Small Great Things

The first section featuring the final point-of-view character, Kennedy McQuarrie, begins with the chaos of a household harboring a 4-year-old child and two working parents, with both Kennedy and her husband, Micah, working to get their daughter violet ready for preschool as she screams about a “fork and knife!”; this is originally misheard as “fuckin’ knife!” (71). Kennedy, who is a public defender, despite a Columbia Law degree that could have gotten her a high-paying corporate job, begins her day “negotiat[ing] about bras” with the warden of the New Haven prison (72). The underwire has been setting off the metal detectors when female defense attorneys visit, so they’d begun removing their bras in the restroom before entering, but now the warden won’t allow them in without bras, in order to “minimiz[e] risk” (72). Kennedy, who is in the public defender’s office because of her principles, invokes her friendship with an attorney at the ACLU to get the warden to back off.

After this meeting, Kennedy texts with Micah about what sort of ethnic food they should dine on that night, hoping for a date night, with Kennedy deciding on Indian. Then Kennedy goes to a spa to redeem a massage certificate from her mother, unable to relax and prompting the masseuse to tell Kennedy she’s never “had a client who needed a massage quite as much as” her, but also never “had a client who was so bad at getting a massage” (77).