Fit Company for Oneself

This post summarizes the chapters in Fit Company for Oneself. If you don’t like spoilers, don’t read it.

Paul, Line and Marty come home from school to find that Mother and Dad have gone to the hospital. Paul picks up Kristen next door and they make supper for themselves. Ellie, their married sister, calls. Marty is remembering the blackberry picking trip when they went in the ditch and she got lost. But Dad finally calls to say the new baby is a little girl named Hanna May. The next day they all go to the hospital to meet her.

Line bikes five miles out to the Berglund farm where the pigs are farrowing. Her friend David has offered that she help take care of one for a 4H project. Being present at the births feels sacred to Line, but she is desperate for experience, wants to be a foreign exchange student. Mother puts her foot down, however and Line must give up the idea. David who wants to farm and marry, realizes their dreams don’t match.

Marty is deeply thrilled by the girls basketball team which is rated second in the state. She goes to one exciting game, but when students go down to Des Moines for the championships, Marty and Line stay home. A snowstorm closes the school, but the game is televised and the whole family watches. Marty feels left out of the action at school, however, and has to find her own way to be happy.

Paul is terribly excited by the fact that Alan Shepherd is the first American in space. On Memorial Day, the family walks out to the nearby creek and has a “double picnic” for both lunch and dinner. They come home to find one of their neighbors has hanged himself and Dad goes over to help. Paul visits Mr. Sherwood, who tells him their neighbor had been gassed in World War I. Mother comforts Paul.

At the Minnesota lake, Paul hangs out in a little bog he thinks of as his own. He also goes into town with Dad and buys lumber to make a platform and dock down by the lake. Dad builds “with nature, not against it,” as he tells Paul. Line and Paul go out on the lake in the rowboat. Aunt Rose is very proud of the cabin and her family.

Line takes stock on New Year’s Eve. She is almost 18, worried about communism, nuclear war and her own lack of prospects. She can’t wait for college. Ellie and Bruce arrive, announcing they will have a baby, and would Line please come down and help them through the summer. Yes, of course! Line gets through the end of senior year playing the mother, an old battle-axe, in a 1920’s play.

Marty goes to the junior prom with Jim, and then to a drive-in movie, where she is surprised by the sweetness in her responding body. It makes it hard to talk to Jim, however. During the summer she reads and plays with Kristen and Hanna. She also wheedles an invitation to visit old Miss Larrabee, the governor’s daughter, and practices on the beautiful baby grand at the Larrabee mansion on the hill.

Line takes charge when Ellie is wan and listless, about to have her baby. A friend takes them to the hospital, but Bruce, Ellie’s husband, shows up before the baby is born. When Bruce again drives to Minneapolis to work and prepare for his family to join him, Line is busy with the baby. Arriving in Minneapolis, the family goes to a church which appears more diverse to Line than her own. Alone in the evenings, Line thinks about the fact that she finally has her own choices in front of her.

At school, Marty finds it difficult to talk to Jim. Her friend Barbara seems to have everything, except she loses the student council presidency. When Mother and Dad go up to close the cabin for the winter, Marty stays home from school to take care of Hanna. Hanna gets a high fever, however, and Marty carries her around for three days. Mother doesn’t thank Marty, and Jim doesn’t ask her to the homecoming dance.

At college, Line finds working in the dish room introduces her to interesting exchange students. She is experimenting with coffee and stays up late, reading The Odyssey. Her teachers’ notice excites Line, but the action around her points to the civil rights battles going on in the South. Even her art classes cannot compete.

On a winter walk with Foxy, Paul puts his foot down a hole and sprains his good ankle. He tries to walk home, but can’t get far. He sends Foxy to get Dad, who drags Paul home on a sled. That winter it is hard to get around, but when Paul sees the doctor, he finds that he is in good shape and needs no more surgeries. The family also stops to see Line at college and have pizza, an unusual treat.

That summer Marty and Paul keep house while Mother is in summer school to get her teaching credential. Marty tries photography and Paul plays guitar and learns the lyrics of the songs on Hootnanny. Marty is sad that the family is scattered. At an ice cream social, Marty meets David Berglund’s fiancé. And then, at the last summer band concert, her friends Jim and Rodney talk about where they will go to college.

At Wittenberg, Marty is invited to an honors banquet where The Stranger, by Camus, is discussed. She feels inadequate in Latin, but laps up the history and religion combined in her core courses. Her roommate is more interested in science. She thinks Marty is a chameleon, just reflecting the ideas around her. When Marty steps on one of the lenses of her glasses she must get along without them.

