The Corrections Chapter 5 Summary

The Generator

• Robin Passafaro is a native Philadelphian, descended from a long line of die-hard Teamsters.
• Robin's father, Nick, is the one exception to this rule. He never got involved with the family business and instead became a "committed Socialist" (5.4).
• Nick married a woman named Colleen and adopted a year-old boy named Billy. Colleen got pregnant with Robin a few months later, and she wound up being the eldest of their three biological daughters.
• Billy tortures Robin growing up, but Nick never disciplines his unruly son. That is, until Billy gets arrested for multiple felonies and Colleen kicks him out of the house.
• After a brief stint with Teamster-loving Uncle Jimmy, Billy ends up squatting with the local radical leftist community.
• Billy continues to get arrested (sometimes for political reasons, sometimes not) until he finally ends up in the state pen.
• Billy is released on parole "the year before Denise met Robin" (5.10), but his freedom proves to be short-lived.
• The city of Philadelphia has just reached an agreement with the W— Corporation to provide computers for the city's classrooms. Billy attends the ribbon-cutting ceremony with his posse to protest the deal.
• Billy has bigger plans, however. He approaches the stage with a wooden board and swings "the two-by-four like a baseball bat" (5.12), breaking the skull of Rich Flamburg, the vice president of the W— Corporation.
• Billy "demolished Flamburg's nose, jaw, collarbone, and most of his teeth" (5.12).
• Despite the savagery of Billy's crime, Nick supports his son's politically-based defense. Robin, on the other hand, visits Flamburg and his family to apologize for Billy's actions.
• She's not doing this out of goodwill, however; she feels guilty about the attack. Robin's husband, Brian Callahan, had recently sold a piece of software to the W— Corporation for almost twenty million dollars.
• Robin was excited when Brian told her about the money, but less so when he suggested moving to someplace more becoming, in his eyes, to their newfound wealth. He agrees to stay in Philly… at least for now. Then, just two days later, Billy crashes the W— Corporation's ribbon-cutting ceremony in his own twisted style.
• After the attack, Robin asks Nick if he told Billy about their deal with the W— Corporation, and his shifty answers make her suspect that he did.
• Robin quits her job and founds an urban farm in a low-income neighborhood. Brian, in his desire to transform Philly into the upscale metropolis of his dreams, decides to open a restaurant.
• The first item on his agenda is to call up his favorite chef from his favorite restaurant in town. That chef is Denise.
• We flash back to the summer after Denise graduated high school, when Alfred got her a temp job in the Signal Department at Midland Pacific.
• Denise is met with skepticism from her coworkers, but her hard work and dedication eventually earn her their respect. Everyone, that is, except Don Armour—a.k.a. "the only man in Signals who seemed not to love Denise" (5.76).
• One day, however, she goes to the bathroom and overhears Don Armour talking in code to another worker. It sounds like he's talking about her.
• A strange mood takes hold of Midland Pacific that summer as rumors of the Wroths' purchase reaches the workers.
• Alfred and Enid decide to go out of town one weekend. Enid hopes that Denise will see Kenny Kraikmeyer, a "very polite" (5.180) young man who's been showing interest in her, but Denise is having none of it.
• After dinner, Denise heads over her former drama teacher Henry Dusinberre's house. He's out of town in New Orleans and asked Denise to care for his home while he's gone.
• Denise wishes "she felt like dating someone, but the boys she respected [...] didn't move her romantically" (5.187).
• The next day, Don Armour sidles over to her while she eats alone outside. He's laying his best game on her—and what's weirder is that Denise is into it.
• Of course, Denise doesn't realize—even though we do—that Don Armour has been pursuing her using pick-up techniques he read about in a magazine.
• Denise heads back to work but it's not too long until Don Armour starts creeping again. Finally, Denise asks him to dinner and he says that he'll think about. He comes back a few minutes later and asks her on a date. Yeah, we know—guys are odd.
• They end up in a low-rent diner that night, and after dinner, they head over to Henry Dusinberre's house, although Don refuses to get out of the car.
• Henry is back from New Orleans and he looks sickly. He tells Denise that he's "quite without blood cells" (5.251), which seems to imply that he has HIV.
• Denise and Don Armour head back to the Lambert home. They have sex and, although Denise enjoys the experience initially, it quickly becomes unpleasant. She falls asleep before Don leaves the house.
• Even though Don Armour "wasn't what she wanted" (5.287), Denise feels obligated to continue their sexual relationship.
• Meanwhile, Henry is getting worse by the day. The following Sunday is the last time she ever sees him.
• Midland Pacific is purchased by the Wroths near the end of the summer. Alfred tells her how proud he is, but Denise, of course, has a guilty conscience.
• Denise moves to Philadelphia for college, where she rooms with Julia Vrais. Although college doesn't click with Denise, she quickly starts a passionate love affair with the restaurant business.
