The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise

“But mostly she hated that after nearly three years of hard work, instead of returning to her beloved Northwestern for her senior year, where she would currently be decorating her apartment with her best friend, Vee, and about to start fall-quarter classes, she was moving into a geriatric’s home to become a glorified babysitter.”

Tanner’s internal dialogue gives a glimpse into what she wants her life to look like at Northwestern. It’s in stark contrast to her life now. She misses her life, and especially her best friend Vee, which establishes some central conflicts in the novel.

“She’d learned long ago not to fight it, to make space for it, the way one might for a new tchotchke on the shelf, a souvenir from a trip you didn’t want to forget. That was all grief was, really, Louise had determined—remembering.”

When Louise wakes up and reaches for her deceased husband Ken, he isn’t there. She takes the time to ruminate on grief. She grieves for Ken, but she also grieves for George. Ken is dead, and she hasn’t seen George in 48 years. She yearns for her husband, but also her best friend. Instead of pushing her feelings down, she makes room for them. The metaphor of the “souvenir from a trip” foreshadows the journey that Louise will take to find George.

“Had Mrs. Wilt been sleepwalking, or was it something else—maybe the beginning stages of dementia? She wasn’t sure. But what she did know was this job was becoming much more of a responsibility than she’d thought it would be—or wanted.”

Tanner questions her own ability to take care of Louise, worried that her health, particularly mental, is worsening. She no longer feels like a “glorified babysitter” but also feels underqualified to be an actual nurse to a woman with dementia. This demonstrates Tanner’s self-doubt and anxiety, two qualities that she works through during her journey with Louise.

“Or maybe Mrs. Wilt had something of value she was trying to protect.”

After Tanner searches the house for Louise’s gun, she notices a number of strange things. There are a variety of locked boxes and closets, the front door has several locks and deadbolts, and the glass is Hammerglass, meaning Tanner wouldn’t have been able to break it with a chair when the fire alarm was going off. This increases Tanner’s suspicion of Louise and her mysterious past and highlights that the novel has not yet revealed everything about Louise’s character.

“Tanner understood. She had been through her own share of torturous physical therapy, for whatever good it did her. She could have said as much to Mrs. Wilt, could have let her know how much she empathized with her, could have created a starting point for connection.”

Tanner considers trying to form a connection with Louise over their shared experience: Louise with her physical therapy for her hip and Tanner with her physical therapy for her fractured leg. Up to this point, Louise and Tanner’s relationship has been stilted and awkward. This is Tanner’s first internal indication that she wants to further connect with Louise, introducing the theme of Unlikely Friendship and Forgiveness.

“And while her mind swirled with the shock of hearing George’s voice after all this time, the swell of love and heartache and what-could-have-beens, the realization that George was in danger and it was all her fault, one thought blared through the melee like a foghorn blasting out into the night: she was out of time.”

Louise is filled with panic after receiving George’s strange phone call in which she says she’s in danger. The sound of George’s voice fills Louise with love and hope, but her words quash the positive feelings and instead drag her down into stress. In this moment, definitively, Louise chooses to run. The statement that she is “out of time” establishes temporal constraints within the novel, lending a sense of urgency to the rising action until Louise reunites with George.

“But as Tanner shifted back up to fifth gear, the Jaguar’s engine humming like a symphony of bees in perfect, beautiful unison, the dark road stretching out before her like an endless lane of possibility, she had to admit she felt something else, too, for the first time in ages. Alive.”

After all her panic and anxiety during her decision-making process about whether or not to be Louise’s getaway driver, Tanner feels free behind the wheel of Jaguar. She feels alive after five months of living in the basement with a healing leg, not knowing where her life is headed. The simile of the bees and the “lane of possibility” emblematize her feelings by conjuring images of flight and movement.

“‘No more unscheduled stops,’ she said. ‘We’re driving straight through to California. I think we can agree we both would be better off once we’re out of each other’s company.’”

After their fight over going up the St. Louis Arch, Louise tells Tanner it will be best for their trip to move faster so they can stop spending time together. This is step backward in their friendship, though the pair spends the rest of their time in St. Louis growing closer. It is further demonstration of Louise’s harsh exterior, though her softer interior will become evident soon.

