It started to rain on Monday and we have been trapped inside ever since – me and the two babies and the broken TV and the racks of damp laundry and the leak in the kitchen ceiling. Cabin fever has already set in.

The first victim was a Colette anthology I had been reading for a couple weeks. It’s a big book, and when I was halfway through the binding cracked. Then Henry pulled off the cover and used it to mop up some spilled apple juice. Then, the further I read, the looser the pages became. Suddenly a paperback that had sat quite solidly in my closet for weeks was reduced to a sheaf of loose pages and dismembered signatures. Was it the damp? Did Henry pull it apart to chew on the pages while I was busy with the baby? Or was it just time for the book to perish? (It was an old secondhand copy, well-thumbed. I hope it had a good life.)

I feel so guilty about the death of this book that I collected the pieces and rubber-banded them together, the stained cover on top. I don’t think I have ever thrown out a book, but it’s in such bad shape I can’t give it away, and it takes up too much room to keep it in my closet. What can I do with four hundred pages (some with teeth marks), a wrinkled cover, and some fragments of binding?

I would like to make a funeral pyre for it on the balcony, complete with eulogy and refreshments, but the rain shows no sign of clearing.