This Is Where I Leave You

Judd has a recurring dream in which he has a prosthesis on one leg. He wakes up horrified and wishing his real life were a dream he could wake up from into something better.

Judd sings in the bathroom to cover the sound of Phillip and Tracy having sex upstairs, then emerges to find his mother. She’s wearing a skimpy robe, and Judd is embarrassed by her breast implants. She talks frankly about Phillip and Tracy, says that Alice is ovulating, and discusses her sex life with Judd’s father, which embarrasses Judd further. Judd thinks, “Underneath those ridiculous breasts and the psychobabble, is a real mother, hurting for her child, and […] her pain fills me with a quiet, relentless rage” (86). Judd has always been uncomfortable with his mother’s openness and spent his childhood lying to her.

Judd’s shower is cold. His father, an electrician, insisted on wiring and updating their house himself to avoid meeting city codes, so the wiring is a patchwork of overburdened lines, and the power trips while Judd is in the bathroom. He finds Alice standing before the fuse box, and she teases him about being naked.

As they sit shiva, Wendy tells the story of the day she got her period and their dad fell off the roof and ended up in the hospital.