The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty Summary Study Guide

Back to Cora in New York in the 1920's. Cora, with the help of the information the German janitor gave her, tracked down and met her mother, Mary O'Dell. Mary tells Cora that she got pregnant as a teen, boned by a guy she only knew for a month. When the guy found out that Mary was pregnant, he ran away (this is Cora's father). Mary realized she didn't want to have a child so young and so gave Cora up for adoption. Then she married some rich guy in Massachusetts without telling him that she had been impregnated before, and now she is a rich lady who doesn't want her family to know anything about Cora. In fact, she never wants to see Cora again.

Cora accepts this abuse dumbly, and even waves when her mother gets on a train to go back to Massachusetts.

So this was it. Her big encounter with her birth mother. The encounter, foreshadowed for much of the book, was incredibly undramatic and boring. What was the point of having the book lead to this point when Cora's birth mother would simply tell Cora to go away?

Louise learns that she has been selected to join the New York dance troupe. So Cora is no longer needed, she can go home. But the last night in New York Cora gets drunk and almost gets boned by some guy. Cora gets very angry with her and tells her for the 100th time not to be such a slut. Louise reveals that she has been a slut for some time, boning guys since she was nine years old. Louise was sexually molested as a child! No wonder she's such a slut now. She started using her v_ginal machinery before it was officially ready to be open for business.

Cora is very shocked to learn all these things. But she feels there is nothing she can do. Louise is going to go with the dance troupe around the country, and her chaperone days are over, and even if Cora tells Louise's mom about these past sexual encounters, Louise will just deny them. But on the other hand Louise is about to go out on her own and she is such a slut that shouldn't Louise's mom be told about it? Cora acts like she has no choice but to stay silent.

Cora is so upset that she finds the German janitor and asks him to bone her. She hasn't had sex with a man in a long time since Alan is only putting his penis inside Raymond's ass.

When the German janitor, whose name is Joseph, finishes squirting into Cora, he apologizes for "finishing so fast", heh heh.

Cora gets an idea. Why doesn't Joseph, and his daughter Greta (he has a daughter Greta, from a dead wife), come back to Kansas and have more sex with her? Now that Cora has tapped a new and willing source of dick she doesn't want to give it up so easily. She assures Joseph that he won't have to bone her again until he gets a steady job.

Joseph asks what Cora will tell Alan, her husband. Cora tells Joseph that everyone will be told that Joseph is her long-lost brother and Greta is her niece. Alan will be told the truth but will be relied on to keep his f'n mouth shut or else his buttsex activities will make the 5 o'clock news in Wichita.

And sure enough Cora does it. She brings a new sex partner back into their house and uses blackmail to get Alan to agree to it. Alan isn't delighted to have a guy boning his wife living in his house, but what he is doing isn't much better.

So what is created is a weird, sort-of polygamous situation built on a lot of lies. The world thinks Cora is married to Alan and Joseph is Cora's long lost brother.  But Alan is really getting boned in the ass by Raymond. Cora and Alan's kids, however, are unaware that Alan is getting buttsexed and think that Alan only puts his schlong inside their mom, Cora. Meanwhile Greta, Joseph's daughter, thinks Cora is her aunt and is unaware that her dad is boning her.