Everybody Has Everything

LATE SEPTEMBER



James had set up camp in the new café he’d discovered on his walk to the mall, the one he resented for not introducing itself to him before everyone else declared it cool. He had positioned himself so that none of the mirrors caught his bald spot. He had his laptop open, the cursor on the blank space blinking. If terrorism exists, what does it look like? Delete. The earliest known terrorists were the Zealots of Judea. Faced with the prospect of the erosion of their Jewish belief in the hands of an idolatrous Roman—

Faced and hands? Would anyone care about this? Maybe fiction. Maybe a screenplay, about police corruption. He remembered hearing about a local police captain who used to dangle criminals from windows by their ankles. Serpicoish. Could that be something?

“Wow, you look really serious,” said a figure from above, and James began at the feet, eyes moving up the black boots, tights, the long leather jacket with the coffee in hand. Short, unpainted fingernails curved around its sides.

“Emma,” he said, and she smiled her red-lipped smile. Her hair was in a ponytail, which had the effect of making her look even younger. She didn’t ask to sit but was suddenly next to him. He shut his laptop.

“I read that book you gave me,” she said, taking off her jacket.

“You did?” He shifted his features into something meaningful, hoping to hide the fact that he couldn’t remember what it was.

“What’s going on with you? Everybody said you vanished.”

James decided to ignore the question.

“Did you like the book?”

Emma nodded. “I think so. It seemed a little,” she paused. “Outdated. ‘The meaning of television.’ I mean, really – television? Does anyone even watch television?”

“I couldn’t agree more,” said James, sipping his Americano. “Wait, you work in television.”

“I’m in on-line, remember?”

James nodded, and recalled Emma badgering him to blog about his interviews. She had called his footage “content.”

“So what’s up?” she asked again.

He answered like an echoing cave: “What’s up with you?”

“I’m down to part time. I got a grant to complete my art.”

“What kind of art do you do?” asked James, instantly imagining sculpture involving silicone vaginas, or a performance piece where Emma sat atop a pile of rotting meat for days at a time.

“Photography. Okay, third time: What the hell are you up to?” Emma shifted her body closer to him, leaned forward a little. James recognized this as flirtation, and flushed accordingly.

Emma smelled like food, mangos or cinnamon, a perfume from an oily antique bottle found at a flea market.

James smiled. “I’m playing dad to a friend’s kid.”

“Single dad?”

James’s smile retreated.

“What? No, I’m married.” There. He’d said it.

“You said ‘I’m playing dad,’ like it was just about you,” said Emma, sipping coffee through a take out lid.

“Well, my wife doesn’t play dad. She’s, you know, she’s the mom.” This sounded even worse in tandem with Emma’s remote, blank expression in front of him. “That’s all I meant. Don’t look for subtext, you denizen of the post-postmodern generation.” She laughed, even threw her head back. Bull’s eye.

“Where’s your friend at, the kids’ real dad?” Why the slightly ghetto vernacular amongst these kids? James was fairly certain that Emma had gone to a liberal arts college somewhere in the northeast. Swarthmore?

James considered the question, answered slowly. “The boy, Finn, his father died. His mom’s in the hospital. There was … this accident,” he said, surprised to find the words catch in his throat, surprised because the catch was totally sincere, but also, surprised by how well it worked (the old James recognized the panty-loosening effect of this confession, while the present one was proud of himself for being honest with a pretty woman). Emma blinked, put her coffee down, and shook her head: “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Yeah, thanks,” he said. She looked at him closely, as if anticipating something more. “His daycare’s right over there, so I’m going to pick him up later. I come here to write.”

“How old is he?”

“He’s two. Almost two and a half.” And then James couldn’t stop himself: “He’s a really gentle kid, but I don’t know when it’s going to back up on him. He seems okay, and his teacher said he’s doing well. He knows the alphabet and can count to fifteen, which I looked up on line and the number thing, that’s advanced, actually. His dad was an engineer, so maybe that’s why. I didn’t really know Marcus that well, that’s the strangest part of this. I knew Finn’s mom, a long time ago. She dated my roommate but I barely remember her. She remembered me—”

Emma nodded, frowning. What am I saying, wondered James? What is this?

