Mary Jane

“Mom would say, ‘We’re obliged to live up to the painting, Mary Jane. We can’t let that painting be fiction!’”

The Dillards have had a picture painted of the exterior of their home. It quite literally looks picture perfect. Mrs. Willard’s comment reveals everything about her values and priorities. She is willing to work very hard to maintain a perfect façade. The emotional desiccation inside the house is immaterial as long as the lawn looks immaculate. She lives to match a fabricated ideal image that can never exist in real life.

“I’d wear the rainbow flip-flops my mother had agreed to buy me after she’d seen the other girls at Elkridge pool wearing them. She didn’t like me to be out of sync almost as much as she didn’t like me to appear dirty or unladylike.”

Again, in this quote, we are given some insight into Mrs. Dillard’s values. While she might personally deplore flip-flops, she will allow her daughter to wear them so that Mary Jane will fit into her peer group. Her daughter is expected to be picture perfect in much the same way that her house is. However, perfection also implies social acceptance by the in-crowd.

“‘Your mom is scary,’ Izzy actually whispered. ‘Really?’ It never occurred to me that she looked or seemed scary to anyone but me. Her voice was always in a steady, calm middle tone. She was tidy. Clean. Not many wrinkles. Her hair was blonder than mine.”

Izzy is spontaneous in everything she says. As a result, she frequently tells truths that the adults around her are afraid to articulate. Mary Jane’s mother is a scary person. Her daughter’s description in this quote conjures an image of a tightly controlled woman who never raises her voice or allows a hair to fall out of place. She may as well be a robot as a flesh-and-blood human being. Such a maternal figure would be scary to any child looking for love and support. Unfortunately, Mary Jane doesn’t realize this fact until Izzy points it out to her. 

“Dr. Cone, Jimmy, and Izzy started fast dancing as if it were no big deal. I stood, leaning forward as if I were about to take a step but couldn’t. I’d never danced to rock and roll before. I watched the others, my mouth open with a half-nervous, half-happy grin.”

The other three people in the room are listening to a record and spontaneously start to dance. Mary Jane’s comment indicates her fascination and eagerness to join them, but she doesn’t know how. Her mother has deliberately trained the spontaneity out of her. It will take the rest of the summer for Mary Jane to reconnect with her inner child.

“How could anyone look away from them? How could anyone shut their ears off to them? How could anyone not stare at these shimmering, gyrating people who created a power of sound that ran through my body and filled me up so I was laden with it? Sated with it. Happy.”

Sheba and Jimmy have now started singing. They strike a chord with Mary Jane’s love of music and singing. This quote depicts her as the vibrating string of a musical instrument that wants to harmonize with the sound surrounding her. She recognizes her desire to join in and acknowledges the happiness she feels surrounded by music. This differs greatly from the dry church music she performs under her mother’s instruction. 

“I stood halfway to the door, wondering if I should say it back. I’d never said that before, not to anyone. And no one had ever said it to me. But when I thought about it, I did love Izzy. And I kinda loved Sheba, too.”

Izzy has just said good night to Mary Jane and declared her love for her new nanny. In an ordinary household, such a statement might be taken as a matter of course. However, Mary Jane’s thunderstruck reaction indicates her abnormal upbringing. Her parents have never said “I love you.” To the teen’s credit, she switches gears so quickly and acknowledges the love she feels for both Izzy and Sheba despite her mother’s probable disapproval of such emotional effusiveness.

“‘Ah, that’s where you trained that gorgeous voice.’ ‘I guess.’ No one had ever used the word gorgeous when talking about any part of me. I could feel the word inside me like a warm liquid. Gorgeous. I knew I was blushing but figured it was too dark in the car for Jimmy and Sheba to notice!”

During the ride home, Mary Jane tells Sheba and Jimmy about her time with the church choir. On more than one occasion, Jimmy expresses his admiration for Mary Jane’s voice. As a professional musician and singer, his compliment holds special significance. His words are another expression of affection and praise, much like Izzy’s “I love you.” Mary Jane has clearly been starved for affection and positive feedback to encourage her talents.

“Dr. and Mrs. Cone seemed more like each other than my parents. If I really thought about it, it was my parents who appeared to be different breeds (my mother the talker, the doer; my father the silent newspaper reader). And the Cones seemed happy and in sync.”

Mary Jane ponders her mother’s view that the Cones are mismatched because of their religious differences. In Mrs. Dillard’s mind, a good match depends on superficial homogeneity. A husband and wife should come from the same economic, political, and religious backgrounds. Mary Jane points out that personal compatibility has nothing to do with what looks good on paper. 

