Rose's mother, Flo, is as ill-tempered in her old age as ever, and when her daughter returns from visiting a possible nursing home, skepticism oozes from her every pore. At the home, Rose found, the residents live on three tiers. The lowest is bright, tidy, and energetic. Sociability and rationality still flourish on the middle one, but on the third floor, many of the residents have stopped speaking, moving, and worrying about whether they're wet or dry. There, Rose ran into a nurse tending to a toothless, blind old woman who, rather strangely, had strained to spell words with all her might. The nurse and Rose had taken turns pronouncing words and waiting for her to string the letters together. They do this, the orderly told her, to see if the blind woman can hear. The next morning, Rose wakes from a strange dream, in which she wandered through a hall full of caged people. One of them was Flo, who was spelling out words in a clear, authoritative voice. Rolling out of bed, Rose discovers that her mother, already impatient, is ready to go. Rose has never mixed well with Flo, her brother Brian, or his wife. When she played a bare-breasted Trojan woman on a nationally televised play years earlier, Flo shamed her in a letter, rightly claiming that her father would wish himself dead were he still alive. Brian has told her to her face that he thinks acting is a useless field. The embarrassment cuts both ways, though. At an awards show, a surprised Flo once called a Black friend of Rose's the N-word. Back in the nursing home, Flo has moved in, and Rose is visiting her. When their conversation turns to Rose's father, Flo asks how he's doing. Rose's heart breaks.