“Anyhoo,” he said.

Emma looked at her watch, started to put on her coat.

“I live just over there,” she said, pointing across the street to a Portuguese bakery.

“Amongst the flans?” asked James, with immediate regret. Not funny, not sharp. Emma ignored the awkwardness.

“Above, actually, in the apartment with the green door,” she said, rising, tightening her scarf. “Come by sometime and I’ll show you my pictures. You might like them.” James felt certain that was not true, though he thrilled at the invitation. He tried to imagine Emma’s apartment. Would she have milk crates for furniture, like he did at that age? A futon? Somehow he doubted that kids in their twenties lived like that anymore. He couldn’t smell poverty on them. Their teeth were very white. Emma’s jacket looked as expensive as Ana’s.

She leaned in and gave him a double kiss. He sat very still as she did this, aware that if he so much as moved his head, all bets were off, lips would brush lips, and then what else might touch? He was hungry enough, tired enough of Ana’s trail of gentle pushes and rejections, so tired that he might throw a little tongue in there. And then a whorl moving toward the green door above the flan.

He waved at her through the plate glass window of the café, watching as she was absorbed into the accepting crowd.


Ann Silvan moved slowly through the house, as if she might buy it. Ana and James trailed her, up-selling: “I tightened this railing,” said James. “Just to be safe.” Finn waited at the top of the stairs. “Hellooooo!” he called. Ana noticed that he was barefoot. It felt too cold in the house for barefoot. Would this be marked down on Ann Silvan’s notepad?

Ann Silvan walked slowly around the room that Ana had made for Finn. She glanced out the window at the half-finished yard. She asked how he was sleeping, eating, how much he cried.

“You should probably get a safety rail for the bed,” she said.

“What’s that?” asked James.

“A plastic rail, to prevent tumbling. Any toy store will have one. You just tuck it between the mattress and the frame.”

“I put cushions down at night, in case he rolls out,” said Ana.

“A rail is better,” said Ann Silvan.

Finn jumped up and down on the bed. Ana stared at his bare feet; should she immediately go and fetch socks?

Then Ann Silvan asked: “What time do you get home from work, Ana?”

“Oh, it depends,” said Ana. (When had she felt this naked, this tiny? A job interview? An oral exam? Oh, yes – wheeled into the operating room, looking at the panels on the ceiling.

The silence of the nurses with their burka eyes peering over their masks, holding the plastic cap of gas over Ana’s mouth. And what they said they did to her: sliced her stomach open like an envelope and put a tiny camera in there, dropped it down like a periscope to peer around at all the bad news. Yes, thought Ana, this felt a little like that.)

Said Ana: “Right before arbitration, or, you know, a closing, then I stay a bit later.” Ann Silvan looked confused. “But usually six. Earlier if I can.” She was shaving hours off her day the way her mother had shaved years off her age. James cleared his throat.

“I’m here, though. I’m with him all the time,” said James.

“When he’s not at daycare,” Ann Silvan corrected him. Then she smiled. “May I spend a little time with Finn alone? Just a few minutes.”

Ana and James nodded.

“We’ll be downstairs, Finny. Ann’s going to play with you for a little bit,” said James. Ana was already on the stairs.

“Did you hear that dig about my job?” whispered Ana.

“At least you have a job,” said James.

They sat on the couch. The coffee Ana had prepared grew cold on the table in front of them. Ann Silvan had left a tiny bite mark in a Leibniz cookie.

“I really hope she’s not sexually abusing him up there,” whispered James.

“Don’t. I’ll start laughing,” said Ana.

“She could be nasty. What do we know about her? We should go to her house with a little pad of paper and f*cking—”

The door upstairs opened and Finn came hopping down the stairs, both feet on each step. James leapt up to monitor his descent. Ann Silvan followed.

