The Ex-Girlfriend

Quick Facts

• Role: The Narrator’s first love; a keeper of family memories and promises
• First appearance: Reenters the story when the Narrator uses his last-ever phone call to reach her after seven years apart
• Key relationships: The Narrator, his Mother and Father; a soft spot for the cat Cabbage
• Defining traits: Direct honesty, perceptive memory, old-fashioned quirks, deep empathy
• Occupation/Passion: A movie lover who works at a local theater

Who They Are

The Ex-Girlfriend is the Narrator’s first great love, summoned back into his life by the deal with the Devil and one final phone call. She functions as a mirror and a bridge—reflecting him back to himself with unsparing truth while reconnecting him to the Mother who shaped him. More than a past romance, she is the story’s custodian of memory and promises, the person who can reassemble the past without sentimental blur and deliver its last, crucial message.

Personality & Traits

Her bluntness is disarming, but it’s the honesty of someone who refuses to indulge in false comfort. Beneath that surface lies a quiet, steady care that expresses itself in precise memory, generous acts, and the practical tenderness of keeping promises when they matter most.

• Direct, unsentimental honesty: On hearing the terminal diagnosis, she replies, “Is that so?”—not out of coldness, but to resist platitudes and make space for real conversation. When she later lists his flaws, she’s honoring a promise they once made to tell hard truths if they ever broke up.
• Keenly observant: She remembers specifics the Narrator has forgotten—his frequent bathroom trips, sighs, and indecision at restaurants—evidence that she paid meticulous attention when they were together, even to unglamorous details.
• Passionate about cinema: Her voice “changed” when she spoke about films; that passion steered her to a job at a local theater and shapes her most compassionate gesture: offering a private final screening.
• Quirky, independent tastes: She resisted getting a mobile phone in college, favored payphones, and later installed a vintage black rotary telephone—habits that reveal a stubborn affection for tactile, old-fashioned connections.
• Deeply empathetic in action: She formed a daughter-like bond with the Mother, wept at the funeral, offered to care for Cabbage, and keeps the Mother’s letter safe until it’s needed.
• Poised and composed: The Narrator recalls her “perfect posture,” and when they meet again, she appears largely unchanged—same walk, same style—save for her hair, now cut short. The stillness of her presence steadies scenes that could have slipped into melodrama.

Character Journey

At first, she reads as cool and perhaps even harsh—answering news of impending death with an almost affectless “Is that so?” and briskly cataloging the Narrator’s worst habits. As they talk, those surfaces give way to history: the Buenos Aires trip, their friendship with Tom, and Tom’s sudden death, which flooded her with the terror of finality and froze the pair into silence. That wound explains their breakup more than any deficiency of feeling. The Ex-Girlfriend’s arc is less about change than revelation: she becomes legible as the story’s moral center of memory and fidelity, the person who can deliver the Mother’s last letter and help the Narrator move from paralysis to Regret and Acceptance. By the end, she isn’t simply “an ex”—she’s the hinge that allows the past to open without consuming the present.

Key Relationships

• The Narrator: Their romance was built on long, electric phone calls where ideas felt world-shifting, even if in-person conversation sometimes stuttered. Their reunion reframes their breakup—not as failure, but as fallout from shared trauma—and lets the Narrator recognize how intimacy depends on honesty, attention, and time, deepening the theme of Human Connection and Relationships.
• The Mother: She became a near-daughter to the Mother, sharing outings and confidences. Entrusted with the Mother’s final letter, she proves worthy of that trust; by carrying the message forward, she preserves the family’s emotional continuity and delivers the love the Mother couldn’t express in person.
• The Father: Though she and the Father don’t meet in the present, she remembers him and asks after him, signaling her awareness of the family rift. In doing so, she quietly echoes the Mother’s wish for reconciliation and nudges the Narrator toward peace.

Defining Moments

Her scenes don’t just recall the past; they make the past actionable, turning memory into change.

• The café conversation after the clock tower meeting: She bluntly lists the Narrator’s flaws, honoring their old promise. Why it matters: It punctures his self-narrative, making space for genuine reckoning instead of deathbed nostalgia.
• Recounting Buenos Aires and Tom’s death: She remembers crying at Iguazu Falls, overwhelmed by finality. Why it matters: The memory reframes their breakup as grief’s aftermath; what looked like detachment was a protective silence in the face of mortality.
• Offering a private final screening at her theater: She uses her great love—movies—to give him a last sanctuary for reflection. Why it matters: The gesture lets him see his life as a film with edits, cuts, and meaning—an image that steadies him for what’s next.
• Delivering the Mother’s letter: She fulfills the Mother’s trust precisely when it can do the most good. Why it matters: The letter anchors the Narrator’s reconciliation with his past and his father; she becomes the conduit for a final act of maternal love.

Essential Quotes

“Is that so?”

Her first response to the diagnosis models her ethic: no platitudes, no panic. By refusing performance, she makes room for truth—and signals that she’ll meet him where he is, not where convention says she should.

“I liked talking to you on the phone. You used to get so excited about music and novels. It was as if the world had suddenly transformed. I liked you best when you talked so passionately. I might have even loved you, even though you were somehow incapable of coming up with something to talk about when we’d meet in person.”

This captures the paradox of their love: intimacy soaring through mediated conversation but faltering face-to-face. The detail is tender, not accusatory; it honors what was real while acknowledging what they couldn’t yet sustain.

“Don’t you remember? We promised that if we ever broke up that we’d tell each other what we didn’t like about the other.”

Her critique isn’t cruelty—it’s fidelity to a shared vow. The line reframes bluntness as a form of care: truth-telling as the way to keep faith with who they were.

“Because you’re hoping that maybe it’ll have a happy ending the next time around.”

Her explanation for rewatching sad movies reveals her philosophy: repetition as hope. Even when she knows endings don’t change, the act of watching again becomes a gentle rebellion against despair—and a key to why she offers the Narrator one last film.