Carmel returns home from the Pentecostal church service for Sunday lunch. She is with fellow church members Merty, Drusilla, Asseleitha, and Candaisy, all of whom she has known since her childhood in Antigua. Barry dislikes the church they attend because he has discovered that they only pray for personal prosperity.

Carmel’s friends barely acknowledge Barry, as they are upset due to Carmel’s gossip about his late-night drinking and adultery. Donna, who is Barry and Carmel’s oldest daughter, also stops by for lunch with her 17-year-old son, Daniel. Donna is a single mother, and Barry funds Daniel’s expensive private-school education.

Carmel’s friends gossip about a fellow church member’s eldest daughter, Melissa, and her uterine fibroids. They insist that she has fibroids because she did not have children by 25. They also speculate that she is a lesbian and that God is punishing her. Donna stands up for Melissa, using scripture from Leviticus to argue that Melissa’s affairs should not concern them. Merty challenges Donna’s convictions by asking her if she’d like it if Daniel brought home a boy rather than a girl. Merty asks, “[I]f Daniel was one of them, an antiman, you’d be happy with that?” (63). Donna reluctantly reveals that she’d prefer it if Daniel were straight and that she would likely view his behavior as a “phase.” Barry silently reflects on how Donna herself went through the type of phase she is describing. Daniel gets angry because they’re talking about him as if he weren’t there, and he storms out of the house. Donna leaves shortly thereafter to check on her son.

The argument becomes even more heated when Barry defends his daughter and grandson, at which point Merty accuses him of cheating on Carmel with other women and says he should be damned. The conflict causes the lunch to end early. Carmel accuses Barry of ruining the lunch and reiterates that his behavior will change once she returns from visiting her father in Antigua.

The narrator admonishes Carmel for being a bad mother, as her postnatal depression paralyzes her and prevents her from performing her responsibilities. Carmel doesn’t want to breastfeed her youngest daughter, Maxine, and physically dropped her as a baby.

Barry becomes suspicious of Carmel’s ability to mother their new baby and takes time off work at the factory to help raise the children. Barry alerts Carmel’s friends to her depression, and Merty arranges for everyone to step in to help with shopping, cooking, cleaning, and spending time with the children despite their own desperate living conditions and the little time and resources they have.

Carmel is upset that Donna is growing closer to Barry during Carmel’s postnatal depression. She continues to neglect her children and becomes fixated on catching Barry cheating. She suspects that Barry uses renovating his properties as an pretense to conduct affairs. When she visits one of the properties unannounced, she is disappointed to find only Barry and Morris working on the house with no women in sight.

Carmel forgets Donna’s birthday and Barry steps up to take Donna out. Donna enjoys her birthday and is excited when she returns home, but when she tries to hug her mother, Carmel pushes her away. Barry insists that Carmel see a doctor for her mental health, but she refuses.

Barry plans on telling Carmel that he wants a divorce to be with Morris. However, on the day he decides to tell her, she is departing to Antigua to visit her dying father. As Barry talks to her, he notices that she won’t be able to process the information in her current state, and he opts out yet again. Morris agrees that it was the right choice this time but tells Barry that he should inform her when she gets back.

Barry’s youngest daughter, Maxine, calls to tell him that she’s cross with him and that she wants to talk to him alone. However, Barry brings Morris along to disarm her, and they all meet at Café Zanza. Barry pours overproof rum into their drinks from his hipflask, and Morris breaks his vow of sobriety. It turns out that Carmel informed Maxine of the fight that occurred during the Sunday lunch. Maxine now calls her father a misogynist for attacking Carmel’s friends. She warns Barry that he could lose Carmel if he keeps behaving like this; Barry and Morris are both aware of the irony, as Barry wishes for a divorce. Barry stands up for himself and his behavior at the lunch, insisting that he won’t let Carmel destroy his relationship with Maxine.

Barry successfully changes the topic of conversation, and Maxine explains the challenges she faces in the celebrity-stylist industry. Her work is inconsistent and demands a lot of networking, which involves expensive nights out to win over rich clients. She asks Barry for money to start her own business, a clothing line inspired by “an imaginative exploration of the relationship between fashion, food, furniture, friendship, and family” (103). Although both Barry and Morris find the concept hilarious, they also recognize the talent and potential in the sketches she shows them. To sweeten the deal, she promises to call the fashion house “The House of Walker” after her and Barry’s surname (107).

He agrees to talk business, which Maxine accepts as a reluctant yes. Barry reflects on how close he has grown to Maxine, partly due to Carmel’s neglect during her postnatal depression. Barry also reflects on everyone he has needed to support financially, such as family back home in Antigua, and how he will continue to fund Daniel’s degrees. At the end of the chapter, Maxine shares her plan to open the House of Walker in major cities across the world, and she drunkenly declares that she will be a “multimillionaire with morals” who will spend her money on good causes (114).