Sunday in New York — The Catcher in the Rye

On Sunday Holden eats at a diner and meets the two nuns again. They talk about teaching. He gives more money and afterwards resents that they have toast while he wastes cash on taxis and drinks. He calls Sally anyway, pride losing to loneliness, and she agrees to meet later. Families in church clothes make the streets look like a place he does not belong.

He secures Little Shirley Beans for Phoebe and is pleased. Home is still too dangerous because of his parents. He walks to the Museum of Natural History, remembering the Eskimo, the deer, the exhibits that never changed. At the steps he cannot go in. He is afraid he has changed too much to enjoy a room that stays the same. In the park he watches children and feels the wish to keep them from the city's dirt. Then he heads towards Sally again, record in hand, the previous strain unresolved.

Church clothes on other families sharpen the feeling that Sunday has an address for everyone except him. The record is ready. Home is not. Sally is the appointment he already regrets and still keeps. Almost-connection is the shape of the whole Sunday. The steps stay behind him.