“Everything seems good,” she said, moving toward the coat rack in the hall. Ana rose from the couch, surprised.

“I’ll write up my report. I know you’re seeing the lawyer in a couple of days, correct?” Ann Silvan’s black coat had a massive fur collar. Ana looked for eyes in it as Ann and James exchanged information and schedules. Finn sat on the bottom stair folding a plastic robot, trying to turn it back into a truck.

“Can I ask you a question?” said Ann, with her hand on the door.

“Of course,” said James, fear rising up to his shoulders. This is when they take him.

“Are prices dropping in this neighbourhood, since the crash? Where we are, things have really fallen.” James exhaled.

“Where are you?”

“Out in the east end. Downtown was the way to go, wasn’t it? We should have stayed downtown.”

James felt embarrassed now. His home suddenly seemed designed solely to humiliate Ann Silvan.

“Well, Ana’s the money manager. She knew it was a good investment. We’re, you know, lucky,” said James.

“Yes, you are,” said Ann Silvan. Ana searched the comment for a sneer, to no avail. Ann crouched down to Finn’s level. “I’ll see you soon, Finn. Be happy.”


James had the telephone tucked under his chin.

Ana, on the other end of the line, spun around slowly in her office chair, picturing the house where James stood. She knew that the housekeeper had left two hours ago, and that by the time she got home, one basket of folded laundry and shiny floors would be the only signs of her efforts. It was constant, the garbage bags and diaper bins full, then empty, then full. What went in to the body came out of the body, into Finn’s pants, onto towels and cloths. The small, environmentally friendly washing machine for two, tucked behind a door in the corner of the kitchen, was suddenly ridiculous, barely able to contain all the secretions he generated. Then they migrated to James, handprints on his T-shirts and stained cheek imprints on his sweaters.

“I have to go to the lawyer’s,” said James, crunching Cheerios under his stocking feet. Finn was picking up the ones that didn’t get crunched and stacking them, placing the occasional Cheerio in his mouth. “You need to take Finn in the afternoon—”

“James, I’m working. I need to get my hours up this week. I took the afternoon off last week. Can’t he go to daycare?”

“It’s not his day. You can’t just drop them when you want. It’s not a kennel.”

“Can we get a babysitter? I can’t miss any more work—”

“It’s one afternoon. Tell them you have another doctor’s—”

“I’ve missed drinks twice—”

“Jesus, really? Drinks?”

“It’s marketing. It’s part of the job.”

James pictured Ana in that chair in front of her computer, spinning and spinning.

“You have to be back here by two.”

Ana paused. “I have another call.”


In the afternoon, James waited for her, circling near the living-room window, checking his watch. Finn babbled and hummed, pulling books off shelves and flipping through them, then chucking each opened book over his shoulder.

At 1:45 in her office, Ana tried to look like she was going to be returning later. She put her jacket over her arm in a casual way, as if she might be picking up a coffee. On the elevator, she thought of the women who had come back from maternity leaves and requested flexible schedules, part-time. It was a vocabulary Ana didn’t exercise, though theoretically, she was on side with that litigator who had brought up on-site child care (but the gym they put in was better). That litigator was long gone now.

When Ana’s cab pulled up, James was waiting at the door. He shot her an angry look: “I’m going to be late,” he said.

Ana shut the door, removed her coat. Then she noticed Finn, leaning against the credenza, looking up at her.

“Oh, hi,” said Ana.

“Park?” he asked.

“Sure. That sounds fine. Let me just check my e-mail.”

Finn said again: “Park?” His request seemed utterly democratic, as if it would go out to anyone he met. Ana nodded.

She clicked her BlackBerry as they walked.

What Ana noticed first at the playground was that the parents outnumbered the children. She had brought along an ethics committee report on soybean seeds, picturing herself getting a little reading in while Finn played. If Emcor had patented these seeds, which were living things, what did it mean for other kinds of seeds? Higher life forms. She had been investigating this phrase for days. There were issues of cloning and sperm banks. Could people be manufactured and trademarked too? Ana was sure that one day the law would kick a hole in the government’s feeble protections. She was sure that if she assembled the information right, Emcor could do whatever it liked.

