Virginia’s sister Vanessa and her children arrive two hours early for their visit. Leonard refuses to entertain before the scheduled hour, citing work; Virginia says she’ll do it. She wishes she could’ve tamed her frazzled appearance before Vanessa arrived.

Vanessa is three years older, and her hale appearance contrasts with Virginia’s sickly one. Vanessa grounds Virginia, soothing her anxiety with her love and effortless embodiment of her roles as wife and mother.

Vanessa’s three children are in the garden attending to a dying bird. Julian, 15, is serious and handsome—Vanessa’s favorite. Quentin, 13, is ironic and smart but common looking. Angelica, 5, is nervous and pretty in a way that won’t last past her childhood. Virginia doesn’t know how to talk to the children about death; Vanessa tells her children that while they can’t save the bird, they can make it comfortable. Before helping Angelica gather flowers for the bird’s grave, Virginia looks at the children and realizes that they’re what really matter—not her books, which will fade before the children do.

Angelica insists she’ll hatch the bird’s eggs; her brothers laugh at her. Virginia notes how males and females play different roles in treating death:

Even now, in this late age, the males still hold death in their capable hands and laugh affectionately at the females, who arrange funerary beds and who speak of resuscitating the specks of nascent life abandoned in the landscape, by magic or sheer force of will (134).