English 21
Blount
Without a Net Reading Guide
Chapter 5
Chapter Vocabulary Words
emboldened
emerging
enticing
inflate
impression
optimistic
eloquent
vehemently
Summary
Michelle Kennedy describes leaving her husband and her journey to a town 150 miles away.
She describes the scenery as well as her feelings about her husband. When she arrives in the
new town, she takes her children to a small beach to play. Michelle then finds a motel for the
night. While the kids are sleeping, she searches the classified ads for jobs. The next day she
takes her children with her to apply for a job. She is hired on the spot. However, she is faced
with the fact that she cannot afford to stay at the motel until she finds a place to live. With
some time on her hands before the start of her new job, Michelle drives to her parents’ home.
While they are initially welcomed with enthusiasm, she knows they are quickly wearing out
their welcome and they cannot stay. Although she has several opportunities to tell her parents
the truth about her situation and ask for her, she doesn’t. Instead, she covers it up and even
lies. Michelle and the kids only stay a week before heading back to Maine.
Key Passages
“I spent close to a hundred dollars on gas, food, and a motel on our drive down Route 1” (55).
“My own independence day became more and more enticing” (5).
“Forty dollars a night seems cheap if you’re only staying for one night. Once you start doing the
math, though, $40 a night is $280 a week and thus $1,120 a month – hardly worthwhile for a
bathroom, a dorm refrigerator, a hot plate and two beds” (59).
“. . . as we sit around the dinner table, and I listen to my sisters relate their high school stories
and ask my dad for money so they can go out, I feel the need to inflate my circumstances and
sound successful in my new endeavor” (60).
“In retrospect, this was the time to ask for help . . . But this is not me. I am terrible at asking for
anything and I can feel years of disappointment weighing me down” (60).
“The fact is that I was tired of having to ask for their help. I was tired of admitting that maybe
my inspired decisions at the age of eighteen were the wrong ones. I just wanted to do it by
myself. I wanted to prove to them, to the world, and to myself that I didn’t need my parents, or
a husband, to bail me out all of the time. I was also tired of feeling like a fuck up” (62).
“Staying here would be admitting defeat and I am nothing but optimistic right now. Every night
I talk vehemently about our future – trying to convince both them and myself . . . that I have
finally gotten my life together” (63).
Questions
1. What is the name of the town where Michelle and the kids end up after leaving Tom?
2. What is the name of the restaurant where she is hired?
3. What is the name of the drink her children are given at the restaurant?
4. What happens when the family is gathered around the dinner table and she listens to
her younger sisters talk?
5. Why doesn’t she ask her parents for help?
Notes
 All actions have consequences, good and bad.
 Decisions made without any forethought can cost you or come back to haunt you years
later.
Chapter 6
Chapter Vocabulary Words
contemplate
encounter
looming
substantial
receptive
quaint
surging
vigilance
prospect
Summary
A few days before she is to start her new job, Michelle leaves her parents’ home and drives
back to her new town. Because she can’t afford to stay at the motel, she decides she and the
children will “campout” until she has enough saved for an apartment. Although she spots a
couple of campgrounds, she parks her car at the end of a street and sets up camp at a little
beach. Michelle also faces two other problems – childcare and obtaining a uniform for work.
She finds a solution to both dilemmas, but she is still anxious about the children.
Key Passages
“Between every drink I make and every wipe of the bar, I am thinking: “What kind of mother
would let her kids sleep in the car?” “What kind of mother would tend bar for a living?” “What
kind of mother would take her kids from their father and think this is a better life?” (73).
Questions
1. True or False: Before she left her parents’ house, Michelle was given enough food to
last a week.
2. How did she get her work uniform?
3. Where were the children on the opening night of her new job?
Notes
Chapter 7
Chapter Vocabulary Words
proposition
consequence
scrounging
aversion
tedious
incessant(ly)
tenuous
Summary
Time has passed and what Michelle thought was going to be a temporary thing has turned into
a routine. She has settled into a routine where she and the kids are out and about during the
day, and her co-workers help out with the kids in the evenings while she works. However, living
life in a car is taking a toll on her. Although she has managed to save enough money for the
security deposit and first month’s rent on a studio or 1 bedroom apartment, she can’t seem to
find a place to live.
Key Passages
“I yell at God in my head. But what’s he going to do? . . . So I yell at my ex-husband instead . . . I
yell because it’s the only thing I can do, because I feel powerless. I want someone else to be
responsible for this mess I am in” (79).
“I have also become religious about saving money. It’s something I was never good at before,
but I have suddenly become incredibly responsible about this, even though everything else I am
doing seems incredibly irresponsible” (80).
“Wandering through the store, I decide that it’s more expensive to be poor than to be rich.
Because we don’t have basic things like a refrigerator, I can’t buy concentrated juice for a dollar
and make a pitcher to last a couple of days. Instead, I have to buy individual servings at a dollar
apiece. The children have developed a taste for water” (88).