• Denise drops out of school and marries Emile Berger. Things go well at first, but Denise ends up leaving the restaurant that they work at together in an effort to preserve their marriage.
• It's there that Denise meets Becky Hemerling. Although Becky's hyper-liberal sensibility irks her to her core, Denise finds herself having (surprisingly satisfying) sex dreams about Becky. Talk about complicating things, huh?
• With that, she tells Emile that she's gay (even if she isn't entirely convinced herself) and they divorce; Denise and Becky start dating soon after.
• After the relationship doesn't work out, however, Denise decides "in reaction to Becky, that she wasn't a lesbian after all" (5.324).
• We're finally brought back to the present—Brian Callahan has just picked Denise up to show her the location he chose for the restaurant.
• Brian is putting on some moves. He blindfolds Denise and plays music carefully selected to please her. Although she isn't very attracted to him, she's "vicariously excited" (5.331) by his attention.
• The car stops and Brian leads Denise down a rocky road until he stops and removes the blindfold. Denise has mixed feelings about what she sees.
• They're standing in front of an old "decommissioned [...] dirty coal power plant" (5.342) formerly owned by the Philadelphia Electric Company; fittingly, he's decided to name the restaurant The Generator.
• Denise has a laundry list of problems with the location but Brian throws out a solution for each one. He also suggests that he join her on a tasting trip of Europe so they can create a menu.
• Denise sees the subtext here so she suggests meeting Brian's family. He tells Denise to come to their place in Cape May, New Jersey the following weekend.
• That weekend, Denise meets Robin Passafaro and their young daughters, Sinéad and Erin. Denise is surprised by Robin's "squeaky and oddly formal" (5.366) demeanor and dislikes her immediately.
• After Robin changes into a swimsuit, Denise's bad vibes magically transform into attraction. So yeah… definitely not a lesbian… Sure, Denise.
• Denise goes to make dinner, but realizes that Robin has already cooked. Denise confronts Brian and apologizes to Robin, but Robin doesn't seem to care.
• The following night, Denise calls Enid "as she did every Sunday" (5.430). Enid complains about Alfred and Denise tells her mom about her upcoming trip to Europe.
• Denise is focusing on the flavors of her Germanic-inspired youth, which pleases Enid to no end. That pretty much means that there's going to be a ton of sauerkraut. Bottom's up.
• Unfortunately, Europe ends up being pretty boring. For example, Denise's "idea of Austria was way more vivid than Austria itself" (5.439).
• While in the country, she visits Cindy Meisner (daughter of Chuck) and her Austrian husband, Klaus. Denise doesn't like anything about them—their apartment is tacky, they're rude to their hired help, and they have bad wine. Some things simply cannot be excused—especially bad wine.
• Denise makes her way to Paris, where she finally meets up with Brian. Brian's family isn't with him—even though he explicitly told Denise that they would be.
• It turns out that it was Robin who made the decision not to come to Europe because "it's the first zucchini harvest at the Garden Project" (5.474).
• Denise is even more surprised when Brian doesn't make any advances. Well actually he doesn't make any advances for a whopping ten days, after which he finally "pulled her into his room and kissed her" (5.484).
• Clothes start flying off and it looks like it's about to go down, but something stops Denise—she can't stop thinking about Robin.
• Denise flies back home a few days later. When she returns, The Generator is almost completely built.
• Denise calls Brian's house one night and Robin answers. Out of nowhere, Denise asks Robin if she can visit the Garden Project and Robin agrees in her typical apathetic manner.
• Denise hits up garden that Saturday. Robin is there alone. There's tension between the two (as usual) until Denise tells Robin that she "doesn't sleep with men anymore" (5.561), which sends Robin into a gleeful laughing fit.
• Robin's demeanor toward Denise instantly changes, so Denise invites her over for dinner.
• Denise is embarrassed about the state of her bachelorette pad but Robin loves it. They eat dinner, which ends with Robin wearing Denise's coat "like a letter jacket on a ball-player's girlfriend" (5.610).
• After that, Denise spends more and more time with Robin and her kids. As her attraction grows (not to mention her love for Robin's daughters), Denise starts to plot out a potential affair.
• At the same time, Brian hires Rob Zito, a friend of Denise's, to oversee work on the Generator. Brian has lost interest in the restaurant, instead choosing to spend his time with an artsy movie director named Jerry Schwartz.
• Denise had convinced herself that Robin and Brian "had no sex life anymore" (5.631) but that illusion is shattered when she sees them making out on New Year's Eve (5.631). She leaves the house in a huff and doesn't contact Robin for over a week.
• Her self-imposed exile ends when Robin calls Denise in a rage. She tells Denise that Brian is funding a movie from Schwartz, heavily inspired by Billy's story—and with that, Denise officially decides to seduce Robin.
