49 pages • 1 hour read
Angie CruzHow Not to Drown in a Glass of Water
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 10-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary: “Session Ten”
Cara takes Lissette’s advice to apologize to her family and meets Ángela in the lobby, where they both air their grievances publicly. Both sisters realize that they are each responsible for the other in ways that the other does not see. Ángela needs Cara to finish her citizenship documentation, and she also needs Cara to apologize and mean it. She also demands that Cara stop being negative and insulting Ángela’s parenting abilities. When Cara protests that she would never hurt Julio and that she is critical out of love, Ángela tells her that she must learn another way to love. She tells Cara that Fernando was unable to relax around her. Ángela wants her children to feel safe. Lulú tells Cara to apologize, and she does, without elaborating or defending herself. Ángela, who never cries, bursts into healing tears.
Alicia the Psychic performs the Galactic Triangulum Magnetization ritual and explains her visions, even though Cara never sends her any money. Alicia sees Cara holding money in the street, sitting at a table with others and holding a check for $14,000. She then sees Cara sitting by the water with someone who makes her genuinely happy. Cara realizes that when she went to mail her citizenship papers, she bought a lottery scratcher and won $25, so she was holding money in the street, just as Alicia predicted. Working toward citizenship forces Cara to consider her identity, and she feels treasonous because she does not believe that she will ever be an American. Even though Obama has helped her and she believes that as the son of an immigrant, he understands immigrants, Cara believes that the government will find a way to kick her out when she is too old to work. However, she and la Vieja Caridad watch a documentary that suggests that grandmother orcas are responsible for the pod’s survival because they focus on feeding everyone. She concludes that elders are more useful than anyone can know. However, she also realizes she cannot be a grandmotherly security guard because she will have to answer the phone, and she only understands half of anything in English over the phone. Cara’s naturalization questionnaire that follows contains her usual tangential answers. An advertisement for the grand opening of a salon owned by Alexis the Pisces follows.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Session Twelve”
Cara explains why she missed session 11 with her caseworker. After she walked la Vieja Caridad’s dog, Fidel, she returned to discover that la Vieja Caridad had died. Luckily, the funeral was already paid for, and all the arrangements were made, so Cara followed la Vieja Caridad’s instructions. The neighbors got together in Cara’s apartment for a funeral dinner, and Cara realized that like Alicia the Psychic predicted, she was at a table with people, although there was no check. When Julio tossed his chicken and ran around the apartment, she followed the behavior management plan instead of yelling, impressing Ángela.
Cara explains that she still feels la Vieja Caridad’s loss and compares it to her job loss, not to Fernando’s estrangement. Caring for la Vieja Caridad, like her job, gave her purpose. Cara feels lost but is grateful because la Vieja Caridad left her $5,600 and a letter telling her that she died without regrets. Cara sees her wealth as Alicia’s doing, but her caseworker reminds her of the work and love that she has shown to la Vieja Caridad.
Cara wants to share her good fortune with Lulú, but Lulú is so distraught about Adonis and humiliated that Cara must frame her offer carefully. She takes Lulú for a makeover with Alexis the Pisces, who recognizes her and agrees to make them both over for the price of one. Although he no longer lives with Fernando, the two men see each other often. Fernando now has a respectable job working for a Madison Avenue store and travels for his work. Alexis promises to have Fernando call her when he returns. Afterward, Cara and Lulú sit by the pond, and Cara invites Lulú to live with her in Fernando’s room since her apartment is too small with Adonis’s family there. When Lulú accepts, Cara realizes that Alicia the Psychic’s final vision has come true.
The report that follows is the caseworker’s assessment of Cara’s character in summary for the Senior Workforce Program. Lissette acknowledges Cara’s hard work and unpaid labor and recommends an immediate extension of her benefits and 12 more sessions as necessary for her long-term employment goals.
Epilogue Summary: “Two Months Later”
Cara visits with pastelitos and café con leche to thank Lisette for continuing to fight for her benefits and for listening to her story. She admits that talking has helped her to learn about herself. She is happy living with Lulú even if Lulú spends two hours in the bathroom each day and does not share Cara’s enthusiasm for cleaning. Lulú’s daughter-in-law, Patricia, now pays half of Lulú’s rent because she feels responsible for displacing Lulú. Every Friday, Hernán leaves the hospital and takes Cara and Lulú to their new home in Shirley, Long Island. In the elevator on Dominican Mother’s Day, Cara runs into her neighbor and her neighbor’s daughter, Sabrina. Sabrina’s mother asks her if it is nice to have Fernando back, and when Cara does not understand, she explains that she just saw Fernando leaving on the security feed and assumed that he was visiting. Cara finds her favorite foods and a note from Fernando wishing her a happy Mother’s Day. Cara thanks Lissette for helping her to find the courage to change. She instructs Lissette to write one final thing: Cara Romero is still here.
