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young rock singer, she choked on a ham sandwich. You just never know.
    Once, when Mavis was out on a walk with Al, they’d seen an old man being pushed in a wheelchair by his young attendant. The man was so old, the blanket across his knees and his thick coat unable to hide his terrible thinness. The attendant was young and strong, his teeth white, and his smile fine and friendly. He’d nodded at Mavis and Al as they passed, and Mavis had taken Al’s arm. “Al,” she’d said, “if I ever end up in a wheelchair, will you push me outside? No matter how I look? I mean, look at that oldman, it must make him feel better that he’s outside, and that out here, nothing much has changed.”
    Al had stopped to pick a yellow wildflower. “Look at how pretty,” he’d said.
    “Will you, Al?”
    “What, take you outside in a wheelchair? Sure.”
    “Okay,” she’d said. “Don’t forget.”
    He’d put the flower behind her ear, tenderly.
    The moon comes out from behind a cloud, and the light pushes in through the bathroom window. Mavis turns on her side, away from it. She’d been thinking about Jonathan, about when he’d first learned to sit and was outside on the newly mowed lawn, blinking in the sun. The breeze was lifting up pieces of his baby hair, rearranging it on his perfect, round head. He’d picked up a blade of grass and put it in his mouth, and Mavis had leaped up from her lawn chair to take it away from him. Eileen, who’d been sunbathing with her—sunbathing and painting her toenails and eating ice cubes out of tall glass tumblers with her—had said, “Relax! A little grass won’t hurt him.” And years later, again, “Relax! A little grass won’t hurt him,” about the other kind. She was right, of course. Jonathan was fine. All the children were just fine, happy and healthy. Mavis opens her eyes wide. My God. It’s true. They’re all fine. She sighs deeply, closes her eyes.
    Poochie died when she was very old, Mavis is thinking. Fourteen? Sixteen? But poor little Sassy, she was hardly over puppyhood.
    Mavis is lying on the bathroom floor, doing leg lifts and trying to remember all the pets they’ve had. She’s been getting leg cramps, and she thinks maybe exercise will help. Maybe it’s goodshe’s got only one more day. She heaves her legs up in the air again, remembers that once the kids brought home a dying baby rabbit they’d found under a bush. They’d begged Mavis to save it. She’d tried warm milk with an eyedropper and a heating pad, but the rabbit was too far gone. She gave the kids a fancy candy box she had been saving, told them they could bury the rabbit in it. They’d padded the box, still fragrant from chocolate, with toilet paper, then carefully laid the rabbit on top. Jonathan had wanted to tie the box shut, but Mavis had argued against it, saying it would spoil the look, and besides, the rabbit wasn’t going anywhere. They’d dug a shallow hole in the backyard near the tomato plants, and she and the children had held hands around the burial site to sing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” Then, at three-year-old Ellie’s request, they sang “Here Comes Peter Cottontail.” Ben was wearing his cowboy hat, and his holster was twisted around so that his jeweled revolver hung off his backside, an undignified sight at a funeral. Mavis remembers that she had wanted to adjust it, but didn’t. She herself, after all, had been wearing the white apron with the big ruffles. A roast beef had been in the oven, she remembers that. She’d said, “I’m going to say a few words, kids, and then I’ve got to get back in there and finish dinner.” Yes. She’d said exactly that. And the phone had been ringing when she came back in the house. My God, she remembers that, too. She’d washed her hands before she answered it. She can’t remember who it was, though.
    Mavis tries a sit-up, abandons it, returns to leg lifts.
    They’d had seven parakeets. No, eight. Eight!
    “You used