How It All Goes Down
"I get the willies when I see closed doors," Bob Slocum confesses in the book's first line, and it's our first introduction to this dude's wacky perspective. Right off the bat, we learn more than we want to know about this guy. He tells us all about how he walked in on his brother losing his virginity to Billy Foster's skinny kid sister, how his dad died when he was really young, and how he's afraid of opening a pantry door and finding a mouse.
Hey, sometimes it's the little things that get to you.
Once we peel away all of the backstories and vignettes Slocum so graciously provides us with, we discover a rather simple storyline. At his corporate office in the city (likely Manhattan), Slocum is being considered for promotion to a new job, which means he'll take the job of someone else at the office. When he goes back to his Connecticut home that night and tells his wife and kid about it, they aren't too thrilled about the idea.
A little bit of time passes, Slocum gets the job, and he does really well in his new role.
That plotline doesn't make for much of a story, so Slocum sprinkles it with other stuff from his past in order to build suspense and keep us guessing exactly which event is the one that actually happened to him. You know, the "something" from the title.
Don't worry, we'll get there.
Slocum takes us back to his very first job as a seventeen-year-old file clerk at an auto insurance agency. He spends most of his time in these memories talking about his twenty-one-year-old crush Virginia, regretting to this day that he was never able to get it on with her, though they did get to first base. Slocum learns later on that Virginia killed herself a few years after he left the company, likely because she was single and depressed.
Yikes.
Slocum shares other memories. We learn how he met his wife (he was really after her sister) and about how much nicer his kids were when they were little. He laments over what happened to Derek, his son, who will forever only have the mental capacity of a toddler, and he worries what will happen to Derek if he and his wife decide they no longer want to take care of him. At one point, Slocum leads us to believe that he has to do something about Derek, and for some reason we think he means murder. This, of course, never happens, but there is a sudden and tragic death that occurs.
Spoiler alert.
Right before his promotion, Slocum witnesses a horrific scene: his other son, the one he likes, has been struck by a car. When Slocum gets to his son, he sees blood spewing from the boy's face, and Slocum makes a quick decision to end the boy's suffering by hugging him so tightly that he dies. At the hospital, the doctors conclude that his son would have survived his injuries, but he died instead by asphyxiation. "Don't tell my wife," Slocum responds.
Whoa.
So that's what happened to Slocum. Though minor in the book's timeline of events, it is significant in its effect on Slocum.
And yet life goes on, even a little more smoothly than before. Slocum ascends his new position in the company with grace, and everyone takes note of his effective leadership style. He and his wife discover a kind of mutual happiness, and the Slocum daughter even shapes up and decides she wants to go to college. Slocum's routine picks up again, and the loss of his son is only felt periodically.
Now that's the stuff to give us goosebumps.