“Tanner closed her eyes—he just kept coming. Forward, hulking. ‘I thought if I yelled or hit him, people would say I was overreacting.’ She’d seen it before. A hundred times. Girls being told they were too uptight, couldn’t take a joke: Oh, what, you’re like a feminist? Tanner only liked being the center of attention on a soccer field. She didn’t want to make a scene.”

Tanner shares with Louise the reason she didn’t stand up for herself against the frat boy at the party. She was so afraid of the judgment of others that she felt unable to defend herself, which connects to the theme of Misogyny and Feminine Rage. Colleen Oakley also conveys the sense of threat through the short sentence, “forward, hulking”; each word comprises a trochee (a stressed and unstressed syllable) to recreate a sense of motion as Tanner remembers the boy coming toward her.

“She was so young. She had no idea how long life was. People always said life was short, but it wasn’t. Not really. You could cram so many different lives into one. Be so many different people.”

Louise, with eight decades of experience, understands better than Tanner that life is long, and there is always time to start over. This also alludes to Louise’s double identity and the fact that she has been a number of different people throughout her life.

“And with that, Tanner snapped. Pure blind fury—no, rage—enveloped her, the same way she felt when she learned she’d never play soccer again, or when she realized her mom bought bread and butter pickles instead of dill. ‘STOP FUCKING CALLING ME GIRLIE!’ she roared.”

Tanner has one of her “Hulk-outs” at Louise, tired of being called “girlie.” Tanner carries so much anger about her situation, about the reason she backed up instead of stood up that night, that she lashes out often at those close to her. This incident is a hint that Tanner is feeling closer to Louise and also an opportunity for them to understand each other more deeply. Oakley puts “rage” in dashes as Tanner corrects herself, conveying the fact that she is changing her habitual patterns of thought.

“Anger was something Louise understood intimately—particularly having been a young woman herself. Anger at her mother for refusing to leave her abusive stepfather. Anger that, though he had never laid a finger on her, his leering presence forced her to lock her bedroom door at night just to feel safe in her own house. Anger that she felt so goddamned powerless. All the time. Unable to change her circumstances.”

Louise understands Tanner’s “Hulk-out” and her internal dialogue conveys her own anger. The anaphora, “anger,” reflects the fact that Louise is stuck on this emotion. The ensuing incomplete sentence, “all the time,” suggests that these experiences make her feel “powerless” since the sentence has no verb or direction.

“He grinned that sweet-Ken mischievous grin, and Louise’s heart squeezed. She could see something of the boy Leonard used to be. A boy who had learned to rely on his wit and charm to woo a girl, rather than overt good looks. In other words, the very best kind. Like her Ken. She felt simultaneously warm and sad.”

During her intimacy with the bartender Leonard, Louise thinks of Ken and feels grief. Though the physicality of the act fulfills her bodily need, there’s an emotional element that is more complicated. Leonard’s smile reminds her of Ken, and that memory warms her, but there’s a sting of sadness in it.

“‘George is my…well, was, I suppose…’ Her what? Whole world. Other half. Soul mate. Though it was true, it all sounded so ridiculous.”

Tanner asks Louise what George is to her, and her explanation falls short. George is Louise’s best friend, the person closest to her, despite having not spoken for 48 years. Their friendship is so sacred that time cannot break it. Oakley moves through romantic platitudes to convey that words are insufficient to describe this friendship.

“Regret. Now that was a feeling Tanner was wildly intimate with. Regret for going to that party, for sure, and for how she had been treating everyone ever since, and for snitching on Vee and getting her suspended from the team. Regret for stepping backward instead of forward on that balcony. For making herself smaller.”

With Louise’s revelation about George’s impending death and the clear yearning she feels, Tanner thinks back to regret, to the things in life she regrets, her action toward her mother and family, her betrayal of Vee, her fear of her own self-empowerment. Like with her use of the word “anger,” Oakley also uses the anaphora of “regret” to convey that Tanner feels stuck and unable to move past regret.

