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But the last, long-drawn-out day of Frankie's childhood is highlighted not by a picture show, but by one of the few dramatic incidents in the novel—Frankie's narrow escape from a drunken soldier. The rest of The Member of the Wedding is devoted to an uncertain child's private meanderings through a stewing hot summer day, when the old ways and excitements have ceased to have meaning, and the most familiar streets and houses have lost their familiar look; when the ear catches nothing but sounds that are incomplete, and the eye is deceived by apparent glimpses of things that do not really exist. The culminating point of all this—the hysterical excitement that surrounds her brother's wedding and her vain attempt to run away from home—merely marks the dividing line between awkward F. Jasmine Addams, Esq., and the poised young high-school student named Frances Addams, who smiles condescendingly at old Berenice, and murmurs: "I am just mad about Michelangelo."