Prince of Tides

Over cocktails one night, Tom marvels at Susan’s ability to retain her composure while taking on the emotional troubles of her patients. Susan tells Tom maintaining a professional distance retains her objectivity and best helps her patients. According to Tom, it is very difficult for him to stay objective when someone he knows is in distress. For instance, when he was a coach, he violently beat up the physically abusive father of Sue Ellen, one of his students. However, the actions did not rescue Sue Ellen, who was later shot dead by her father. Tom attributes his rash actions to his own unpleasant experience of domestic abuse.

The conversation between Tom and Susan turns flirtatious, and it is obvious they feel a mutual attraction. Susan reveals that Lila never mentions Luke to her. For Tom, this is unsurprising, given that Luke and his fate are a taboo topic in their family. Susan also tells Tom that Savannah has requested Tom not visit her for some time, as his visits compound her anxiety. Savannah’s painful condition reminds Tom of Tolitha’s terrible decline from Alzheimer’s disease in a nursing home. Though he visits Tolitha regularly, there isn’t much Tom can do to fix her pain. He recalls how Tolitha traveled the world after Papa John’s death in 1951, sensing the Wingos postcards and souvenirs from “Zanzibar, […] Singapore, Goa” (148). After her money ran out, Tolitha returned to Amos, her first husband.

Tolitha and Amos’s dysfunctional relationship contributed to Henry’s streak of violence. While Tolitha was a free spirit, Amos was an extremely religious and conservative Bible salesman. Tolitha and Amos were so caught up in their differences they never paid Henry much attention. However, because his grandparents are gentle people, Tom still cannot understand what makes Henry violent. He knows that childhood trauma affects one for life in strange ways like it did Savannah. He cannot undo his trauma or Savannah’s, but he can address it.

In his second week in New York, Tom gets “the New York willies” (158), an urgent desire to better himself. He makes a to-do list of enriching activities, including reading great literature and working out religiously. The most important item on his list is to be more forthcoming to Susan about the Wingo family history. Tom brings up the subject of his rescinded visits at Bellevue to Savannah with Susan but notices that she seems disappointed by her husband, the celebrated violinist Herbert Woodruff, canceling dinner plans with her.

When Susan expresses surprise that Tom reads Savannah’s poems, Tom feels she is patronizing him because of his southern heritage. Susan tells Tom her surprise is because she feels Savannah’s poems are meant primarily for women. Tom finds the view reductive. On Susan’s query if he hates women, Tom answers that he hates both women and men since he was raised by a woman and a man. Susan and Tom call it a truce, and she reveals her first name—Susan—on Tom’s insistence. Tom begins to call her Lowenstein. Susan requests Tom to coach her son Bernard in football.

Tom continues the story of his childhood. Four other children were born to Lila and Henry, all stillborn and buried on Melrose Island. After Henry’s return from Germany, the family all convert to Catholicism, becoming a religious minority in the South. Thus, all the stillborn babies are baptized before burial. Henry keeps the last baby, baptized Rose-Aster, in the freezer, so Lila doesn’t have to see its body till the funeral. Later that night, Savannah brings Rose-Aster’s body into her bed, hugging it. When Tom confronts Savannah over the disturbing incident, Savannah denies it. Later, Savannah admits to Tom that she probably did bring Rose-Aster into her bed because it is wet. Savannah cannot recall the specifics of the incident and confesses to Tom that she often loses chunks of her memory. She tells him she will start keeping a journal to record her days. Lila burns the journal when she discovers Savannah uses it to note family quarrels. Later that night, Tom finds Savannah on the beach, smiling and writing on the sand as if that were her new notebook.

Meanwhile, the loss of the babies traumatizes Lila, already fragile from her husband’s abuse. Lila now uses her children to compensate for the emotional vacuum in her life. One night, she calls Tom into her bed, hugging him, kissing him inappropriately, and telling him that she loves him the best of all her children. Tom is both flattered and disturbed by the intimacy. Later, he learns Lila said something similar to Luke and Savannah, making each child feel they were her chosen one, separating them from each other.

Tom also tells Susan about his breakdown, which occurred because of an overwhelmingly sad incident in his life. It can be deduced that this incident has something to do with Luke, who never appears in person in the present-day sections of the narrative. During his period of sadness, Tom tries to lose himself in his work but wanders off on a beach the night of an important game. As a consequence, he is fired from his job. He sinks into depression after being laid off.

Tom’s memories of Tolitha are warm and happy, even when his grandmother acted strangely. He recalls how Tolitha took him, Luke, and Savannah to pick out her coffin from Mr. Winthrop Ogletree, Colleton’s most established undertaker. A Romani woman has recently predicted Tolitha’s death in the next few years, so Tolitha wants to save her children the trouble of choosing a coffin. Amos has shot down Tolitha’s preference for a funeral: being left naked on Stone Mountain to be picked apart by vultures.

On the way to Mr. Ogletree’s, the family waves to Reese Newbury, Colleton’s richest man. Tom suggests Reese has a sinister and great role to play in their lives and their misfortune. At the undertaker’s, Tolitha demands to see a fancy coffin. She lays down in the casket and has the children take pictures of her to know how she will look at her funeral. She makes sure her makeup looks right because she doesn’t want the usual garish make-up Ogletree applies on his deceased clients. When Ruby Blankenship, an acquaintance, enters the parlor, Tolitha lies still in the casket, playing dead. As the children run out laughing, Tolitha suddenly sits up straight, frightening Ruby. Outside the mortician’s, she urinates in the azalea bushes, much to Luke’s amusement and delight. Meanwhile, Susan tells Tom she thinks Monique, the beautiful woman he saw crying in her office, is having an affair with Herbert.

When he was a child, Tom tracked the seasons through the flowers Lila wore in her hair. Spring gardenias were followed by summer roses. To Tom, Lila was the epitome of beauty and femininity. However, Lila is acutely conscious of other people’s opinions of her. Once, when she overhears Isabel Newbury, the wife of Reese, criticizing her habit of wearing flowers in her long hair, Lila stops the practice immediately. This makes Tom hate the manicured and perfumed Isabel. Wingos either forgive, in the fashion of Amos, or hold a grudge forever, like Henry. Tom is sure he takes after his father.

As a child, Tom is often torn between his thirst for vengeance, which Henry encourages, and his mother’s pressure on him to be the model child. When Todd Newbury, the son of Reese and Isabel, humiliates Tom by calling the Wingos “the lowest form of white man on the face of this earth” (222), Tom beats him up. Lila is livid at Tom’s perceived lack of civility and thrashes him. Lila takes Tom to the Newbury house to make him apologize to the family. While Isabel treats the Wingos coldly, Reese invites Lila and Tom into his lavish home. Lila is impressed by the grandeur of the house. Reese excuses himself from Lila’s company, taking Todd and Tom inside to settle matters between the boys. Reese shocks Tom by slapping him for what he says is “your own good” (235). Tom feels betrayed by Lila and doesn’t tell her about the incident.

Susan thinks Tom is rambling because the story has nothing to do with Savannah’s past. However, Tom informs her that the story is relevant to the history of the Wingos. As an explanation, he asks her to look at the return address on his mother’s letter kept in Susan’s files. The doctor is shocked to see that the name on the address is Lila Newbury, indicating that Lila went on to marry Reese. Tom’s revelation also sheds light on his estrangement from his mother.