17. February 8, 2021

Emi­ly warm­ly invites Bar­bara into her home after Bar­bara, adorned in red attire, seeks a favor relat­ed to the writ­ing pro­gram. Attract­ed by Emi­ly’s well-appoint­ed kitchen and the offer of a spe­cial tea blend, Bar­bara, a cof­fee afi­ciona­do, accepts the tea to main­tain good­will. They dis­cuss Bar­bara’s admi­ra­tion for the poet Olivia Kings­bury and her wish for Kings­bury to men­tor her. Emi­ly, though out­ward­ly sup­port­ive, inter­nal­ly express­es reser­va­tions about Kings­bury’s con­di­tion and her own feel­ings towards Bar­bara’s request.

Emi­ly chal­lenges Bar­bara to share one of her poems for cri­tique. Bar­bara selects “Faces Change,” a poem reflect­ing a har­row­ing expe­ri­ence. Emi­ly cri­tiques the poem in a pri­vate analy­sis, sug­gest­ing minor adjust­ments, and offers to con­nect Bar­bara with Kings­bury, imply­ing Barbara’s tal­ent. The inter­ac­tion reveals Emi­ly’s com­plex nature; she tog­gles between encour­age­ment and inter­nal skep­ti­cism, reflect­ing on gen­er­a­tional and racial bias­es that she acknowl­edges but does not voice out loud.

The chap­ter con­cludes with Emi­ly show­ing her hus­band, Rod­dy, a video cap­tur­ing Bar­bara dis­creet­ly dis­card­ing the tea and tak­ing a cook­ie, a moment which they find amus­ing. Emi­ly explains her motive for giv­ing Bar­bara the stale tea was out of curios­i­ty, show­cas­ing a play­ful yet some­what manip­u­la­tive aspect of her per­son­al­i­ty. This inter­ac­tion under­scores themes of men­tor­ship, artis­tic aspi­ra­tion, and the under­ly­ing com­plex­i­ties with­in human rela­tion­ships, hint­ing at Emi­ly’s mul­ti­fac­eted char­ac­ter that blends warmth with an ana­lyt­i­cal and cal­cu­lat­ing mind.