I didn't start with the rabbit. Sometimes when I'm falling asleep things occur to me, and this time it was the first sentence: 'Martha got the knife away from her mother and shut her in the garage.' I knew that Martha was someone who'd lived alone until recently, and that her mother, Judy, had dementia.
It's true that Judy is a huge and probably unsustainable responsibility for Martha. There's certainly an aspect of duty to her caregiving; since she was a child, Martha has embraced the role of the good kid-good student, good daughter, good sister.
I don't think that Judy is company for Martha at this point, but her presence forces Martha to think about the past and about what kind of daughter and sister she's been. That reckoning may inspire her to make some changes in her life.
Judy's current erratic behavior can be explained by her dementia.
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