Everybody Has Everything

HALLOWEEN DAY



On Halloween morning, Ana left for an early meeting while the house still slept.

James awoke to Finn next to him in bed, wide-eyed.

“Hey, man,” said James, reaching for him. “How long have you been there?”

“Long.”

After breakfast, James wedged Finn into his Panda suit, slipping black rain boots over the paws. The suit was too fluffy and the boots too small, and Finn appeared like an inflated toy from the knees up.

“Too tight!” said Finn.

James went to the kitchen for scissors. He removed Finn’s boots and the boy sat on his bum with his legs in James’s lap, expectantly.

“This will be better. You can just put the legs on the outside of the boots …” James strained as he cut open the bottom of the panda suit, aware of the blades slicing close to the small toes in their bright red socks.

James put a ski jacket over top of Finn’s panda suit. At every house, the boy stopped, running up strangers’ staircases to examine pumpkins on stoops. James dragged his injured foot, trying to keep up.

A paper skeleton attached to a door made him scream: “Dead!” And then he laughed. James called Finn back, calming him, then watching him sprint away again.

Finally at the door of the daycare room, James released Finn and the boy ran as if unhooked from a leash. Coloured pictures of bats lined one wall; white paper ghosts made of tissue paper balls hung from the ceiling. Across the room, Bruce, two silver hoops replacing the gold ones, smiled his mournful, supportive smile and waved at James.

As he waved back, James’s BlackBerry beeped. The sound had become less and less frequent over the past weeks. Exiting the daycare, James looked at it: Fun night. Going to the Ossington @ 10. Halloweeeeeen. Em.

He walked to the row of cafés, selecting the one with the unflattering mirror above his bald spot. James left his hat on and ordered a coffee and sank into a chair at the window. With his laptop open, he became one of several men gently clicking away. Then he pulled out Finn’s picture, the mouth-less boy floating in space. He stared at it for a long time. He wanted to hold Finn, wanted his body close to him.

Then he began to write. It made no sense, what he was writing. There was no money in it. There was barely a story. But he felt clear. He was writing a confession. And he continued to write, and in doing so, forgot about Emma and the green door, did not even notice it open. He did not look across the street and see the girl in the black coat put her key in the lock, checking the knob twice. He did not see her waiting at the streetcar stop just outside his window, or hear the sound of the streetcar, or notice her remove her gloves to root around for her bus pass. He did not see as it carried her away.


Leaving the café, James deleted the text. Tingling with accomplishment, stopped in a small CD store, a place where he had spent a few hours a week only a decade ago. He didn’t recognize the name of one single band in the window. It had happened, then; he was not just outside the loop, the loop was unrecognizable to him, a new shape entirely.

The girl behind the counter was difficult to take in all at once. She had a metal stud in her chin, another in her lip. Black eyeliner seeped into her acne. She wore black leather cycling gloves.

To this, James posed the question: “Do you have any children’s music?” She smiled, then, not bored, not angry, but young, very young and pretty under the armour.

“Sure. Follow me.” The children’s section was small, a single row underneath “consignment.”

“These guys are awesome. Local. This is a compilation, money goes to fighting poverty or something,” she pulled discs out one by one.

“I’m looking for a specific song. It has the word ‘light’ in it.”

The girl laughed. “That’s all you know? Who wrote it?”

“That’s what I’m telling you. I don’t know. This kid I know keeps requesting it. A song about light.”

“Man! That’s insane!” Still, she divided the row into two stacks and handed James half. They put their legs out in front of them, the discs in between like they were dividing Halloween candy. “Light … light …” she muttered. At the end of ten minutes, they each had three discs with songs containing the word light in the title.

“Thank you,” said James, pulling himself to standing.

As she bagged the discs, she said from her black chapped lips: “Thanks. That was fun, sir.”


Ana had missed three days of work. This long an absence was unprecedented, a fact underlined for her by others several times during the day. In a meeting, Christian’s small, loud greeting: “Nice of you to join us. How was Aruba?” But the evidence against Aruba was in the looking; Ana was pale, thinner. The skin around the bottom of her nose glowed, ravaged and chapped, its redness unsuccessfully damped down by copious amounts of foundation and concealer. But even tired and only slightly recovered, Ana fell deeply into her work, investigating those seeds spliced in laboratories. Genetically modified. Ana typed the phrase eight times in one hour. On the issue of patenting life forms, the Supreme Court says …

As a researcher, Ana could pluck the legal issues from any subject she was assigned like a butcher removing the feathers from a dead chicken. But the substance of the question only appeared to her when she stopped to blow her nose. She thought of the wands the doctors had put inside her, the optimism that her body could make something of itself. The doctors were certain that life could be inserted, removed, that pieces could be implanted in other people’s bodies, in other people’s lives, and that this future was something everyone could live with. But she had heard the weeping woman in the room next to hers at the fertility clinic, absorbing the bad news of another wasted round of carefully placed embryos. Ana was suspicious.