“She thought maybe she was actually a bad person. Deep down where it mattered. And that she deserved to be lonely. To be alone. Her stomach felt cold and hollow.”

After Louise shares her fear of her Parkinson’s diagnosis, Tanner shares her fear of being broke and not being good at anything but soccer. However, she holds back, keeping her deepest fear inside: her fear of being a bad person, due to how she treats those around her, and her fear of deserving to be alone. The incomplete sentence, “[t]o be alone,” reflects the hollowness that she feels.

“Since the beginning of time, women had often been underestimated for their abilities. Ignored. Looked over. As she had been twice for promotion the past five years.”

Special Agent Lorna Huang looks over the Copley Plaza Hotel heist case and considers Patricia Nichols as a serious suspect, despite every past agent who had the case passing her over. She believes that, like her, Patricia was looked over because she was a woman. This provides another example of Misogyny and Feminine Rage, highlighting the pervasiveness of these societal issues.

“Or maybe it was the simple, and admittedly pathetic, fact that Louise had called them a pair. And Tanner wanted so desperately to be part of a team once again—even if the other half of that team was a wanted felon—that she took it to heart.”

Even though Louise tries to get away from Tanner, Tanner wants to go with Louise. She doesn’t just want to the money anymore, she wants to feel like she’s on a team, something she misses from her soccer career. She’s also growing closer to Louise in their friendship and does not want to leave her friend to take this journey alone. Her note about Louise being a felon highlights the power of Unlikely Friendship and Forgiveness.

“Aside from cancer, it had been Louise’s biggest fear when it came to the inevitability of aging. ‘I don’t care what happens to my body, as long as my mind doesn’t go,’ she said often to Ken, the kids, anyone who would listen. ‘If my mind goes, just take me out back like Old Yeller.’”

Louise thinks about aging when she struggles with the news of George’s memory issues. She prioritizes her mind over her body, lucidity over mobility, yet with her Parkinson’s diagnosis she will slowly lose her body and her mind. The reference to “Old Yeller” injects gallows humor into the text to characterize Louise as sensitive and yet pragmatic.

“‘You never know. He seems like a nice guy, but I’ve known plenty of men who seem like nice guys, if you know what I mean.’ She looked off into space, her eyes glazing over for a bit, as if lost in a memory. ‘My mom always kept a leg of lamb in the freezer. She never used it, though my stepfather gave her plenty of reasons to.’”

Louise introduces the “leg of lamb” metaphor that she references when she gives Tanner the Kinsey Diamond at the end of the novel. Louise leaves her gun in Tanner’s bag during the night she spends with August, just to be safe, demonstrating her protective nature and her growing affection for Tanner. This “leg of lamb” builds into a metaphor for women defending themselves.

“‘I don’t know,’ Louise said. ‘Sometimes it just feels like we still spend so much time trying to teach the house not to catch on fire, instead of teaching the arsonist not to light it.’”

Louise and George discuss if they think the world is better for women now than when they ran their whisper network. They agree than in some ways it is, but in other ways many things are the same. Louise then uses the house analogy to say that she wishes society would address the causes of misogyny and that she wishes society would teach men to treat women better instead of blaming women for the cruelty men inflict upon them.

“He said it in the way boys had been talking to her for her entire life, like she was an adorable baby panda. How cute that she thought she knew how to play soccer or video games or knew a little about engines in cars, but they clearly knew more or played better.”

When Salvatore condescends to Tanner, she no can no longer take it. She thinks back to all the boys who condescended to her throughout her life and to the frat boy on the balcony at the party. This is the climax of the novel in which she reclaims her power.

“She didn’t want to go back to her life, to who she was before. Or maybe she just didn’t want to leave the one person in her life that she hadn’t pushed away with her anger and outrage—a person who seemed to genuinely like her. Or at least not mind her being around.”

On the flight back to Atlanta, Tanner reflects on her life: on where she has been and where she wants to go. She’s changed as a person over her adventure with Louise, and she doesn’t want to lose her friendship with Louise or the new person she’s become. Louise is now an important part of her life, demonstrating the depth of their friendship at the culmination of their journey.