Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses pregnancy loss, racism, alcohol use disorder, suicide, mental health conditions, and anti-LGBTQ+ biases in connection with the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s.

The narrative has a fairy tale introduction: “There once was a girl named Phoebe Snow” (1). Lillian describes the character used to advertise railroads when she was a child; her Aunt Sadie who lived in New York City would send postcards with the ads because Lillian loved them. She recalls her admiration for Sadie and her mother’s disapproval, both for the same reason: She was a single woman living in the city with a career of her own. Lillian reflects that Sadie led her to New York while Phoebe led her to poetry and advertising, as she modeled her ad copy on the short poems from those postcards, even sending her job applications in rhyming verse. She says, in some ways, getting a job at RH Macy’s saved her life but in other ways ruined it.

On New Year’s Eve, 1984, Lillian gets a call from her son, Johnny (also nicknamed Gian). He tells her that his stepmother Julia had a heart attack and will likely die before the new year.