“‘Mary Jane,’ Mrs. Cone said, ‘you are a gift to us all.’ She leaned in and kissed me. I was starting to get used to all the kisses around here.”

All the members of the Cone household appreciate Mary Jane’s many good qualities, not the least of which is her ability to cook. They see her value in a way that her parents never do. Mr. Dillard always has his nose stuck in a newspaper and barely registers his daughter’s existence. Mrs. Dillard only notices her daughter’s faults and is vigilant in correcting them to gain more superficial social approval for Mary Jane. Without any positive mirroring from her own family, the girl has no sense of her true worth.

“Mrs. Cone said she hated all those dishes anyway, as they had been given to her by her mother and symbolized her mother’s need to impose her value system on Mrs. Cone. [...] It had never before occurred to me that sometimes dishes weren’t just dishes, that things could represent ideas in more powerful ways than the ideas themselves.”

Sheba and Jimmy have broken Mrs. Cone’s dishes during their epic fight, but Sheba offers to replace them. Mrs. Cone’s observation about imposed values is relevant to Mary Jane’s situation. Parents unconsciously transmit their values to their children, sometimes through heirlooms. Mrs. Cone’s resistance to family indoctrination is a new concept to Mary Jane. She now begins to think about how her mother’s disapproval is shaping her values.

“When Dr. Cone pulled up the station wagon in front of my house, I thought I might weep. I wanted to stay with everyone, put on that water-soft nightgown, and sleep in Izzy’s plush bed. I wanted to wake up in that house, where I felt like I existed as a real person with thoughts and feelings and abilities.”

Mary Jane has spent the night at the Cone house for the first time. This allows her to separate psychologically from the stultifying atmosphere of the Dillard home. Until now, she has never been able to see how her upbringing is toxic. The contrast the kindhearted Cone menagerie presents makes her weep with regret at the thought of going home and becoming invisible again. 

“I’d been coming to the club my entire life and had never seen it the way I did that day. What in the past had seemed normal suddenly felt abnormally hushed, quiet, and contained. It was like we were in a play that went on forever and ever without any dramatic tension.”

Just as Mary Jane has seen the contrast between the Dillard home and the Cone house, she extends that contrast to analyze the larger community in which she lives. She has been immersed in country club culture since her earliest days but never had any contrasting experience that would allow her to judge whether it was good or bad. Dr. Cone’s religious difference and her parents’ prejudice have led her to examine other ways in which the Dillards are closed-minded about people who are different from them. 

“I’d never once thought of leaving my parents before college. But after Sheba had tossed out the idea of running away and living with her and Jimmy, I was momentarily infected with it. Like a fever that lets you see the usual world through the intensity of the unusual.”

Mary Jane briefly entertains the fantasy of escaping her suffocating home life by running away with Jimmy and Sheba. Even though she never acts on that impulse in the novel, the fantasy gives her greater clarity about her circumstances. Again, contrast plays an important role in helping Mary Jane to see that her parents’ values and way of life aren’t her only options. The choice is impossible without a clear sense of alternatives. 

“In the Cone family, there was no such thing as containment. Feelings were splattered around the household with the intensity of a spraying fire hose. I was terrified of what I might witness or hear tonight. But along with that terror, my fondness for the Cones only grew. To feel something was to feel alive. And to feel alive was starting to feel like love.”

Sheba and Jimmy have had an epic fight. Accusations are hurled, and objects are thrown. Through it all, Mary Jane doesn’t doubt that these two people love one another fiercely. This makes what might otherwise be a terrifying experience something transformative. The fight becomes a thunderstorm that clears the air. Because the Dillards control their emotions so tightly, it is impossible to determine what they truly feel about anything. Love or hate would both be masked, and no transformation is possible. 

“Disaster was looming and yet we did look beautiful. Everyone was smiling. We all seemed relaxed, like we’d just fallen into place. And each body was connected to another body, closely. An unbreakable chain of love. It was the opposite of the staged family photo my mother sent out every Christmas.”

Everyone at the seaside cottage poses for a group photo shortly before the beach therapy session that will change everything. Mary Jane notes the intertwined bodies and sees these as a symbol of the love shared and easily expressed by Sheba, Jimmy, Bonnie, Richard, and Izzy. In comparing her mother’s staged photo, she fails to recognize that her mother’s objective is not to demonstrate love. She wants to project visual perfection.

“‘So you’re defying your mother, in a sense.’ Dr. Cone was nodding. He paused for a moment and then said, ‘Does this defiance feed you spiritually?’ [...] ‘It might. Allowing myself to flaunt what my mother wanted me to hide makes me feel like I exist on my own terms,’ Sheba said, and I understood her completely.”

