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Three swans dropped dead this week and this morning there was a fourth on the street out front. Nobody knows why. Maybe they are choking to death, maybe it is a sign from God. At first I thought it was a big pile of newspapers just starting to blow away but when I got closer I saw it was a swan with one wing spread out on the road as if it had tried to lift itself up. Poor thing. Already ants were in its eyes. I called Buddy to come quickly I was so upset. I did not know what it might mean right in front of our house and the baby due in three weeks. Buddy said all it meant was that he had to pick it up which he tried to do but the body kept slipping out between the wings, it was hard to get a purchase. Finally he dragged it up on the lawn. I said I’d call the ASPCA, but Buddy shook his head. “Virginia,” he said. “It’s as dead as a doornail.”

It is the terrible summer we all go crazy. Uncle peach has offed himself and I now sleep in my clothes. Maybe we hardly knew him, but his blood runs in our veins. There is lunacy in this family and I feel too peculiar in my floaty nightgown. I know I am a child, but I am a tall child, and children can go crazy too.

Louise, who is pushing down the tall grasses near the land of menopause, accepts an invitation from Mona, who is not that far behind. Mona could use the sight of Louise. “I need a drinking companion,” she says. Louise can hear the twins wailing in the background. “We don’t drink anymore,” Louise reminds her. “But we can talk about it, can’t we? Remember pink gins?” “That wasn’t us, Mona, pink gins. That was our grandmothers.” “Don’t quibble, Just get off the bus at Concord. I’ll pick you up.” “I’ll come Friday. Thursday I’ve got my teeth.”

Sometimes he comes up behind me at the stove and lifts my skirts and we do it right here in the kitchen like a couple of kids. Quite a change from Noah who could only stay hard by imagining me being sawn in half. Robbie is the tallest, nicest man I’ve ever gone out with. His back and shoulders are broad and strong and make me think of the word wingspan. When we go to sleep he folds me in his arms as gently as if I were an origami bird. But nothing is perfect. He is dead broke. And worse.