Summary
Chapter 21
Back at Grazina's house, Hai spends two days high on painkillers. Grazina's absence impacts him profoundly. He calls out of work twice. When Grazina is finally brought home, she tells him that she does not want to return to the nursing home because of its darkness. She also misses her owls. Hai feeds her corn bread and tea, and they watch an Easter video together. Eventually, Lucas shows up with a counselor to take Grazina to the care home, having discovered that Hai is not a nurse. Hai defends Grazina, who does not wish to be taken away. Grazina flings sugar at Lucas and the counselor until they leave. Hai asks Grazina if she fabricated these war stories since she sometimes claimed her brother was killed in a raid, and other times it was her cousin.
Spring arrives. Hai rushes back from a HomeMarket shift one day after receiving a distressed call from Grazina, only to find her sitting calmly at the table, having forgotten that she called. Maureen's lump turns out to just be a cyst. Vogel, the regional manager, returns and forces BJ to tell the crew that HomeMarket will terminate Sony's employment. Wayne, Maureen, and Russia try to organize a shift pool to enable Sony to take some of their shifts. Sony runs out of the restaurant. A huge crowd comes in before Hai can leave, and BJ asks him to help out so that Vogel does not come back and criticize the way the restaurant is managed.
On the phone with his Aunt Kim, Hai discovers that she has been writing to Sony for years, pretending to be Minh. For that reason, Sony intends to take the train to Vermont to reunite with his father. Hai catches up with his cousin, who is walking in the railroad tracks. Upon hearing Hai tell him that his father is dead, Sony punches his cousin in the face and says, "'I know.'"
Chapter 22
Sony tells Hai that he found out about his father's death online. It was labeled as "death due to misadventure." Sony resolves to go to Vermont to retrieve the diamond he believes to be embedded in his father's hand. When Hai fails to convince Sony not to make the journey, Hai decides to accompany him and bring Grazina. BJ authorizes the use of a company van, and she, Maureen, Sony, Hai, and Grazina embark on their quest. Maureen compares the circumstances to the plot of Star Wars. BJ asks permission to also drop her music tape off at an acquaintance's house along the way. Night falls and the crew cannot find a motel with vacancy. Wayne clocks them out back at HomeMarket, agreeing to clock them in the following day. They find a barn to sleep in. Sony and Hai reminisce on past memories while they retrieve Grazina's medication from the van. Back inside, Hai counters Maureen's conspiracy theory about evil lizards by suggesting that the reptiles actually work to evolve human beings.
Hours after everyone goes to sleep, Hai dreams that he sees a giant ship outside, which he decides is Noah's ark. He also sees an enormous, whistling hog. After apologizing to all the members of his family, Sony wakes him up by spelling out "okay" on Hai's face to counter the sadness of his somniloquy.
Chapter 23
The crew wakes and heads out with Maureen at the wheel. Sony directs them to Devil's Leap State Park, which is more of a hiking loop. They walk until they come across a half-seared headrest. The group remains silent while Sony addresses his father, promising to remember him always. Maureen wraps a black apron around Sony. They huddle in a collective hug that Hai refers to as the HomeMarket Monster. Sony gives a speech that harkens back to the Civil War, and Grazina cries "charge!" at the end of the speech. Sony runs into the forest before he collapses, sobbing. After allowing Sony to mourn his father, the group heads out. BJ carries Sony. Maureen sings "The Parting Glass" while the evidence of spring is all around them.
Chapter 24
Back on the road, Hai opens the window and feels awe and gratitude. BJ and Maureen drop Sony off at his group home and leave Hai and Grazina at her house. On the door, an official notice from Hartford County Family Services reads that someone will come the following day to take Grazina to the Hamilton Home. Grazina and Hai spend the day eating Stouffer's and watching The Office reruns. That night, Grazina asks Hai if they can go to a diner to drink coffee. They order a meal that Grazina finds disappointing. She tells Hai she is unsure if she was a good mother. The retired detective walks in with his partner. Grazina asks Hai about his own mother, making him cry. They pay and leave after Grazina attempts to call her daughter. Outside the diner, Hai begins to hyperventilate, thinking the ground is swallowing him. Grazina tells him it is just Big Night, when salamanders emerge from winter hibernation and migrate en masse to vernal pools to breed. The image renders Hai awe-struck.
Chapter 25
Hai wakes to the sound of music coming from Grazina's record player. They have 20 minutes remaining before Social Services will arrive. Using their World War II narrative, Hai proposes that they make an escape. Towing his R2-D2 sculpture from Maureen, Hai takes Grazina outside and helps her start her motorized scooter. He asks if she is ready to land in America. In a moment of lucidity, she questions whether she is old. Hai begins to unravel, repeating names of people and places from past wars. He notices that Lucas arrived early with a police officer. Still using the Second World War timeline, Hai comforts Grazina and primes her for the upcoming changes she will face. She tells him that she left the money from Jonas in a cookie tin as payment for helping her. The officer grabs Hai's arm while Lucas and a nurse take charge of Grazina. Lucas accuses Hai of being mentally unstable. Hai simply tells Lucas to buy Stouffer's Salisbury steak dinners for his mother.
