A girl comes from a family of immortal women, and each year and a half, the family has a reunion in which they take a picture of all of the elder women — the grandmothers, great-grandmothers, great aunts; all above the age of sixty-five — which hangs on the living room wall. Because the girl's family has such strong older women, she should have known that her mother was going to make it when she goes to the hospital. Her mother goes to the hospital without explanation, and says that nothing serious is wrong with her. So as to not shame the family in which no woman has ever been hospitalized before, she attempts to hide her hospital visit as much as possible; she will not even tell her husband, the girl's father, what causes her pain. The mother takes off of work and leaves home for days, and calls her daughters to ask how they are and how their father is doing. The girl's father is so furious that he refuses to talk to his wife because she will not tell him what is going on. He listens to the conversations between the mother and the girl, but is unable to figure where in the hospital the mother is, so he cannot locate her to visit her. While the mother is gone, the family eats casseroles brought over by the women of the family. The girl's father realizes that all of the family photos are photos of the women at the reunions; not one picture includes a man, and the girl thinks that the explanation is they must not live as long as the women. The father puts up a picture of his Uncle Jack on the wall. He also puts up a picture of the mother gardening and another of her next to a Volkswagen. The mother eventually returns home with a scar across her neck. She does not explain what was wrong with her, but remains weak for a while. She insists that she be put in the family picture although she is only middle-aged. This picture goes up on the photo wall, and the picture of Uncle Jack is taken down. The girl thinks again about how she should have known that her mother would not die in the hospital because her mother, like all the family women, is invincible and immortal.