How to Age Disgracefully

Ziggy stops the slideshow of Jeremy pictures while Lydia runs out of the hall, sobbing. As Ziggy chats with Alicia, Kylie chews on the envelope that Ziggy is supposed to deliver for Floyd. There are bags of fine white powder inside. Alicia, disapproving, walks away. Daphne intervenes and says she will take Kylie home while Ziggy delivers the package. Ziggy is upset by Alicia’s response and worried Social Services will take Kylie away from him.

Art goes home and climbs into bed. William leaves him a casserole, but Art doesn’t emerge. He feels all his problems “were exposed to the air again: his lack of money, the end of a career that had never even begun, his addiction to stealing, and […] his overwhelming shame at what he’d done to his family so many years ago” (167). He doesn’t know how to deal with any of it.

Lydia, hiding in her bedroom, grapples with her identity. If she is no longer responsible for childcare, since her children are gown, and she is no longer a wife, “then what on earth was she? What was the point of her?” (168). She turns to a self-help book but feels her anger at Jeremy mixing with guilt and shame that she is responsible for his not loving her.