Summary

Leda begins to reveal details about her life, starting with her daughters’ move to Toronto to live with their father. She does not yet give the names of her daughter or their father. She admits that when her daughters left, “it was the first time in almost twenty-five years I was not aware of the anxiety of having to care for them” (10). Her daughters’ departure seems to have been a positive event for Leda, whose remaining maternal duty towards them was simply to call them once a day. She describes the phone calls as “almost always hurried, sometimes . . . fake, as in a movie” (11). Leda seems relieved that the physical distance between herself and her daughters makes it impossible for them to ask her to take real action to help them and says, “I felt miraculously unfettered, as if a difficult job, finally brought to...