In the doctor’s office, the father gets the news that he has breast cancer. An old-fashioned, working-class white man, he is furious. Responding to his disbelief and fury, the doctor tells him that men have the same mammary glands as women. Men are more unlikely to develop breast cancer, but it is not impossible. His father tells no one but his son, who has to drive him to and from the doctor’s office for radiation. After his wife had left to lead her own life in Northern California, the father has lived alone near his job as an aquarist for the amphibian exhibit at the Detroit Zoo. His son is an unemployed anthropology Ph.D. who has been sleeping in a hotel. Their relationship is very masculine in the American sense. When the son drops his father off from the doctor, the father gruffly offers to let him sleep on the couch. While living with his father, the son learns that he must channel all his conversations through humor and swearing. The first night, the phone rings, and the father has missed his twilight shift at the zoo. The son, more or less knowing the layout, covers for him. He continues to do so in the days ahead. One night, the son comes face to face with an alligator, who opens its jaws wide and reveals a tooth with a gold filling. The next day, the father has trouble with his radiation treatment. His gums are melting away from his teeth. The cause: his old, metal fillings. His father complains his son is not the working man he wanted him to be. Another night, we learn that the resident python has trouble shedding due to someone shutting off the dehumidifier in her tank. She cannot shed on her own, and someone typically needs to help. Meanwhile, the son is hired full-time at the aquarium, and the father becomes sicker as the radiation fails and he transitions to chemotherapy. The son is alone in the amphibian exhibit. Reptiles do not have mammary glands. They are immune to his father’s pain. The python starts to shed its skin, it struggles. The son delicately holds a wet rag and begins rubbing the skin off.