On the train home, wearing Betsy's skirt and blouse that she acquired by trading her bathrobe for them, Esther sees herself as a sick Indian with pieces of dried blood on her face. Now, as Esther is becoming more and more depressed, more and more of her life is described as gray. Her suitcase, for example, is gray, filled with two dozen unripe avocados that Doreen has, quite lovingly it seems, given Esther as a farewell present. And when Esther arrives home, she crawls into her mother's gray Chevrolet. This will be Esther's first summer in the suburbs because she failed to get into the writing course she wanted so desperately to be accepted for. She says, "I had nothing to look forward to." The situation seems even bleaker when Esther awakens on her first morning home; it is unclear which of the Greenwood neighbors irritates Esther more — the busybody Mrs. Ockenden who spies on Esther when Mrs. Greenwood is at work, or "the breeder," Dodo Conway, who has six children and is expecting another, "Catholic that she is." "Children make me sick," says Esther.
When Esther's friend Jody calls from Cambridge about the room they might share for summer school, Esther knows that it is wrong to decline, but she is unable to call Jody back and, thus, Esther is stuck in the suburbs — stuck in an atmosphere that is as hateful as New York City was confusing. In her indecision about how to spend the summer, Esther vacillates — thinking that she will write a novel about a girl called Elaine, then deciding to learn shorthand from her mother in the evenings, then deciding to read Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce, and then writing her honors thesis. But, plan after plan is discarded. Esther's mother tries to reason sweetly with her, but to no avail. The shorthand lessons only give Esther a headache. She decides that she can't write a novel because she doesn't have enough experience in life yet.
