The Hand That First Held Mine

Lexie lives and works with Innes, spending most of her time with him. One afternoon, Lexie is working on revising a piece for the magazine when Innes’s estranged wife, Gloria, comes into the magazine office with her daughter, Margot. Gloria tells Margot that Lexie is the reason Innes left her and makes a show of crying. Innes confronts her, seething with anger. They argue about Lexie and where Innes lives. Innes controls his anger in deference to Margot, and when it becomes clear that Gloria can’t win, she sweeps away with Margot in her wake.

After they’ve left, Innes tells Lexie more about his marriage to Gloria. They married a month after meeting, but Innes was then sent to war. He was a prisoner of war for two years. When he returned, he discovered Gloria had had a child with another man and had put Innes’s beloved mother, Ferdinanda, into a convalescent home and burned all her prized possessions. Gloria and Innes separated, and Gloria kept Innes’s family home while Innes took a flat in London.

Following the confrontation at Elsewhere, Gloria continues to show up at the magazine office and write letters to Innes. At the same time, Margot seems to be following Lexie. One day on the subway, Lexie asks Margot why Margot keeps following her. Lexie says she’s not to blame for the situation between Innes and Gloria, but Margot refuses to believe her and says, “I’m going to make you sorry. I am. You see if I don’t” (147).

Ted jogs to his parents’ house. He has come to fill out some financial paperwork that his father, Felix, wants to establish for the baby. He talks with Margot about Elina and the baby. Ted asks Margot if he was breastfed, and she’s evasive. He also asks Margot if she recalls a man outside their window—something he remembers from his childhood. At first, she insists it never happened, and then she says it might have been a salesperson.

Ted returns home to Elina struggling to get the baby to feed. They argue, and Ted seems far away again. She asks if he’s alright, and he tells her not to ask anymore. The three of them lie together on the bed, and Ted wonders when the baby will start to form memories. He tells Elina a memory he has recovered—following someone wearing green platform shoes.

Lexie and Daphne have a night out, during which Daphne reassures Lexie that she and Innes are a good match.

The narrator explains that Elsewhere’s building has since become a café: Ted is now sitting at the table that used to be Lexie’s desk. He is talking with his friend Simmy about the baby’s name: He and Elina have decided on Jonah.

At his office, Ted edits a clip of a man about to fall off a building. He scrolls the film back and forth, allowing the man to fall and reverse back onto the building several times. He finds an imperfection and fixes it. Suddenly, he remembers his father pulling him along while he refused to walk. He remembers the sensation of wanting his mother and trying to get back to her.

On another evening, Simmy comes to visit and takes Ted, Elina, and Jonah to a photography exhibit. Ted stops for a time in front of a picture of a man and woman in front of Elsewhere’s office—Lexie and Innes, though Ted, Elina, and Simmy do not know this. Simmy comments of the exhibit, “[A]ll photos of the past look melancholy and wistful precisely because they capture something that’s gone” (174). At the museum café, Ted has another sudden memory: sitting on the lap of a woman wearing a red dress. He decides the memories are tied to becoming a father and watching his own son. When he looks at Jonah clinging to Elina, he also wants to pull Elina to him and keep her close forever. When Elina gets up to go to the bathroom, he holds on to her, coming up with a strange question about the bathroom’s location that worries Elina.

Lexie is on her way to Oxford for an interview. As she leaves the office, she notices that Innes feels feverish. When she gets back to the office, Laurence tells her that Innes has been rushed to the hospital. They ransack the office for money for a taxi and hurry to the hospital. Lexie pretends to be Innes’s wife so that she can see him. Innes has pleurisy but seems to be doing well on the oxygen mask. The nurse makes Lexie leave because visiting hours are over, but Lexie returns the next day. Innes tells Lexie he loves her and that he’s going to talk to his lawyer about a will.

On the third day, Lexie again returns, this time with Innes’s favorite cashmere scarf and a bouquet of violets. However, the nurse tells her he has died and that Gloria has been to the hospital to make the funeral arrangements. Lexie is devastated and cannot even see his body, which Gloria has already had taken away.