Rocky is at the tram beach with Nick, holding a spot for her parents who are arriving in town. She watches an elderly woman in a green wetsuit emerge from the ocean like a mermaid, prompting Rocky to reflect on the dual nature of becoming a 'crone'—simultaneously beautiful and brutal.

Rocky launches into an extended meditation on menopause, cataloguing its indignities: leaking thoughts and flesh, crepey skin, receding hairline, reflux, jowls, under-eye bags, and a host of bodily betrayals she never anticipated. She describes night-sweating vaginas paired with vaginal dryness, skin tags requiring biopsies, white nipple hairs, and apocalyptic periods—including an incident in Montreal where a clot dropped from her pants in front of an Airbnb host.

Her memory is failing too. She struggles to recall the word 'sepia,' offering Nick fragments like 'seep' and 'steep' until he supplies it. He also notes her swimsuit is inside out. She compares her memory to pretzels stuck in a vending machine—every name and word frustratingly out of reach.

When Nick asks what she's laughing about, Rocky says 'menopause.' She tells him she at least avoided the public humiliations of male puberty, and Nick responds cautiously, sensing her simmering anger. Rocky acknowledges internally that her rage about the public nature of her reproductive life—and the buried griefs around the babies and the lying—could erupt into a fight. But as she ages, she increasingly resists honest emotional conversations, preferring instead to behave badly and be quickly forgiven.