“He had been Mayor of New York for three terms and, before that, a Congressman for a decade; his was one of the most recognised faces in America. But, out of office for three months and away from the limelight, Fiorello LaGuardia was not a contented man.”
“Bird hangs up and sits on the stairs still talking, wondering if it might be true. She might be dying, that is, or only making it up. There is a code she doesn’t know, she thinks there must be, a sneaky, menacing tally.”
“Say you’re the middle-aged only child of an increasingly fragile mother who can no longer chop her own firewood, lug bales of hay, or—though she is loath to admit it—even harvest the honeycomb from her hives. For the past two months, since you decided to take some time away from your entomologist husband, a full professor in the department where you are an underpaid adjunct, you’ve been living in a camping trailer on the family farm, and now your mother has found a breast lump and says it’s nothing, says she wishes she’d never mentioned it.”
