The Farm by Joy Williams

First published: 1981

Type of plot: Psychological

Time of work: Around 1980

Locale: New England

Principal Characters:

  • Sarah, an upper-middle-class suburban woman
  • Tommy, her husband
  • Genevieve Bettencourt, a mother whose teenage boy Sarah and Tommy accidentally run over

The Story

Sarah and Tommy are an affluent couple leading a comfortable life in suburban New England. On the face of it, nothing is wrong with their lives, but one shadow plagues their happiness: They both have a drinking problem. As Sarah and Tommy go to their third party on a certain night in August, Sarah recounts a story about a young child eaten by an alligator. Tommy does not seem to respond to the story, and Sarah begins to reflect on the troubled state of their marriage.

The party is one of many in the couple's customary routine of drinking and socializing, interspersed with name-dropping and boasts of European travel. After the party concludes, the couple go home. Sarah, who is driving, begins to feel the effects of her heavy alcohol consumption and starts to hallucinate. Her visions are brought to a sharp halt when she runs over a teenage boy standing in the middle of the road, killing him instantly.

The police exonerate the couple in the death of the boy, Steven Bettencourt. No charges are filed, and Sarah is not prosecuted or held legally accountable for the young man's death. Nevertheless, Sarah feels a severe sense of guilt and vows to give up drinking and orient her life in a new, more positive direction. This resolution, however, does not improve her emotional state. Indeed, Sarah feels disoriented by no longer drinking; it is as if her entire identity had previously depended on her alcoholism.

During the next three months, things seem to be returning to normal, but just as Sarah's sense of psychological solidity begins to be restored, her life receives a sudden and disagreeable jolt. Unannounced and unexpected, Genevieve Bettencourt, the mother of the boy Sarah ran over, comes to Sarah's door. She is weirdly amicable, showing no overt resentment. She and Sarah exchange information about their lives and families, in a manner at once intimate and coldly formal.

There is an unreal quality about the meeting. Genevieve reveals that Steven was hardly the perfect son, but still she displays a sense of deep mourning for him. Sarah apologizes to Genevieve, but Genevieve will not accept her apology. Sarah begins to realize that Genevieve's friendliness is a form of calculating revenge. Genevieve is determined not only to make Sarah feel guilty but to ruin her life. Genevieve's actions constitute harassment, even stalking; but they are also a form of retribution, and Sarah cannot help but feel a sympathy for Genevieve that is against her own best interests.

Tommy feels that Sarah is being harassed by Genevieve and wants his wife to stop admitting her to their house. The eerie presence of Genevieve in the couple's home is the subject of a long and increasingly nettlesome tug-of-war between husband and wife. Sarah persists with the acquaintance, noting that Genevieve seems to take a particular interest in their own daughter, Martha. In attempted atonement for her misdeed, Sarah offers to share Martha with Genevieve. Genevieve, though, continues to bring up more memories of her son, until Sarah feels that the intruder has taken over her life. Tommy wants to move the family away to a farm in the country, but Sarah realizes that she cannot escape the psychic burdens symbolized by Genevieve's presence in her life. For her, things can never be as they once were.