The Boy in the Black Suit

Matt’s mother, Daisy Miller, is deceased from the outset of the story, but she is well-characterized through Matt’s memories and dreams and through her own words in the recipe booklet she left for him. Daisy went to school to be an actress and met Jackson Miller when she worked in a restaurant in Harlem. She convinced Jackson to give up drinking before marrying him. She had one son, Matt, and raised him in their brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant before developing breast cancer. She died a few weeks into Matt’s senior year.

In Matt’s memories and dreams, Daisy is smiling, comforting, and cheerful. She practiced accents on customers in her waitressing job, and for his sixteenth birthday, at the restaurant where she used to work, she spoke all evening in an accent, fooling the waitress into thinking she was someone famous. Daisy left a recipe booklet for Matt to use so that he could continue homemade cooking; cooking together was “their thing.” Her recipes are filled with extra notes and loving advice in her down-to-earth tone: “Put them bad boys in the oven and let them bake for ten minutes. You got yourself some damn good choco chips. Love ya, Matty, but I’ll tease you if you burn these” (170).

Jackson Miller is Matt’s father. He had an obvious drinking problem when he met Matt’s mother Daisy in the restaurant where they both worked in Harlem, but he overcame his addiction to marry Daisy. When she dies, he starts drinking again out of grief. Matt knows his father is drinking with Mr. Ray’s youngest brother Cork, a known neighborhood drunk. Only a few weeks after Daisy’s death, Jackson stumbles into the street on the way home on a rainy night; a cab hits him. He needs extensive surgery and must stay in the physical rehabilitation part of the hospital for the months that make up the rest of the story. Mr. Ray takes Matt to visit him there often. Matt and his father do not have arguments about Jackson’s drinking, but his father’s actions and recovery complicate Matt’s desire to grieve and heal from his mother’s death.

Mr. Ray is a neighbor to the Millers and the owner of the local funeral home. Out of kindness, he offers Matt a job working to set up funerals, knowing him to be an upstanding and polite young man who just lost his mother. Mr. Ray also feels obligated to tend to Matt once Matt’s father Jackson is in the hospital; Mr. Ray feels that his younger brother Cork, with whom Jackson was drinking, is at least partly to blame for the accident that injured Jackson.

Like Matt, Mr. Ray is familiar with grief and loss. He was a promising basketball star in high school and college until an opponent named Martin Gandrey fell on Mr. Ray’s knee, injuring him permanently and ending any hope of a professional career in the sport. Not long after, Mr. Ray lost his young wife to a senseless accident. Mr. Ray later had cancer twice but beat it both times. These experiences gave Mr. Ray the opinion that life is more about fate than planning or strategy, and that everyone should appreciate the beauty in life when they have it. Mr. Ray fulfills the archetypal role of a mentor in the story, as he often tells Matt what he, Mr. Ray, has learned because of his experiences. He also offers Matt advice, such as when he convinces Matt to bring cookies to Love’s house on Thanksgiving Day.

Matt thinks that Love’s name is Renee when he first sees her working at the Cluck Bucket because her necklace has a charm with that name. Matt finds Love attractive even before he sees her at her grandmother’s funeral, where he is transfixed by her calm demeanor. Love shows Matt that it is possible to be at peace while you miss your departed love one; she delivers the funeral remarks with poise and grace after her grandmother’s death.

Love’s qualities fascinate Matt, and he is happy to spend Thanksgiving Day with her. She is a strong, confident, attractive senior girl who now lives alone and intends to continue helping at the homeless shelter her grandmother ran and improved, suggesting she's a selfless, philanthropic person.

Love takes Matt to the Botanic Garden and explains her emotional connection to the place, as it was where her grandmother showed her there that life and beauty exist in many ways; Love wants to show Matt this as well. The author characterizes Love as strong and bold, which is indirectly emphasized by Candy Man; she is generous and empathetic with Matt when she gives him the Sempervivum. Matt learns from Love, so she is another mentor force in his life. She is also clearly fighting for Matt to move through the stages of grief in healthy ways, making her an ally along his journey.