Lena believes that her mother has an uncanny ability for predicting bad things that will befall the family. For example, she predicted the failure of a bank and her own husband's death. Lena worries what she will say about the house that Lena and her husband, Harold, have bought in Woodside. What will she predict about their future — based on their new home and the location and arrangement of the rooms in it?
To compound the problem, Lena and Harold are having marital difficulties. At present, the problems are manifesting themselves in a quarrel over who should pay for the cat's flea treatment.
When mother and daughter arrive at the house, Mrs. St. Clair is clearly astonished at the enormous amount of money that her daughter and son-in-law paid for the house. Beneath the fancy architectural details, she sees clearly that the house was vastly overpriced — whereupon Lena remembers an incident from her childhood.
To coax eight-year-old Lena to finish her food, Mrs. St. Clair told her that her future husband would have one pockmark for every grain of rice that the child did not eat. Little Lena immediately thought of Arnold, a cruel twelve-year-old boy in the neighborhood, who was indeed pockmarked. She quickly finished her rice. The possibility of Arnold being her future husband became a fearful obsession. She hated Arnold so much that she found "a way to make him die." After seeing a movie about lepers in Africa, Lena gradually stopped eating.
