- Esther tells Suzy that Deborah is in a convalescent home.
- Esther tells her parents that Deborah is in a rest home, but they see through the deception.
- Esther's dad, "Pop," takes the opportunity to insult Esther by saying nothing's wrong with Deborah's brains.
- Esther asks her parents to be supportive of the decision to put Deborah in the mental hospital, and she gets support from her brother and sister, who convince Esther's parents that Deb needed the treatment.
- Jacob has trouble dealing with the decision to send Deb away. His brain says it was the right thing to do, but his heart has trouble with it.
- Jacob and Esther continue to have problems fully communicating their true thoughts and feelings to each other about the hospital decision.
- The hospital sends a letter with updates on Deb's progress, saying that she's made a "good adjustment" after being there for a month (4.5).
- Esther starts to question how she and Jacob may have played a part in their daughter's illness.
- Jacob doesn't analyze things the way Esther does. He just thinks he fed Deborah and clothed her, so what's her problem?
- Esther remembers that Jacob had a hard childhood, during which he was cold and hungry. He immigrated to the U.S. from Poland in 1913, so he can only look at Deborah and think, Why is she complaining?
- Jacob thinks providing should have been enough.
- Esther writes to the hospital to ask when they can visit Deborah.
- Jacob still hopes that they'll say hospitalizing Deborah was a mistake and that she's not sick. He even argues with his father-in-law about this.
- Esther instead wants answers about why Deborah is sick—and about whether and how she and Jacob might have contributed to it.
- After a few months, everyone in the family enjoys some peace without Deborah around. Esther realizes there are moments of calm and happiness. Jacob (even though he denies it as it happens) realizes he'd been walking on eggshells with Deb around. And Suzy begins to "come into her own" (4.15).
- Suzy has friends over one night. They all stay for dinner, and Jacob and Esther enjoy uproarious laughter. Afterward, they can't believe they haven't laughed that hard in years.
- Esther tries unsuccessfully to help Jacob accept that Deborah wasn't just unhappy, she was sick—but Jacob can't accept it.
- Dr. Fried tells Deborah her parents want to come visit.
- Deborah imagines an iron partition separating her from the doctor. It makes it hard to hear and see the doctor. In Deborah's world the partition has a lock on it.
- The doctor calls Deborah out on the way she isolates herself and uses avoidance techniques like the gate—it came down as soon as the doctor mentioned parents. She tells Deborah to unlock it and give her an answer about parents visiting.
- Deborah decides that only her mom should come. She's afraid that her dad might freak out to see the way she really is, and the way the hospital is. She doesn't want him to drag her away from the hospital, because she knows it's good for her to be there.
- Deborah then goes with Anterrabae, Yr's Falling God, into the Pit. The Pit is a dark and scary place where there are only horrible sounds from the real world and Yr.
- Deborah remembers being in The Pit before and coming out of it. Coming out is scarier than being in it. When she was a kid, she came out of The Pit during school and could barely remember English. Scary stuff.
- Esther gets Deborah's letter and tries to shield Jacob from its actual wording of the letter, which states that Deborah "will not see Mr. Blau" (4.34). Esther tries to put it more nicely, but Jacob takes the letter from her and reads it for himself. He gets upset. He insists on driving up there anyway and just staying outside in case Deborah changes her mind about seeing him. Talk about stubborn.
- Esther goes upstairs to put the letter away and overhears Suzy talking on the phone with a friend.
- Suzy talks about how her sister is away and about how the family gets monthly progress reports. Then Suzy tells her friend that she can't come over if the next report they get is bad. This makes Esther angry, and she thinks "Deborah! Deborah—what has she done to us all!" (4.45).