"When a hawk is electrocuted, the damage is instantaneous and critical," you repeat. Anesthetized, frail, you hardly know your voice. "Most times, necrosis sets in, and a wing needs to be amputated. The most humane course of action is euthanization."

"Euthanasia," your mother corrects. "Did Martin tell you that?"

Outside on the denuded lawn, blue jays gorge on the feeder. The mid-afternoon shadows pour in through the picture window, dimming the kitchen table, where a round Prussian-blue tin of Greek butter cookies waits, oracular. In the living room, your daughter Meena stacks pink blocks into a house.

"Yes, Martin." You are a liar. "He took his ecology students to a raptor rescue."

"Does she know about Jurassic Park?" your mother asks, grinning. "Meena?"

Her non sequitur robs you of speech. You manage a nod.

"Good," she says, taunting.

It's January, not the first but enough days in that any hopes you have are not resolutions, goals, aims, or intentions—just the usual feathered things flying into glass. Your mother slides a meadow-green nail under the rim of the lid, prying it off the tin. She pinches the white corrugated paper shield and exposes the cookies, stacked in white paper cups, snugged in concentric circles. Her eye falls on a broken crescent, snowy with powdered sugar. She pops a piece of the moon into her mouth.

While she chews, you picture the hawk or, rather, the ornithologist who spoke with the radio host about the hawk. The ornithologist was an Arizonan, with a resolute elocution and the type of smart stoicism that has always drawn you to older women. You imagined her in khakis, a gray wicking quarter-zip, clothes she's had for years because her life's work requires nothing more, and with strong hands, slim fingers, unvarnished nails, a grip that could steady a flailing hawk. Hawk—picture it—a snap of its obdurate dinosaur beak, twisted wire, voltage rocking its muscular body, how it fell in a field, could've starved to death, been eaten half-alive. You are working on feeling your feelings, modeling appropriate emotional release for your daughter and Martin, who will no longer be the victim of your self-estrangement, whose needs you might satisfy were you not so tightly locked, and so you stay seated as you begin to cry, quietly, in the kitchen, even though the bathroom is around the corner, past where Meena clanks blocks. Naming your feelings: project for another year. For now, snot is about to drip from your nose—humiliating, your body's biddable cry for attention, but excusing yourself would be worse and the ceramic dish of napkins that was here forever is gone. Sniff.

"Have I told you about the show Liz turned me onto?" Your mother's expression brightens with devilish glee as she invokes her best friend, names the series. "It's the rawest thing I've ever watched. I've got one episode left and then—enough."

Failure. Without mentioning blood or viscera, you have produced a foul talking point. Think for a moment. "Why are you still watching it?"

Your mother rotates the tin. "Why do we keep picking our scabs?" Her touch lands on the dusted crescents. She takes another, snaps it in half, leaves the smaller piece. The actress who stars, she explains, is terrible.

"I really don't like her," you say.

"I've heard a lot of filthy language, but this is next level."

Bait—mice, rats, other small birds. Ancient falconers had an arsenal; the modern homeowner plagued by a nuisance raptor will need to obtain a permit.

"Momma!" Meena calls. "Come look what I built!"

"Too much anal sex!" your mother says, holding your gaze. "Why am I watching her get reamed?"

Bucking, flailing, opening, you picture the hawk writhing in the desert grasses, the assaultive current borne in its bones, coursing through its blood, as you go to the living room, where your small daughter plays. What you wanted to share is how, in the story you heard, the hawk was lucky. A college girl found it. Brought it to the sanctuary. Amputation, in this instance, unnecessary. Screeching, cawing, it cameoed on the audio. It survived.

.