Severance

For five years, Candace ascends the ladder at Spectra while continuing to do the same work. Her unchanging routine consists of going to work and coming home to watch movies in Jonathan’s apartment. She finds a new supplier for the Gemstone Bible and fulfills the contract. When the new supplier closes soon afterward due to worker health issues, Candace tells herself that she “just doing [her] job” (151).

After Jonathan breaks up with her, Candace attends a party at the apartment of Lane, one of the Art Girls, who encourages her to apply for a new opening in the Art department. Candace is tempted by the offer but feels nauseated and out of place among the glamorous women. Looking out into Lane’s hallway, she sees a fevered old woman repeatedly fumbling to open her door. She is shaken for several days by the experience.

No longer able to come home to Jonathan, Candace supplements her daily routine with longer hours in the office. One night she comes home and takes a pregnancy test, which turns out positive. Unable to process the news, she pushes it to the back of her mind and continues her routine.

Candace wonders whether there is much difference between herself and the fevered—she, too, feels caught in a repeating loop of memories. She and the remaining survivors arrive at the Facility, which turns out to be the abandoned Deer Oaks Mall. Bob announces that the first floor of department stores will be a communal space, while the boutique stores on the second floor will each be allocated to individual survivors. Candace chooses the L’Occitane skincare store because it reminds her of her mother. As she is unpacking her belongings, Bob approaches her and reveals that Evan told him about the pregnancy. He tells her that her baby is “miraculous”—it gives the group hope, and therefore, she can’t leave the group until she carries it to term. Because of her past rule-breaks Bob doesn’t trust her—she will be imprisoned within the mall for the length of her pregnancy. Adam and Todd pull down the store’s metal grating, locking her in the store.

The chapter opens with the story of the Mormon exodus from Illinois. Brigham Young and other members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints spent months trekking across the U.S. until they reached Salt Lake City in the summer of 1846. 142 years later, Candace’s father Zhigang arrives in Salt Lake City with his wife Ruifang. Zhigang is the first Chinese student at the University of Utah’s Economics apartment. The couple moves into a dilapidated basement apartment and begins saving up money to bring Candace over from Fuzhou. They are deeply isolated; Ruifang struggles to make friends and begs to return to her family in China. After the Tiananmen Square protests, however, Zhigang decides that they will never return. To placate Ruifang, he takes her out to restaurants, bars, and malls, observing that shopping soothes her homesickness. They finally find friends at the Chinese Christian Community Church and become immersed in faith, with Ruifang taking up a ritual of daily prayer.

Candace resumes narration, recalling the first four years of her life in Fuzhou with her mother. She remembers how Ruifang would plan out their days methodically, creating a sense of stability which Candace has chased ever since. After she joined her parents in Salt Lake City, however, her relationship with her mother suffered as Ruifang pressured her to be perfect and punished her harshly for behavior deemed ungrateful or “self-nullifying.”

Zhigang steadily ascends the corporate ladder, rarely finding time to spend with his family. One day, he takes Candace to KFC and regales her with tales from his childhood in Fuzhou, recalling how he used to think there was nothing better than his mother’s special-occasion dish of two fried eggs with soy sauce. After eating at an American buffet for the first time, though, he decides that “fried chicken is better” (188). Shortly afterward, Zhigang dies in a car accident. After his death, Ruifang develops Alzheimer’s. Candace moves back in with her mother to care for her. Ruifang recounts countless stories and memories—some real, some fabricated or absorbed from Zhigang’s life. On her deathbed, she implores Candace to stay in America and to fulfill her father’s wishes by “[making] use of herself” (190). Four years after Zhigang’s accident, Ruifang dies.

Candace describes the beginning of the End in New York. She has been ignoring Jonathan’s calls, unwilling to tell him about her pregnancy. One day she arrives at Spectra to find the offices deserted except for Blythe, who tells her that the company has closed in anticipation of Storm Mathilde. Blythe also informs Candace that Lane, one of the other Art girls, is fevered. Jonathan calls the office. His basement apartment will likely flood due to the storm. Reluctantly, Candace agrees to let him spend the night in her studio.

Candace and Jonathan go out to dinner, observing festive crowds filling bars and spilling out onto the street. Candace explains that everyone is happy because the extra time off work granted by the storm means they are freed from their routines, can “do the things [they’ve] always meant to do” (199). Later, Jonathan again asks her to leave New York with him, pointing out that she doesn’t even enjoy her job at Spectra. Candace thinks of the way Jonathan lives, moving along the periphery of society, limited by his poverty. She tells herself that “money is freedom. Opting out is not a real choice” (206). They sleep together, and Jonathan asks her for a favor: He wants her to keep updating the NY Ghost, so he can see her pictures of New York after he’s left. As they fall asleep next to one another, Candace decides that she will carry her pregnancy to term.