BIRDS 5.2

I didn’t read it, honest. What’s progesterone?

It’s a hormone.

What does that mean?

Surely you took biology in high school.

Uh-uh. I swapped it for home ec.

Look it up in the dictionary then.

Are you ill?

Yes.

What are you ill with?

Don’t you know it’s impolite to ask that question?

It isn’t terminal is it?

Daisy, how about you find some other way to entertain yourself. How about you go to the kitchen and bake cookies or something.

What do the pills do? Why do you take them?

Daisy…

I’m sorry. I’ll go and bake cookies.

No, don’t. I’m worried you might burn the entire house down. Remember when I told you about my mother?

Her name’s also Edith and she’s in the lunatic asylum.

Yes, that one.

What about her?

When you read that book at the library, did it tell you that there are certain mental diseases which are heritable?

No, but I never made it past the second page.

Well, you know how if a mother has blue eyes there’s a good chance her baby will have blue eyes too? It’s like that, see?

What’s that got to do with the pills?

What hasn’t it got to do with the pills?

They keep you from having a baby or something?

Supposed to, anyway.

But don’t you want a baby.

Take a guess.

I don’t know. But I think you would be a wonderful mother. I wish I had grown up with a mother like you.

Maybe it’s you who’s the lunatic.

You’re not a lunatic.

I don’t know what I am, what I’m not. Clark never should have married me in the first place.