Chapter 10-Epilogue Analysis
In the final chapters, Cruz redefines the American ethos, revealing the importance of Maintaining Hope in the American Dream despite the clear lack of equal opportunity, and accordingly, the recurring motifs of astrology, fate, and dreams culminate in a tangible payoff for Cara. By depicting Cara’s payoff for hard work in support of her community through the lens of Alicia the Psychic’s dubious predictions, Cruz offers a framework for understanding that the American Dream is an idealized belief, not a contractual guarantee of prosperity. This concept is especially true for those whose very Americanness may be denied. However, like the believers of astrology, those who subscribe to the American ethos can use it to maintain hope that there are higher laws governing the universe, and this hope can drive their resilience.
Cara’s strong belief in the dubious messages from Alicia the Psychic offers an avenue for the protagonist to maintain hope in the American Dream despite the immigration status that she believes will steal her claim to its promises. Like the astrological predictions of Walter Mercado or the self-fulfilling ways in which Cara and her loved ones adhere to their star signs, the American Dream represents an equalizing force greater than the social and economic forces working against them. While gentrification, the housing market collapse, outsourced manufacturing work, and American mores governing who is deemed employable are all human-made, Cara takes comfort in the belief that universal ideals will prevail in ways that humans cannot predict or dismantle.
Just as Alicia the Psychic’s predictions about Cara’s fate appear to come true in unusual ways, Cara’s hard work pays off even if it does not guarantee unending prosperity. Cruz therefore uses the culmination of the subplot with Alicia the Psychic to raise questions about who or what is responsible for Cara’s fate. By extension, the novel also questions who or what is responsible when Americans prosper. While Cara initially believes that her financial windfall is the result of a cosmic ritual that Alicia the Psychic has performed, Lissette sees Cara’s efforts on behalf of her community as the reason for her windfall. Cruz suggests that both cosmic luck and hard work account for Cara’s fate and thus, neither conclusion adequately explains Americans’ failures or successes. Cruz implies that while the American Dream is an equalizing ethos capable of sustaining hope, a person’s inherent work ethic should not be measured by their wealth or social influence, as social and economic factors are not equal for everyone living in America. Like Cara, it is possible to be both hard-working and a step away from financial ruin. This is especially true for immigrants and working-class Americans whose unacknowledged labor supports the whole. Thus, the novel posits that as a belief, the American Dream has many benefits, but Cruz also urges people to remember that it is an ideal tarnished by an imperfect world.
Although Cruz uses the parallel between astrology and the American Dream to imply that the latter is a belief, not a guarantee, Cruz does not assert that the American Dream is not real or attainable. Instead, Cruz suggests that the American Dream is realized through the supportive, reciprocal relationships found in strong communities. By overturning the popular interpretation that the American Dream requires individual effort, Cruz shows that the communal effort in immigrant communities like Washington Heights creates better avenues for shared prosperity. As Cara’s stories illustrate, community support creates opportunity while the individualistic competition that many Americans embrace limits such opportunities. While immigrants are often scapegoated for eroding American values, Cruz reveals the ways in which those same immigrants embody the American Dream in their responsibility to each other. Like Alicia the Psychic’s predictions, which are not as grand as promised, community support levels the skewed social and economic playing field so that more people can survive and thrive, even if the results are not as grand. For example, Cara’s care and financial support enables Ángela’s education and later unburdens Ángela of childcare costs, allowing her to save for a new home. Cara then benefits from relaxing visits to Ángela’s home. While these are modest successes, they are more sustainable than the competitive, individualistic striving and lack of shared responsibility that led to the collapse of the housing market and the economic hardships of the Great Recession. Through la Vieja Caridad’s bequest in gratitude for Cara’s care, Cruz offers a more sustainable and attainable version of the American Dream. Furthermore, the author overturns stereotypical narratives about immigrants eroding the American Dream by exploring the pernicious American individualism behind the economic forces that erode community and suppress cooperative spirit. The uncertainty of Cara’s future at the end of the novel despite her bold declaration that she is still here reminds readers that immigrants’ futures are still uncertain and that American prosperity is not a guarantee.
