Babette Timeline and Summary

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• Babette realizes she's missed the yearly tradition of watching the family station wagons arrive at her husband's university. She scolds Jack for not reminding her, suggesting that her memory is bad.
• She goes into the kitchen, where her daughter Denise and stepdaughter Steffie criticize her for not eating the healthy food she buys at the supermarket.
• Babette goes to the Congregational church to teach classes on correct posture to a group of old folks. Jack comes to meet her when she's done, and they walk home together. They have sex in bed together, after an endless conversation about who should get more pleasure out of it. In the end, Babette decides to read from an erotic book while they have sex.
• At the supermarket, Babette's forgetfulness gets the best of her. Her three-year-old son Wilder has gotten out of the shopping cart without her noticing. She finds him after a brief scare.
• When she pops a piece of chewing gum into her mouth, Babette gets scolded by her daughter Denise. Babette argues that she needs to chew gum to stop smoking, but Denise says she shouldn't have to do either.
• One day, Wilder starts crying and no one can figure out why. Babette brings him to a couple of doctors, but they send her away. She is frightened at not knowing what's wrong. Suddenly, after hours and hours of crying, Wilder stops.
• On the day of the Airborne Toxic Event, Babette tells Jack to start showing his son Heinrich more encouragement and support, and not to force all of his worries onto the kid.
• When the toxic cloud starts moving toward them, Babette gets into the car with her family. She pops something into her mouth, but lies to her husband when he asks her what it is.
• After the Airborne Toxic Event, Babette hangs out in the kitchen while her kids are talking about chemical studies and corporations burying the truth of what happened to keep people ignorant. Babette asks them what ever happened to civics class in high school, what ever happened to the normal stuff, like learning how a bill passes through government.
• Jack asks Babette about the strange medication he found taped under the radiator cover. Babette denies remembering what the stuff is. When he presses her, she asks him to have sex as a distraction, and gets out of the conversation.
• Later, Jack presses her a second time about the drug, which is called Dylar. Babette admits that she's been using the drug to help numb her fear of death. She admits that her fear is so bad she actually sexually traded her body to a man named Mr. Gray so he'd give her some of the drug.
• Jack demands to know who Mr. Gray really is, but Babette won't tell him.
• After she tells Jack the truth about her medication, Jack tells her that he's been exposed to toxic chemicals and that the exposure will eventually kill him. Babette is crushed.
• Babette's father Vernon comes to visit the house. Babette doesn't realize that Vernon has given Jack a handgun, and that Jack plans on using it to kill the man named Mr. Gray.
• Jack keeps after her to tell him who Mr. Gray is, but she won't budge.
• At the end of the book, we hear that Babette likes to drive to a highway overpass with her husband and her son, Wilder, and look at the sky. Awwwww…