• She thinks that she has it on lock when Brian leaves for five-day trip, but she ends up striking out despite some heavy flirtation.
• Denise goes back to St. Jude for Easter. She ignores Robin on her return, instead focusing all of her energy on the Generator.
• But now Robin is the one doing the seduction. It doesn't take much longer for the two women to finally get together.
• The Generator officially opens for business, but things are disappointing at first and Denise is devastated when a food reviewer only writes "seven [paragraphs] about her food" (5.683). The nerve.
• Meanwhile, Robin and Denise's relationship grows more passionate by the day. They see each other constantly, whether to talk about Robin's feelings or, er, do things other than talking.
• This is the first time in Denise's life that she's been in love or had a fulfilling sex life. She gets sloppy at work and she and Robin start "taking stupid chances" (5.689) when Brian is around.
• After one particularly close call, Denise goes to the Generator and finds a ton of work waiting for her.
• Denise doesn't see Robin for a few weeks; when Denise finally shows up to Robin's house unannounced, she finds a used condom in Robin's bedroom and leaves in a huff.
• Robin shows up at the Generator the next day and breaks up with Denise. This saddens Denise, but her mood is lifted by a glowing review from the New York Times—the restaurant, at least, is getting some buzz.
• One night, Denise is sitting on the roof of the Generator with Brian and his fancy-pants friends. Someone tries to be a tough guy by putting a cigarette out on his tongue, but Denise one-ups him by putting one out behind her ear. Which, you know, hurts a lot more.
• Chronologically, this brings up back to the opening of Chapter 2. A few weeks later Denise goes to New York to "bail out her feckless brother and entertain her parents" (5.772).
• Denise notices a change in herself as she watches her parents board the Gunnar Myrdal. She finds herself feeling more sympathetic towards Enid and more concerned about her father's mental state.
• Denise goes to Axon Corporation seminar with Gary soon after.
• When she gets home, Brian invites her to an A-List party. It's a pretty lame crowd, but they're all wealthy and sophisticated, and that must count for something, right?
• Denise ends up getting drunk and sleeping with Brian. What's worse, though, is that Denise is awoken in the morning by pounding on the door—and it's Robin, begging to come inside. Denise manages to shoo her away.
• She gets a phone call from Gary moments later, who tells her about Alfred's fall. He survived and is on his way to the hospital.
• Denise is forced to hang up the phone after Robin storms back inside. She saw Brian's car across the street and is furious.
• The married couple is now arguing loudly upstairs. Robin is the first to come down and storm out the front door; Brian follows soon after, firing Denise on his way out.
• Next, we're shown an email exchange between Denise and Chip. Hilariously, Denise's Internet provider is "cheapnet" (5.848).
• Denise updates Chip on what's been happening and tries to convince him to come home for Christmas. Chip ignores her requests and says that everything is great, but his emails get increasingly ominous as time goes on; then he stops responding altogether
• Denise sends email after email and even blurts out the truth about her firing—yet there's still no response.
• Chip has been busy creating fake websites to swindle rich investors out of their money. He and Gitanas build a Kickstarter-style website that offers absurd rewards like "no-hassle adoptions of Lithuanian girl babies" (5.915). What's even more absurd is that it works.
• Chip loves his work. He loves feeling rich, and he loves hanging out with Gitanas, to whom Chip was "less like a sibling [...] than like his girlfriend" (5.933).
• In the end, Chip decides to return to the States only after he has the $20,500 that he owes Denise.
• That's when the snot really hits the fan. The Lithuanian economy starts collapsing, as Gitanas's economic initiative does little but line his own pockets. Meanwhile, former warlords are rising up to get a piece of the pie—and they're not taking no for an answer.
• The most intimidating of these warlords is Lichenkev, an "ethnic Russian" who made his living in heroin and ecstasy (5.944).
• Although Gitanas is crafty, he's no ruthless crime-lord; his youth was spent struggling against the Soviet occupiers and he actually started his free-market push with good intentions.
• Lichenkev sabotages the cell network that Gitanas operates. The people rise up against Gitanas, which allows Lichenkev to take control of the Lithuanian parliament. The Lithuanian president refuses to ratify these election results, but can you guess where that will end up?
• Chip wakes up the following morning to find that all but two bodyguards (the only two who happen to be related to Gitanas) have left and that they're currently surrounded by a mob of angry Lithuanians.
• Gitanas gives Chip an envelope of cash and tells him to go back to New York. Chip reluctantly accepts the money and hops in the car. After all, it's almost Christmas…
• Chip counts the money in the airport bathroom: $29,250. Although it's more than what he needs, the sheer amount somehow "made him afraid" (5.1030), so he hides the money in different spots about his person like a nervous tourist.
• Chip calls Enid while waiting in line and tells her that he's coming home for Christmas.
• Suddenly, a tank pulls up on the runway and the lights go dead.