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tinier and more fragile bundled up against the snow. Her boots were barely big enough for a doll, and her body seemed to vanish into her coat. We walked around the whole zoo, stopping to peer into each cage, but perhaps because of the cold, they were nearly all empty.
    Cheetah, Bengal tiger, puma, camel, antelope, lion … I read the nameplates as we stood for a moment in front of each cage. Dry leaves floating in a water dish, traces of blood clinging to a bone, droppings scattered about—and the snow piling up on everything.
    My only concern was Mama. Was she seeing enough? Had she found what she needed for her story?
    Rhinoceros, llama, flamingo, ostrich …
    Only the penguins and the polar bears were out enjoying themselves. The snow suited them fine. The penguins were busy diving in their pond, while the polar bears paced their cage, thick necks swaying from side to side. The snow glazed their fur with a sparkling crust.
    Anteater, sloth, gibbon, cobra, hedgehog, crocodile …
    Eventually we found we could imagine the animals even without seeing them. The tiger yawning, the llama twitching its ears, the sloth shifting its grip on a branch.
    “Why do you suppose giraffes have such long necks?” Mama said, brushing the snow from the railing in front of the cage.
    “I don’t know,” I said.
    “It seems absurd, doesn’t it?” I nodded vaguely, not quite sure what “absurd” meant. “Long necks that serve no purpose. An elephant uses its trunk to take a shower, an anteater eats with its nose, but a giraffe’s neck is useless.”
    “That’s true,” I agreed.
    “I suppose they learn to live with them somehow, but if I were a giraffe, I’d want a normal neck.” She sounded terribly sad.
    When we had been around to see every cage, Mama bought us soft-serve ice-cream cones at the snack stand. She took off her gloves in order to dig the coin purse out from the bottom of her bag. Her fingers looked numb as she counted out the change. We sat down to eat them on a bench. It seems ridiculous now that we wanted ice cream on such a cold day, but at the time it felt perfectly natural.
    The snow fell on our cones, and we ate it along with the ice cream, but it didn’t have much flavor. Mama looked at me from time to time, and not wanting to disappoint her, I tried to appear as though I were enjoying myself. We could hear the animals howling over the wind.
    I wonder whether Mama ever wrote her story about the zoo? In any case, she never read it aloud to me.
    *   *   *
    “We apologize for the delay. Thank you for your patience.” The announcement played over and over, and was greeted by sighs up and down the car.
    “‘A shooting star with a long tail.’ What could that be?” said the woman next to me, tapping her pen against her temple.
    “Comet?” I suggested.
    “It’s six letters,” she said, counting “c … o … m … e … t” under her breath.
    “Meteor,” said one of the college students across from us.
    “M … e … t … e … o … r. That’s it. It fits perfectly. Thank you.” She eagerly filled in the blanks.
    “Not at all,” said the girl, turning back to her conversation.
    *   *   *
    It was difficult for me to believe that Mama had grown old. In my memory she was unchanged from that day at the zoo, and younger than I am now. When I finally arrive at the funeral and see her picture on the altar, will I feel that I am looking at a total stranger?
    “It says her body was discovered by the paper boy,” my girlfriend had said. “He thought it was strange that no one answered the door even though he could hear the TV. She was found with her head resting on her desk, as though she’d been writing something.”
    “Did she have a heart condition?” I asked.
    “It doesn’t say. But she hadn’t published much in almost ten years, so none of our editors had ever met her. But…” She hesitated.
    “Tell me what it says,” I prompted. “I want to know.”
    “She