When the World Tips Over

Cassidy snoops into her father’s boxes and finds posters, pictures, reviews of The Blue Spoonful, and a newspaper clipping about the disappearance of Theo Fall, with a picture of his sons. She was initially upset to think Wynton might be her brother but now is convinced they’re not related. She wonders how her father could have left the family while their mother was pregnant. She reads a journal left by Maria Guerrero and learns the story of Alonso Fall and the Cain and Abel curse on the brothers. Cassidy thinks she knows why Theo left and says the fourth betrayal was Wynton’s.

Bernadette writes of The Day It Happened. She feared she was in love with Clive and Theo both, and she thinks, “there must’ve been two of me back then” (450). A week before Theo went to a bluegrass festival in San Diego, she slept with Clive. A month later, she was pregnant and engaged to Theo.

Bernadette told Wynton the truth but said that Clive didn’t know because she lied about the DNA results. Wynton remembers how, after swinging with Miles, he went inside the house and saw his mother in bed with Clive. When his father was ill years later with pneumonia, Wynton whispered the secret in his ear, and that was when his father’s heart stopped. Wynton realized that he and Clive were not magical like Miles and Dizzy, and he began to hate Miles. Learning that Clive and Theo were not related stopped his heart because he doesn’t share one drop of Theo’s blood. “This,” Wynton thinks, “is what’s making all the music fade out of you. Clive’s hex was right” (457). Theo left, asking Bernadette not to find him, and became Dexter Brown, winemaker. Bernadette ended things with Clive. Neither of them has ever recovered from losing Theo.

This fable is Cassidy’s piecing together of what happened. Before he left, Theo told Clive they weren’t related by blood. The brothers fought. Since he left, Theo has gone back to The Town many times, where he will “sit on the ridge and observe his life going on without him, very much like he was one of Dizzy’s mute ghosts” (462). He sees Clive enter the white house each night and assumes that he and Bernadette are together and that the children are Clive’s, too.

Dizzy, riding with her father as he drives Purple Rain, is euphoric at the thought of her family reuniting. She tells him her mother named the restaurant The Blue Spoonful because of Dizzy, who has synesthesia, like Miles. She tells him that her mother doesn’t have much to do with Uncle Clive, who sneaks into the house to sleep on the couch. She asks his advice about Lizard, and her father suggests she be honest with him. Dizzy leaves a voicemail for Lizard, who texts back that he is at the hospital.

Miles doesn’t know if he can forgive his father, but he feels he could love him. He talks with Felix and Sandro as they drive back to Paradise Springs. Miles confesses to Felix that he’s attracted to him.

Cassidy describes how she returned to The Town because she wanted to meet her siblings and Wynton again. She gave Felix a ride and told him the Alonso stories, and he fell asleep. She went to Dizzy’s school, saw her run away from gym class, and saved her from being hit in traffic. Then she met Miles and thought, “He rights me, like I was a painting hung crooked my whole life. And he makes me feel expansive, like a never-ending girl” (483).

Cassidy attended Wynton’s show to hear him perform and thought their romance was like the one in Live Forever Now. She met the music industry scout who had come to hear Wynton play, then talked with Dave Caputo, whom she learned had left his family and opened a furniture shop.

Cassidy has been staying above Dave’s restaurant while she sneaks into Wynton’s hospital room at night. She’s terrified about blowing up her father’s life, but also, “I want to be part of the Falls’ long and winding story. I want to claim Maria Guerrero. I want to sprout wings on my back. I want Dizzy and Miles as my sister and brother. And I want you, Wynton” (488).

Cassidy goes to Wynton’s room during visiting hours and meets Bernadette, who thanks Cassidy for saving two of her children. Cassidy tells Bernadette everything and asks if Wynton is Theo’s son. Cassidy can see that Bernadette still loves Theo, and Bernadette welcomes Cassidy to the family. Cassidy realizes that each of her betrayals has also brought her joy. She hopes her and Wynton’s story will have the right ending.

Felix shares that he is likely to lose his sight, and Miles is just happy he’s not dying. He tells Felix that he turns up the volume and brightness of Miles’s world. They arrive at the hospital, and Miles is eager to see his brother. Felix and Miles kiss in the truck, and they both feel as if they are Alonso and Sebastian, floating in the air.

Dizzy sees Lizard at the hospital. Lizards admits he likes Dizzy and felt something when they kissed. They kiss again, and Dizzy feels interest this time. She goes to Wynton’s hotel room and thinks everyone in this room is “her whole world […] her personal people-pile” (510). They all watch Theo emerge from the RV, then turn around and go back inside to get his trumpet.

Wynton hears terrible trumpet playing. Miles whispers about the day on the swings, and Wynton wants to say he is done being like Hector. He hears his father asking Wynton to return to them. He feels Cassidy’s hand and knows he’s back. Wynton wonders if it is Clive’s trumpet he’s been hearing all his life, Clive who gave him the ability to make music. Cassidy kisses him, and Wynton thinks he “will never stop loving this girl. This girl who has planted a sun in your chest. This girl who has brought you back to life, word by word, with the full orchestra of her being, her story, and now with this kiss that is turning you into brightness, into music, into yourself” (513). When he moves, he hears everyone cheer and feels, “the world that you’re all in together tips over, and for once, it’s joy, and only joy that spills out” (513).