It immediately became clear, as Ana and Finn opened the park’s iron gate and set forth, that reading did not happen here. The mothers shadowed their children, digging bigger ditches in the sand next to the children’s smaller ditches, boosting them onto the slides, scooping them up from the bottom of the slides. Where the kids went, the mothers were already there, their invisible sensors beeping, rushing ahead to intervene.

The first blow of winter was upon them, and a few kids had on hats. One Chinese girl wore a scarf, winter boots, gloves. Ana looked at Finn, who walked a little ahead of her. He wore a fleece jacket, runners. Ana wondered if he was cold, but what if? What could she do about it? She decided not to ask him.

“Want to go swing,” said Finn in his caveman dialect. Ana nodded, feeling a knot of anxiety as they approached the swings. They were all filled, but a mother was extracting a child – a baby, really; a baby on a swing! thought Ana – from one little bucket seat. Ana walked toward it quickly, with Finn in tow. She was lifting him up, always surprised by his weight, when a frizzy-haired woman appeared beside her.

“Excuse me, we were waiting for that,” she said. “There’s a line, actually.” She punctuated this sentence with a smile as insincere as a mime’s. Ana looked around, and sure enough, there were two other mothers queued a few feet away, gazing into the distance, pretending not to notice the confrontation.

“Sorry, I really didn’t know,” said Ana, lifting Finn out. He started to scream. “Swing! Swing!” She held him in space and his running shoes kicked at Ana’s thighs. “My turn! My turn!” Snot. Tears.

“Finn, no, I’m sorry. I didn’t know, I didn’t know,” said Ana, trying to put him on the ground. He threw his arms around her neck and his legs around her torso, refusing to let go, his wet face gumming to her neck.

Where Finn had tried to sit, the other kid swung cheerfully, pushed by her blank-faced mother.

Ana found a bench, sitting them down, lightly patting Finn’s heaving back as he whimpered.

A woman next to her lit up a cigarette. She was a little heavier than the other moms, and older, with a battered quality in the ridges of her face. There was no makeup on her eyes, but they were bright.

“I know Finn,” she said. “He goes to daycare with Etta.” She gestured at the Chinese girl in the hat, digging in the sand with her mittens.

Finn heard this, peeked out from Ana’s chest, his breathing slowing.

“Where Etta?” He spied the girl sitting in the sandbox and slid off, ambling toward her. Because Etta’s mother was sitting, Ana decided it would be okay to sit, too, wiping Finn’s wet marks from her neck with a Kleenex.

“How’s he doing?” asked the woman. Ana appreciated the directness of the question.

“He’s good, I think,” said Ana.

A father appeared, bracketed on either side by toddler boys. The littler one licked sand from his palm like sugar.

“You’re not allowed to smoke here,” he said. “And is that your dog?” A dog tied to the fence near the gate offered a bark for emphasis. The woman squinted up at him.

“First of all, I’m hardly blowing smoke in your kid’s face, and secondly, the dog’s tied up,” she said with that same matter-of-fact voice. “Call the f*cking parks board if you have a problem.”

The man paled. “You’re very rude,” he said.

“Your kid’s eating sand,” she took a long, dramatic drag on her cigarette and blew the smoke straight out in front of her like a finger.

The man gathered his children and they tottered away. Etta’s mother butted the cigarette with her foot, then picked it up and peeled off the paper. She sprinkled the last tobacco into the garden behind her, and placed the filter and paper in her pocket. “And how are you doing? Are you his aunt or something?” she asked.

“No, no, we’re just … friends of Sarah’s,” said Ana.

“Kids of your own?”

“No,” said Ana, wondering when this question would stop making her feel as if someone had just torn off the shower curtain while she was mid-scrub.

“Well, then, you’re probably really enjoying the park,” said Etta’s mother, with a grim smile.

