Her rage flopped awkwardly away like a duck. She felt as she had when her cold, fierce parents had at last grown sick and old, stick-boned and saggy, protected by infirmity the way cuteness protected a baby, or should, it should protect a baby, and she had been left with her rage–vestigial, girlhood rage–inappropriate and intact. She would hug her parents good-bye, the gentle, emptied sacks of them, and think Where did you go?