Sheba has been talking about her Playboy photo shoot. Her mother would be appalled because she always called her daughter a “whore” for her obvious sexual allure. This comment is parallel to Bonnie’s rejection of her mother’s dishes. Both parents wanted to impose their rigid value systems on their daughters. Both daughters rebelled in the face of that control. Mary Jane’s comment indicates that she agrees with that reaction.

“If you’d been watching a film of us that last day, or over dinner that night, or even the next morning as we packed up the car, it wouldn’t have seemed that anything had changed. But something had. I felt like an invisible vibrating net had separated us into three alliances.”

Mary Jane sees her time at the beach as a magical experience. The growing emotional intimacy among the group members inevitably leads to epiphanies. While this is a good thing, some insights also lead to separation. By the time they are ready to leave, Richard and Bonnie have withdrawn into their private worlds, leaving the rest of the party to regroup.

“At home in my own bed, I missed everyone at the Cone house. With my mother, at breakfast, I felt like an imposter. [...] Like Sheba in her wigs—I couldn’t wait to get to the Cones so I could rip off the false self and just be me. Barefoot. Singing. Cooking dinner. Wearing a bikini. Playing with Izzy’s hair.”

Mary Jane has now spent enough time away from the Dillard house to form a completely new perception of her parents. She has also begun to clearly understand who she is and what she wants. Until now, Mary Jane has always wanted what her parents wanted her to want. Now, her need for freedom and self-expression asserts itself, and she realizes how much of a false façade she has constructed to please her parents. Mary Jane doesn’t want to live her life as an imposter anymore.

“I’d found that to put your hands in the food, to touch, move, tear, bend, and sprinkle ingredients straight from your fingers, gave you a better sense of what you were doing [...] My fingers knew things a spoon or spatula couldn’t.”

Mary Jane describes the difference between her food preparation methods and her mother’s. Mrs. Dillard never touches food. She uses utensils. Mary Jane’s approach is more sensual and intuitive, while her mother’s is sanitary and detached. Mrs. Dillard doesn’t cook by instinct, so her emotions are always separate from her actions. To Mary Jane, food is love, so its preparation becomes a tactile and emotional experience for her. 

“I thought of Izzy Cone. How she’d probably never had even a second in her life when she felt afraid of her parents. Fear, I suddenly realized, was an emotion that ran through my home with the constant, buzzing current of a plugged-in appliance.”

Mr. Dillard has just verbally intimidated his daughter about her behavior at the record shop. Her reaction is distrust and terror. This has probably always been her default setting when dealing with her parents, but Mary Jane never realized this fact until she saw a contrasting example of benevolent parenting at the Cone house. Fear at the Dillards has always been a subliminal threat but is not stated openly, which is why Mary Jane has had such a hard time identifying her uneasiness around her parents.

“It was like they were in a different Roland Park [...] Where people were just doing what they wanted, without concern as to how it was seen. Maybe a person’s standing in the community was an illusion. Like the witch in the Cone house. An imagined evil that created unnecessary rules.”

Both the Dillards and the Cones occupy homes in Roland Park. Externally, the houses look much the same. However, the interior of each is the opposite of the other. The Dillards have constructed a reality in which they stage a façade for the social approval of their neighbors. The Cones simply don’t care. Mary Jane makes the analogy to Izzy’s imaginary witch, whose presence requires her to keep her bedroom door closed. For the first time, Mary Jane recognizes that the necessity of pleasing the neighbors is a ridiculous illusion, just like Izzy’s witch.

“I think we did it right those couple of months, don’t you? Great food, great music, and great fun. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that fun isn’t important because, damn, Mary Jane, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my strange life, it’s that fun counts.”

Sheba makes this comment in her letter to Mary Jane at the end of the summer. She sums up why the experience at the Cone house was memorable. Everyone ate well, sang often, and had a good time. The experience was emotionally liberating because fun mattered, a lesson that the Dillards would have difficulty grasping. Their lives revolve around status and duty. Constructing a perfect façade for the benefit of others takes hard work and is rarely fun. As Sheba points out, fun counts when the goal is emotional health. 

“I took a breath and got braver. ‘I wish you knew who I am. Or, how other people see me. I can play the song for you.’ My mother lifted her wrist again, as if time were jumping forward faster than usual. ‘How long is the song?’”

Mary Jane is trying to get her mother to listen to Jimmy’s song about her. She knows that her new friends have seen her as she really is. Her hope is that Mrs. Dillard might get beyond her preconceived notions about her daughter if a third party nudges her toward the truth. As the quote indicates, Mrs. Dillard resists this idea by pretending to have no time. Fortunately, Mary Jane prevails, and Mrs. Dillard does listen.