Sonny Timeline and Summary

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• Sonny gets arrested for using and selling heroin, and after he's released from jail he moves in with the narrator and his family.
• The story moves backward in time at this point and we learn more about how Sonny got to his present situation.
• Sonny's father dies when Sonny is 15 and his mother dies just a couple years later. Since the narrator is in the military and has gone off to war, Sonny has little choice but to move in with Isabel (the narrator's wife) and her family. He'd rather join the army and then be free to pursue his music, but his brother finally convinces him that living with Isabel is the best thing for him.
• One good thing about living with Isabel's family is that they have a piano, which Sonny plays as much as he possibly can. But he also stops going to school, which Isabel's mother confronts him about, blurting out that he's ungrateful. This hurts him so much that he runs away, disappears for a while, then joins the navy. The next time anyone hears from him, he's in Greece.
• Once he returns, he starts hanging around with musicians and playing in clubs. He also starts doing drugs. After a heated argument, he and the narrator don't talk for years until the narrator contacts him when his daughter dies.
• The story jumps back ahead to the point when Sonny has moved in with the narrator and his family. One afternoon when they're alone in the apartment they get into a horrible argument in which they both finally express their pent-up anger. At the end of the argument, Sonny invites his brother to come hear him play piano at a club that night.
• That evening Sonny and the narrator go to the club and Sonny gets ready to play for the first time in a long time. At first he's really nervous and uncomfortable, and his playing shows it. But he slowly starts to feel comfortable again, and then his playing is remarkable. He sort of loses himself in the music and seems to be his old self again (at least as a musician).