Dad becomes friends with an archer, and when hunting season starts Paul goes out with the men early in the morning. They watch a beautiful buck protecting his does. When Paul gets home from school, he finds Dad has killed the buck with his bow and arrows. He takes Paul to the meat locker to show him the head. When President Kennedy is killed, Paul finds himself equating the president and the beautiful buck.

At Christmas, Paul is thrilled to have Line and Marty home, at least briefly. But when an acquaintance requests Paul come and sing with his folk group, Paul goes. Dennis and the Dots practice for a talent show, Paul with his guitar being the third in the trio. They sing a couple of traditional songs which the audience loves. Paul finds he likes singing with this group also.

Line finds her new roommate, Mae, an exchange student from Spelman College, is miserable about leaving her boyfriend who is in the Movement. It’s a dangerous time in Atlanta. Line takes her to an International Relations Club meeting and introduces her to Henry, whom Line has ambivalent feelings about. Afterwards they spy on a sorority fashion show displaying wedding dresses.

The college campus during summer school feels empty and lonely to Marty, until a classmate, April, a dancer from the city, chooses her for a friend. Marty works at the library and enjoys her class in the contemporary novel. She and April spend the weekends hiking and reading. At the end of the summer they admit to each other that something has happened between them, though they may never see each other again.

At the lake cabin, Paul takes the canoe out in the early morning. When Ellie and Bruce come with their kids, he plays host, as Dad is doing pastoral duty in Iowa. When Dad and Marty turn up the next day, Paul happily steps back. He and Marty talk about their dreams for the future, but also take a boat out to the middle of the lake when the aurora borealis is strong one night.

At Spelman College in Atlanta, Line finds that the previous “freedom summer” had exhausted many of the civil rights workers, and that the rabble-rousing professors she had heard about were no longer there. Her previous roommate, Mae, welcomes Line, however and Line learns much about Southern manners and mores.

Marty attends an evening at Dr. Magnusson’s house, for a discussion of philosophy, but she is more taken with his wife and their European tastes. She is courted by Glen, a sweet pre-seminarian, and also makes a friend of Kate, who convinces her to slow down and do what is important. Glen invites Marty to a dance but without a nice dress and a pimple on her nose, Marty feels the evening is a failure.

Line let Marty know she was going down to Alabama to March for voting rights, but she did not sign out properly. In Selma, she meets Stephen, an organizer who tells her group where to go. Line spends her time at the hospital tent. When the march gets to Montgomery, Line and her friends are allowed to join. Stephen won’t leave Line’s side. They listen to the singing, and to Dr. Martin Luther King.

Paul is surprised on Saturday night when Line turns up! The family has been worried about her. Paul shows Line how Hanna sings folk songs when he pulls out his guitar. Line goes back to school, but that week the family celebrates a Seder. Dennis and the Dots, including Paul, practice for a dance, but they are graduating, getting drafted. That is the end of the Dots.

At summer school, Marty rooms with one of the Scandinavians who have come for a workshop, learning more about her own heritage. She babysits for the Magnussons and enjoys playing with Thea. She is studying the Romantic poets, but has trouble expressing herself. When April comes for a visit, Marty is intimidated by her beauty, but they picnic together as they used to.

Up at the lake for the summer, Paul goes exploring, finding a beaver pond back in the woods. He wishes he could stop time, or at least realize he was in the wilderness, where he wanted to be. He collects cattails and Mother makes pancakes, using their pollen. When Dad comes up, Paul convinces him to go deep into the woods, camping. While there, Paul says he doesn’t want to go to Wittenberg College.

Line has a job at a Lutheran Home for the Aged in Chicago for the summer. She likes working with and learning from her “old people.” But she also spends as much time as she dares with Stephen Cohen, who lives at the big communal SDS headquarters in the south of the city. They go to an SDS convention, at which Line is bored by the endless talk. She writes home, however, saying she will not go back to school this year, setting herself free.

Marty is uncertain what will happen once she graduates from college. She and her friend Kate are both free, and Marty finds inner freedom too when a friend in a philosophy class asks why Christ came to only one place in the world, only one people. Dr. Magnusson asks whether Marty would like to be an “au pair” for their family in the coming year at Oxford University. Marty would!

Stephen and Line come to Wittenberg for a teach-in about Vietnam and the draft. Mother and Dad bring the rest of the family up for a picnic to meet them. Few of them have met anyone Jewish before and Stephen is clearly important to Line. Marty and Paul have complex feelings about all of them being outward bound, but they are impressed with their gracious and welcoming parents.