The story concerns a woman who lives with her mentally challenged daughter, who has miraculously at brief intervals been "normal". In fact, the daughter, Louise, is sometimes super-normal, speaking in beautiful haiku poetry, which her mother has recorded and has had published under the mother's name. Then an older daughter, Billie, comes for a visit. Billie only knows her sister as hopelessly retarded, and refuses to believe that her mother's poetry has actually been composed by her sister.