“Mrs. Pederson? Mother? He knocked but no one answered.”(Oates,173) Jesse Pederson was adopted into a family of secrets. Ones that always seemed to lie behind a locked door, that Mary Pederson had closed on him. The Pederson’s on the outside seem to have everything that they could possibly need. Jesse in the beginning is welcomed with open arms by Mrs. Pederson. He truly liked to spend time with her and was happy to do anything to make her happy, unlike her other children. Jesse was the one person in the Pederson household that cared about Mrs. Pederson’s feelings. Mrs. Pederson took advantage of Jesse’s eagerness to please her, and manipulated him so that she could make an escape, that would result in the death of Jesse Pederson.
One of the family’s biggest …show more content…
She kept her secret hidden from everyone until one day when Jesse came home and found that she had locked herself into the bathroom after having disappeared for most of the afternoon. Jesse was the one who came to her rescue and found her lying naked on the bathroom floor next to empty liquor bottles. “Jesse felt as if a veil had been ripped away from her face and from his own, that they were starting at each other openly, confronting one of the terrible secrets of the world” (Oates,151) After that incident Jesse started to spend more time away from home and seemed to distance himself from Mrs. Pederson. She on the other had seemed to latch herself on to Jesse knowing he was too kind to really every say no to her. One afternoon, she once again seemed to manipulate Jesse into taking her with him to buffalo. Once in the car she told Jesse she was going to leave her husband that day. But of course she had never been on her own and asked Jesse if he would help her. “ You’ll help me, won’t you, Jesse. She touched his arm. He flinched. Otherwise I will go crazy, I will die. I will have to take my own Life.” (Oates, 157) Mrs. Pederson always knew just what to say to Jesse to get him to do