply accept the arrangement.

When Leo asks her if she writes, she says no. She is a reader. He is relieved and doesn’t feel threatened by her. Instead, he uses the story she tells him to craft a bestselling novel. He insists the book is a product of his imagination, but clearly, she has allowed him to use her family’s grief for his own gain. Yet her relationship with Leo allows her to have a deeper understanding of her life, which she values. Leo’s careful attention to the nuances of her story also inclines her to be a better listener to the stories of others, including those of her dying father.

While Franny is often passive, Caroline is usually aggressive. As the oldest of the step-siblings, she quickly takes control of all the children when they spend their summers together after the divorce. While her domineering personality results in her hitting Franny when they were children, as an adult, Franny trusts her sister implicitly. In an emergency, Caroline can always be counted on to know how to handle things.

Caroline’s love for law represents her love and loyalty to her father. It also represents her desire for justice. She insists on right and wrong when it comes to her mother and how she should act; however, when Cal dies, it is Caroline who causes the children to withhold the full truth.

Bert is arrogant and impulsive. He kisses Beverly out of drunken desire, despite having a wife and four children. He leaves his second wife Beverly and six children at his parents’ house to have an affair with an office mate. Good looks and money allow him to indulge in selfishness that forces his first wife Teresa into a difficult single life raising four children. He sues her to get summer custody of his kids, knowing how painful that will be for Teresa, and when his children arrive, he flees and leaves Beverly in charge. Rather than take accountability for his impulsive behavior, he blames others. He blames Teresa for how Albie turned out. He blames Beverly for focusing on his affair rather than on Cal’s death. In the end, he remains alone in his home. His children do not flee him the way he would flee from them when they were younger. Franny returns to visit. Jeanette invites him to Christmas. Holly plans to meet him. Only Albie remains aloof, but he too seems as if he might forgive Bert.

Teresa is briefly mentioned in the first half of the story, first depicted as pregnant with her fourth child, and then later, divorced and having to find a way to work and care for her young children on her own. She is given the spotlight later in the book, when she goes to visit Holly in Switzerland and on the night of her death. The unusual placement of her death before her Switzerland visit allows a pathos to permeate the scene with Holly and later with Cal. For forty years, Teresa has worked, worried, struggled, and tried to find a way to persevere, despite Bert’s charge that she is “determined to stay stuck” (62). In Switzerland, she is allowed the time and space to feel both peace and joy as she can finally be at one with her daughter and son again.

Cal’s point of view is rarely developed, and his brief characterization is that of a teenager, angry and resentful over his parents’ divorce and over his need to be responsible for his siblings. He is like Caroline, who is also angry after her parents’ divorce, but she had the chance to grow out of that anger and grow close to her mother once she was an adult. Unlike his siblings, Cal never had the opportunity to grow and develop layers of forgiveness. The book’s various characters try to process and understand their love and guilt as they remember the events leading up to the day he died at fifteen.

Jeanette is ignored for much of her childhood. Because she is so quiet, some, including Beverly, think she might have a disability. In general, her quiet nature allows the adults to forget about her. During childhood visits to Virginia, she joins the other children in their activities, walking around with a big purse that she uses to carry everything from candy bars to the unbroken seal from the bottle of gin to Bert’s gun. While others flee burdens, she is ready to take them on, silently.

As an adult, she marries Fodé, an immigrant from Guinea, and has a child, Dayo. When Albie shows up at her door in Brooklyn, she insists that he stay with them, despite having a crowded, small apartment. Albie enjoys the tight, nest-like home that Jeanette has created with her small family. He enjoys feeling a part of this family who cares so deeply for each other which stands in contrast to Jeanette and Albie’ s childhood, when both were often ignored.