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Catalyst
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Part 3, Chapters 11-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “Gas”
Part 3, Chapter 11 Summary: “Alpha Decay”
It is the morning of Mikey’s funeral. Mikey’s drawings decorate the casket, and the organists plays tunes from Sesame Street. During the sermon, emotion overwhelms Kate’s father.
At the gravesite, Kate wonders about death: “It is a physical law that energy is neither created nor destroyed. So what happens when people die?” (195). At the luncheon at Kate’s home, Toby asks Kate about their mother’s funeral. Kate tells him she doesn’t remember—when the time came to go to the church she ran away and hid, and no one found her until after the service. Toby tells her that Teri borrowed her car.
Kate knows where to find Teri. She arrives at Teri’s house and finds her swinging a sledgehammer against the kitchen’s half-finished walls, destroying the church volunteers’ work. She seems to be in a trance. Kate is conflicted. She wants to stop Teri, but Teri is 18, and there is no law against destroying one’s own house.
As Kate prepares to leave, Teri, sweaty and out of breath, tells her about selecting the outfit Mikey would wear for the funeral: jeans, a Mickey Mouse t-shirt, and pull-ups, not diapers, because he was big boy. Teri attacks the wall with renewed vigor: “She screams, screams, hits, hits, stops to pant, and then brings down the sledgehammer again” (205). Kate tells her that her father will find a specialist to help her with her grief. Teri is stoic: “When I wasn’t looking, my son wandered upstairs and got killed. Got his brains fried” (207). She dismisses Kate, assuming that Kate did not come to help her but to get her car back.
Kate decides it’s best to leave. As she drives away, Teri tosses a can of red paint from the upstairs window, hitting the car’s roof and cracking the front window.
Part 3, Chapter 12 Summary: “Activated Complex”
Over the next several days, her college plans gone, Kate drifts through school. Teri stays at her deteriorating house, causing more damage each night with the sledgehammer. There is nothing Kate’s father can do: “Teri is doing what she wants and nobody can stop her” (211). Kate misses work at the pharmacy, and her boss fires her over the phone. At the last track meet, when the starter’s gun goes off, Kate doesn’t move, just sits down. She can’t sleep. She thinks about her mother as a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of MIT. Kate’s sense of failure haunts her.
Part 3, Chapter 13 Summary: “Critical Pressure”
Saturday morning, Kate’s concerned friends, including Mitch, take her to a local diner. When it’s time to order, Teri comes out of the kitchen. Kate notices a fresh tattoo on her arm, the letter M. Teri is snarky and impatient with their orders.
Teri brings Kate dry toast instead of the doughnut she ordered. She sits down in the booth and assures Kate that the doughnuts are stale. Mitch takes exception to Teri’s tone: “We’re all really sorry that Mikey was killed, and I know you’ve had a really hard life. But that doesn’t give you permission to make Kate feel like shit, or make fun of people, or steal from them” (222). Then he adds that Kate is still waiting for her water.
Teri stands, undoes her apron, and goes into the kitchen. When she reemerges, she stops at the table, sets down a glass of water, and drops Kate’s necklace and watch on the table. She leaves. As Kate’s friends return to their chatter, Kate has an epiphany: “The diner air is jelling, concentrating, molecules collapsing in the void, the invisible gases taking shape and mass” (221). She thinks: “I don’t recognize anyone” (221). Kate stares into the glass of water. It acts like a prism, and the light shatters into a rainbow. Water, she thinks, is an amazing solvent. Given enough time, it can dissolve almost anything. It is magic, from ice to water to vapor. She drops the glass of water to the floor. She feels at sea.
She leaves the diner and runs the six miles to Teri’s house. The house is a mess; the walls, save the one with Mikey’s handprints, are in ruins. Kate finds Teri crying in Mikey’s room. Kate tells her that she needs a place where she can stay with her mother, and that her house needs to be re-rebuilt. Kate feels emotional urgency: “Our essence is in this room, the atomic products of breaking down two girls in their elemental selves; frightened, defiant, lonely” (229). Teri says she understands that Mikey’s death was a “damn accident” (230). Kate tells Teri that she would like to help her rebuild the house, that she is taking a year off, a gap year. “When do you want to start?” Teri asks. “Now,” Kate says (231). For the first time, Kate lets go of her frustration about MIT and prioritizes helping Teri, her friend.
Part 3, Chapters 11-13 Analysis
It would seem that Kate forfeits a happy ending: There is no bringing Mikey back, and MIT has definitively rejected her. Instead of a traditional “happy ending,” Kate achieves redemption. In committing to help Teri re-rebuild her home, Kate transcends grief and loss. She has learned the importance of healing, the complex gift of awareness, the shallowness of her friends, and the courage to express compassion.
Kate takes the first step toward awareness after the funeral when she and Toby discuss their deceased mother for the first time. Kate has rarely confronted her mother’s death. As she admits: “I know I am supposed to be all tragic and freaked out because my mom is dead, but sorry, I’m not” (22). She has not processed the loss and pretends it doesn’t matter to her.
While she and Toby talk about their mother, Kate gathers garbage from the luncheon and carefully packs it into tidy garbage bags. Kate is trying to pack away the pain, to relegate it to the “garbage” where it will not cause any trouble. This way she can remain in denial: “Sometimes not knowing is better” (200). But she does know, and soon she learns that she can’t move on without acknowledging her trauma.
Teri helps Kate grow by venting her anger and confusion. She understands that understanding death through science is impossible. In the closing scenes, Kate and Teri come to realize how much they share—Kate lost her mother too soon and Teri lost her child. Kate understands that she came to the house because she cares about Teri: “It wasn’t just the car. I was worried about you” (203). Kate discovers her compassion and ability to think beyond the narrow scope of her problems. It’s time to put the MIT rejection in perspective, to understand the depth of Teri’s devastation and to help her. It is time for Kate to grow up.
Mitch is a catalyst for this change. His boorish and insensitive behavior toward Teri in the diner clarifies what Kate has begun to suspect: Mitch is shallow, egotistic, and heartless. Kate finally realizes that Mitch, although physically attractive and a great kisser, is not what she needs.
Kate’s epiphany in the diner, a slow-motion frame-by-frame ascent into awareness, leaves her unable to hang around with her shallow friends. Peering through the water in her glass, she suddenly doesn’t “recognize anyone” (224). The water reveals to her the necessity of change, the “magic” of transformation (225).
Kate reveals her growth by pledging herself to help Teri rebuild her house. She is connected with her emotions, shifting away from self-absorption and the urge to run from difficult moments. She has begun to heal from the trauma of her mother’s death, and Teri is the vehicle for that healing. They will help each other. It is far from the happy ending that Kate envisioned; rather, it is a hopeful beginning.
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