Those were the days just before busses replaced the trolley lines. The children could hear from their bedroom windows the screech of the streetcars up the hill. Their father ran his family’s radio manufacturers, and there were radios in every room of the house, pocket and tabletop, historic cathedrals. His name was Alan. “Poor Alan,” Leonora called him, and they both understood why: he was in thrall to his wife. He was a very bus of a man, practical and mobile, and he left the children to Leonora, who had a talent for love, as he had a talent for business.

Winters she took the children tobogganing. Summers they piloted paddleboats across the city pond. She never dressed for the weather. No gloves, no sun hats, no shorts, no scarves. She was always blowing on her fingers or fanning her shirt against her torso. Sunburn, windburn, soaking wet with rain. The children, too. Other mothers sent them home with hand-me-down mittens and umbrellas.

Not surprising, said those mothers later: she never took care of her children.

Rosa, Marco, Dolly: Leonora took them to see the trolleys the last day they ran. She wore a green suede coat, the same color as the trolleys, in solidarity. The coat closed with black loops, which Leonora assured her children were called frogs.

“It’s raining,” said Leonora. “The frogs will be happy.”

“Those aren’t frogs,” said Marco. He was five, the age of taxonomy.

“They are,” said Leonora. “I promise. And my shoes are alligator.”

“Why are we watching the streetcars?” asked Marco.

“There’s no beauty in busses,” Leonora said. “A bus can go anywhere it likes. A trolley is beautiful.”

“Oh yes,” said Rosa, who was seven, “I can see.”

Leonora was as doleful as if the streetcars had been hunted into extinction. They were lovely captives who could not get away, and they left only their tracks behind.

Her coat fastened with frogs; her shoes were alligator. Perhaps she was already turning into an animal.

The children grew bigger, and bony. Leonora grew worse about love: she demanded it. She kissed too hard. She grabbed the children by the arms to pull them close. “You seized me,” said Dolly, age six. “Why did you seize me so?”

“I was looking for a place to nibble,” said Leonora. Dolly was a skinny girl.

Leonora bit. She really did now. Moments later, contrite, writhing, she would say, “The problem is I love you so. I do. Can I be near you? Do you mind?”