Phoebe's Bedroom — The Catcher in the Rye

Holden slips into the apartment. His parents are out. The maid is asleep. Phoebe wakes glad, then suspicious, and guesses the expulsion at once. She is angry because he is wasting himself, not because of a grade. Jokes do not work on her. He tells her about Stradlater and how unhappy school makes him. She asks what he wants to be. He describes children playing in a field of rye near a cliff, and himself catching them before they fall. She says he has the poem wrong, and that he hates everything. He says he does not hate Allie or her.

She gives him her Christmas money. He nearly breaks. For a few minutes the apartment feels possible. Then footsteps in the hall: the parents are home. He grabs his shoes and gets out. Phoebe covers for him. He is on the street again, loved and unable to stay.

The catcher speech is the closest he comes to saying what he wants to be, and she will not let it stay pretty. Love in this room includes the correction. The street afterwards includes the fear of his parents. She covers for him because loyalty outruns the disappointment, at least for tonight.