Jane and Rita were trying for fancier eggs with Russian-style shells, and kept a book open to photos of jewel and folk-art eggs. They made tiny holes in each end, inserted a long, thin needle—one of Dee’s trussing needles—to stir up the interior, and used a bulb syringe to blow the insides out. Rita held her colored fingers in the air and asked Polly to flip through the book until she found a design she liked. Jane, not as adept and unable to look away from the television, managed two and crumbled a last half-empty shell in her hand.

What, asked Dee, was wrong with simply boiling and dyeing and eating the things when we’re done?

On the television, a Gerber baby food commercial broke into the news coverage. Rita watched and let her wet brush fall to the floor.

“I need to see the doctor,” she said. “I worry something’s gone wrong with the baby. It should be big like these babies.”

No one said anything.

“Take me now,” said Rita.

Edmund took his bowls to the sink and Polly started to clean up her things.

“Now,” said Rita.

Dee dried the colored eggs and lowered them into the carton. “Jane, honey.”

“No,” said Jane. She’d joined Merle and Papa in front of the television. “Real people are dying here.”

“Now,” said Rita. “Call the damn ambulance.” She picked up a paring knife and gouged the palm of her left hand, then brought it down again on the back, between the tendons below her first and second knuckles.

There was an immensity of blood. Merle and Jane took Rita in together. It was late when they all came back. Polly could hear Dee and Papa talking, Jane and Merle talking, Rita crying, Edmund talking to Lemon.

In the morning—no ringing alarms, because school was still out—Jane swept into Edmund’s and Polly’s rooms and told them to get dressed and pack up—they were going on a surprise trip to the city with Papa and Dee, maybe overnight, because it was their vacation, after all. They needed to hurry, but when Jane pushed them down to Dee and Papa’s bathroom, past Merle, who was talking to Rita through the locked bathroom door, Dee was still lying with a pillow around her head, muttering about Irish lunatics. Through the wall they could hear Rita crying. Jane hustled Edmund and Polly through toothbrushing and peeing and shooed them back down the hall. They dressed and started to pack satchels in a lounging, scattered way until Rita started wailing in earnest, and Merle started to yell. Papa put Polly over the top of his shoulder and pulled Edmund along by an arm. In the car now, he said. He bellowed down the hall to Dee, to get a move on.