Chapter 1 Summary

Alice is sixty-one and has been married to Harland for two years; however, she is preparing to leave him because he is extremely uncommunicative. "His idea of marriage is to spray WD-40 on anything that squeaks," she thinks. He runs a paint and body shop during the week, but watches the Home Shopping Channel on cable TV endlessly when he is home. The house they live in, which was left to Alice by her first husband, is filled with Harland's collection of antique headlights.

Her neighbor, Hester Biddle, keeps Vietnamese miniature potbellied pigs and they often invade Alice's flowerbeds. Today, she picks up a flowerpot that Harland has ordered from HSN and throws it at them. She reminisces about the pig farm she grew up on in Mississippi and ponders where she will go when she leaves Harland. Her mother died some years...