“It definitely feels like a scene,” said Ana.

“Don’t talk to anyone about vaccinations or breastfeeding.”

“Good to know. Thank you.”

Ana noticed that Etta had made her way to the jungle gym, where she stood banging her head against a post over and over, laughing.

“We don’t know what it was like for her before—” said the woman, standing up.

“Before?”

The girl stopped her banging, and returned to digging next to Finn.

“In China. They showed us the orphanage and it was pretty nice, but now we’re hearing that’s not where they were kept at all. They really kept them in a shed or something,” she said, and then looked at Ana and smiled darkly, shrugging.

“That must be—” said Ana. “You must worry.”

“What can you do?” she said, lighting another cigarette, offering one to Ana, who shook her head no.

“There are these cases now, where it turns out the kids weren’t actually given up in the first place. You know that whole, ‘foundling by the side of the road’ idea?”

Ana nodded.

“Seems that might be a little exaggerated. Maybe some guy drives up on a moped, while the mother’s cooking or cleaning, and he just snatches the baby off the porch, sells her to an orphanage for a thousand bucks, which is a lot of money over there.”

“Jesus,” said Ana. “How do you know?” She pictured the adoption forms, unsigned, waiting in her desk at their house. Then she saw James in a long winding line marked RETURNS & EXCHANGES, the last of hundreds of white people clutching Chinese babies, taking them back like defective sweaters.

Finn and Etta were pulling each other’s hair now. Ana didn’t know if the squeals meant pain or delight. She was about to say something – but what – when the mother yelled: “Etta! No!”

Ana tried again: “So how do you know? What will people do?”

“Eh,” said the woman. “We love her. There’s very little to do but that.”

She picked up a courier bag from the bench. At this gesture toward leaving, Ana was filled with desperation.

“My name’s Ana,” she said suddenly, surprising herself. It was the kind of awkward introduction she suspected little children were enacting every few minutes on this exact playground; a proclamation, mired in need. But this woman had loosened a stream of loneliness that Ana hadn’t realized was hidden beneath all the events of the past few weeks. What she felt now, in this park, as Finn dug in the sand, was that she missed Sarah. She was aware of how selfish it was, but she missed Sarah’s friendship for herself. She missed her kindness. And if Sarah were back, if Sarah woke up, then Finn would be secure again, and Ana would be released. Sarah.

“Nice to meet you,” said the woman. “I’m sure we’ll see you here again.” She began to walk off and Ana, stung by rejection, looked away, up at the trees, considering all the hurt feelings circling a playground. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the woman stop after a few steps, perhaps confronted by her own embarrassment, wondering how much sympathy to give, what shape she should lend to this tragedy. Ana saw her waver and root around for her better instincts. She left Etta to the sand a moment longer and returned to Ana’s side.

“I’m Jane,” she said. “I don’t think I said that. And, uh, you know – good luck with this. I’m sure it’s tough.”

Ana nodded, blinking back her gratitude.

With his friend gone, Finn came to Ana and stood close to her legs, fingers in his mouth. He seemed to be scanning the playground for the next distraction.

“What should we do, Finn?” asked Ana.

He pointed outside the iron fence, in the general direction of the open park, toward trees and far off tennis courts. As they walked, he held out his hand, and Ana took it. She gripped the warm palm tightly.

Finn led her to a large tree and pointed up at the squirrels. There were two chasing one another around the trunk, first the brown one after the black one, then, with no warning, an unspoken shift, and the black one began chasing the brown one, furiously fast, their tales bobbing, ducking and weaving. Finn was laughing and pointing, and Ana laughed, too, brought up by his lightness.

“Silly!” cried Finn.

“They are silly,” said Ana. “Ridiculous.”

Finn was laughing so hard he dropped her hand, and placed his palms on his stomach like a small Santa Claus, shaking with giggles. Suddenly, Ana leaned down and hugged him. The gesture was a surprise to her but not to Finn, who separated from her embrace and then came in for another hug immediately, as if love was entirely expected.