Hai crosses King Philip's Bridge and walks through town, beholding the place that formed him. He swallows more pills. With nowhere else to go, Hai walks to HomeMarket. Sony greets him and asks where his usual UPS jacket is. Hai had left it, along with his glasses and an unfinished book, at Grazina's house. Hai gives Sony the money that Grazina gave him alongside Hai's own savings. He tells Sony to pay for his mother's bail and make a deposit for an apartment. Before the rest of the crew sees Hai, he walks to a nearby dumpster and climbs in. His mother calls him. On the phone, she asks him to tell her something he learned in medical school. He describes the space inside human bodies. To his mother's confusion, Hai speaks about his enormous fear of the future. In the final passage, Hai hears the sound of hogs being "[d]ragged by their hooves into the emperor’s butchery." They sound like people who live only once.
Analysis
Despite the way Hai cares about Grazina, he is not equipped to fully handle her medical needs—not least because of his job at HomeMarket. As the counselor who accompanies Lucas to 16 Hubbard Street points out, Grazina "has a medical history. And [..] she suffered a bad fall here last week" (Chapter 21). Hai may have good intentions, but he cannot provide around-the-clock care for Grazina. Furthermore, he makes the irresponsible decision to take Grazina on Sony's quest to Vermont. That being said, Grazina receives a different kind of care from Hai that she may or may not have access to at a nursing home: namely, the dignity of being humanized. Hai stands up for Grazina when Lucas attempts to remove her from her home. Hai exclaims, "'She clearly doesn’t wanna go. You can’t just take people against their will like this'" and recites part of the international code for displaced persons during wartime (Chapter 21). The fact that he cares about Grazina is indisputable, but his capacity to care for her is debatable.
Further truths surface when Kim admits she authored the letters Sony thought were from his father. Unable to bear the weight of another revelation, Hai shouts, "'What the hell is wrong with this family? Why does everything have to be a lie?'” (Chapter 21). Kim is unaware of Hai's hypocrisy in making this statement because of her estrangement with her sister. For months, Hai has deceived his mother into thinking that he is pursuing a medical degree in Boston when all the while he has been living and working in East Gladness. Even Sony keeps secrets of his own. For nearly four years, Sony knew of his father’s death, even as his mother assumed her ex’s identity and wrote letters to her son.
Grazina is not the only character who uses war terminology in the present. Sony also uses a war as a framework to process his own grief and abandonment. This can be seen when he declares, "'[t]his is Private Sony Minh Le of the Seventeenth Connecticut Volunteers reporting for duty'" while voicing his intention to travel to Vermont to recover his father's diamond (Chapter 22). Having a higher purpose to fight and even die for amidst violent circumstances infuses Sony with a sense of hope. Grazina's relationship with war is more complex. Her PTSD and dementia warp her reality until she is convinced that she is in a different world. The legacies of past wars live on in these characters even if the facts that Grazina and Sony believe in are unreliable. When Hai asks Grazina if her war-time family narratives are all imagined, she merely smiles. This ambiguous response casts doubt on the accuracy of certain details she shares, such as whether her brother or cousin was killed. In Sony's case, he later comes to find out that his father was not actually a war hero, but rather worked in a laundry room at a U.S. Army base. Ultimately, the fact remains that past wars still traumatize these characters in the present.
Vuong describes the group hug that envelops Sony as the "HomeMarket Monster" because of the way it defies corporate categorizations of normal, useful, and legible. The love and care that the team members show each other demonstrates the way that human connections break through rigid corporate structures. This appears throughout the novel, such as when Russia, Hai, and Maureen help Wayne at a slaughterhouse on their day off, when the team shows up to support BJ at her wrestling match, and when BJ and Maureen accompany Hai and Sony to Vermont. In addition, the camaraderie that occurs in the store during business hours blooms beyond what upper management deems appropriate. Vuong describes how the "hours of periphery maneuvering through the narrow counters and back rooms of a fast-food joint designed by a corporate architect" can actually build more intimacy than one has with one's family (Chapter 23). This is due to the sheer amount of time spent together with a shared purpose. Time spent "collectively shouldered" in this way creates deep (if temporary) bonds between people. For all these reasons, Vuong refers to their collective as a "monster."
Once again, the narrative spans a different chronology, this time ranging into the future. In the final chapter, Hai contemplates the nature of life beneath a starry sky. The stars allow the reader a glimpse into the characters' futures. Russia will successfully help his sister through rehab. Wayne will open a smokehouse in North Carolina. Maureen will get a mastectomy and move in with her brother in Ohio, finally retiring. Sony will live with his mother and work at a ravioli factory while studying to become a docent at a Civil War museum. BJ will manage the HomeMarket location at the airport while becoming an amateur wrestling tag team champion. And Grazina passes away seven months after leaving her Hubbard Street home. These revelations somewhat satisfy the need for closure, a theme explored throughout the book. However, the characters' futures serve more as points of continuation than as conclusions. Hai's future, on the other hand, remains ambiguous. It is unclear whether he overdoses and dies in the dumpster at the end of the novel, or if he symbolically throws himself away to begin anew.