Questions
1. True or False: The children are at a co-worker’s house while Michelle is working.
2. Why can’t she find a place to live?
3. Who approaches her about sleeping at the beach?
4. Where does she store her family’s belongings?
Notes
Chapter 8
Chapter Vocabulary Words
splurge
perpetual
frugality
succumb
consistent(ly)
dingy
generic
seething
meager
impromptu
permeate(s)
cynical
audacity
Summary
It is now the end of June and Michelle has had it with living in her car. She is spending money
that she could be saving by sleeping at campgrounds, by eating out because she doesn’t have a
refrigerator to store food, especially perishable food, and by not having a place to cook. She
decides to apply for food stamps but is denied. Frustrated and upset, she walks out and takes
the kids to library. While there, she meets a woman with a young child and they strike up a
conversation. By the end of their time at the library, the woman has invited Michelle and her
children to stop by her home. Michelle and the kids go back to the campground where she
makes dinner over a campfire. Afterwards, they clean up and go to sleep. The next day, they
run errands before going to visit the woman and her son. While she is running errands,
Michelle runs into a co-worker and they end up flirting with each other.
Key Passages
“I am still learning how to budget . . .” (91).
“I’m actually quite impressed with my frugality skills. Years of poverty have made me the
queen of shopping” (91).
“I cheerfully walk into the Job Center – doing my best to put on an air of the kind of person who
is “just down on my luck – not a perpetual welfare case.” I do not want to be associated with
the really poor. I am not really poor. I just don’t have a house” (93).
“I am determined that no matter how poor we are, we will never succumb to the idea of being
poor. If we give into that, then there is no turning it around from there” (94).
Questions
1. Where does she go to seek assistance?
2. Why is Michelle denied food stamps?
3. What is the name of the woman who denies them assistance?
4. What are the names of the woman and child they meet in the library?
5. What does the woman’s husband do for a living?
6. True or False: The woman thinks Michelle is a single parent because she got a divorce.
7. What does Michelle make for dinner at the campground, the day she is denied food
stamps?
8. What is the name of the co-worker she flirts with?
Notes
“boredom” appears again on page 98
Chapter 9
Chapter Vocabulary Words
gleam(ing)
transient
spacious
abating
conscience
dilapidated
relinquish
sanction(ed)
foliage
flounder(ing)
dire
flaunt
Summary
Michelle and the kids go to visit the woman and child from the library. Michelle describes the
woman’s home, her child’s appearance and what she imagines life to be like in that house-hold.
The woman agrees to babysit and they agree on a rate. The woman encourages Michelle to let
the kids stay at her home that night and Michelle agrees. The kids are happy with the idea and
Michelle is “grateful that they will sleep in a real house” (109) that night. Michelle goes to
work and in between groups of customers, she socializes with her co-workers. She then
decides to call her mother to ask for money to help her get an apartment. However, her
mother cannot give her any money. When Michelle asks for help with the kids and mentions
staying with her parents and commuting to work, her mother sighs and tells her, “They are your
responsibility” (116). Feeling desperate and disappointed, she goes back into the restaurant
where a co-worker listens and gives her a shoulder to cry on.
Key Passages
“I want to be Diane when I grow up” (105).
“I don’t want to relinquish my pride . . . Not even for money” (107).
“Fear. My life has become about fear. Feeling it. Living it” (109).
“My life has become a tunnel and I am focused on getting through it, but I am afraid of what I
will find on the other side” (110).
“My desire to remain silent – and proud – is not conducive to begging. I hate asking for money.
I just hate it. And I hate confrontation. I hate having to explain myself, and I don’t want to do it
. . . again” (117).
Questions
1. “What commercial does the woman’s child “looks like he just stepped out” of?
2. What is the name of the man who is a bar regular?
3. What is the name of the co-worker who listens to Michelle?
Notes
Chapter 10
Chapter Vocabulary Words
Patron
fantasizing
swoon
enhanced
mahogany
surge
jovial
wallow(ing)
*cattiwampus*
Summary
The restaurant closes and Michelle has a chance, for the first time, to hang out with her coworkers after work. They have drinks and play games. Michelle then leaves. She goes back to
the little beach/bay area where she and the kids have slept. She paces the beach, frustrated
with her life, yelling at God and throwing rocks into the water. To her surprise a co-worker
walks up to her. The coworker and Michelle talk, mostly about his personal life, and then he
leaves. Now alone, she tries to sleep but can’t. Feeling down about her situation, she thinks
about dying. She ends up falling asleep for a couple of hours before going to Diane’s to pick up
the kids. When she wakes up, it is her birthday. She and the kids have a late lunch at the
restaurant. She receives a package from her parents. She ends up having an impromptu party
at the restaurant and before the night is over, a co-worker says something to her that leaves
her stunned.
Key Passages
“It’s odd. My life is in a shambles, and yet I am having some of the most fun I have ever had in
my life” (123).
“I am acutely aware that this time in my life is excruciatingly important, but yet there is a part
of me that wonders why it’s necessary to go through it at all” (123).
“I yell at God for allowing this to happen to innocent children. How can you subject them to
such an awful life, and such an awful mother?” (125).
“Each rock represents a person I blame or a judgment I made that I hate” (125).
“It’s weird to think about the choices you make that bring you to your life as it is. Every choice
bringing you down a different path. Or is it fate?” (129).
“It’s amazing how when I was a kid a hundred dollars would have seemed like a million. How
quickly it goes now” (131).
Questions
1. What games do they play?
2. Who is the co-worker who walks up to her as she is throwing rocks into the water?
a. Who is with him and what is his name?
3. What does she do for the kids on her birthday?
4. What was in the package from her parents?
5. Who makes her a birthday cake?
6. What does the co-worker tell her that leaves her stunned?
Notes