She had consented to the treatments, but had she ever really felt the need, the urgency? She couldn’t remember. James had felt it. He was rushing to the Petri dish; he was desperate to keep existing. Maybe that’s the difference between us, she thought.

At four o’clock, Rick Saliman appeared in her doorway.

Sitting himself down without invitation, he said: “Croissants. Café au lait. St. Laurent Boulevard. Bagels.” Ana nodded. She had long ago realized that speaking as little as possible around Rick Saliman was the best strategy. He would simply pile on top of her words anyway. “Have you ever been to Saint Joseph’s Oratory? People throw down their crutches and crawl to the top of the dome on their knees.” Rick was enormous. He crossed his legs in the little chair. Ana felt as if a dinosaur had entered her office.

“I’ve never been there,” said Ana.

“To Montreal?”

“No, the Oratory.”

“Me neither,” he said. “We need bodies in Montreal. They’re struggling since the restructuring.”

“Bodies?”

“Your body, Ana. Would you consider it? They’re desperate for a first-class researcher. A transfer? Not permanent, just six months or so. Unless you wanted it to be permanent.”

“I don’t—”

“It’s a given that you’re beyond capable. But you’re also mobile. With James working on his book, no kids – it’s an opportunity.”

Opportunity was another word for chance. Ana felt that she had a very close relationship to chance these days. Futures kept raining down on her like cold hard pellets, scattering this way and that. She was not sure which way to look anymore. She liked the idea of making a decision one way or another. She liked the idea of croissants and a city without her childhood in it.

“Can you outline in more detail—” she began.

“—the proposal. Of course,” said Rick. “I’ll e-mail it this afternoon.”

He stood up, broadening as he did.

“I can’t say this officially, of course, but I believe this is the fastest way to equity partnership for you,” he said. “I think you could expect that within a year, pending review.”

Ana nodded. This was what she had wanted. It looked duller up close.

“You’ve been away,” said Rick at the door.

“I’ve been sick,” Ana said it quickly.

“Nothing serious, I hope?” The inquiry was a rough, ill-fitting effort, a delicate glass object in a big hand.

“Just a cold,” said Ana. But his point had been made. The afternoon cleaning Sarah’s house; the illness. These were to be the last absences. She was being as measured and monitored as a parolee. She needed to be in the chair.

At five-thirty, as the room darkened, Ana turned on her desk lamp and watched the man in the tower opposite hers reach around to turn off his computer. He buttoned his coat and flipped up the collar. Then, with his hand on the door and his back to Ana, he froze for a moment, as if steeling himself. He stood like that for long enough that Ana felt embarrassment, and looked away, checking her e-mail for the first time in an hour.

Subject: You should know

She clicked.

I’m writing you this because I think you deserve to know. Your husband is not a good man. Ask him about the girl in the black coat. Your being made a fool of. I think you deserve to know but Im sorry to tell it to you like this.

Signed,

A Friend

Ana’s practical sense took over even as her emotions drained out of her body. She checked the return address – a 1234 Google account. Garbage. Then she read it again, annoyed by the spelling and grammar. For all the appearance of intrigue, it wasn’t much of a mystery, really, she thought, as she fumbled for her coat, her fingers sticking on the buttons, her breath short.

Where did Ruth sit? she wondered. She came out of her office. Most desks still had people at the helm, bent and clicking keyboards, murmuring into headsets. A few were in the process of gathering their things to leave. She gazed across the room to the small, exposed cubicle in the centre. Ruth’s cardigan hung over the back of her chair, but her lamp and computer were off. The girl was gone.

A hand touched her elbow.

“What do you see?” asked Elspeth.

Ana shook her head, offered a smile. “Nothing. I think I should go.”

“Lucky you,” said Elspeth. “I’m here all night. I just lost one third of my team.”

“Who?”

“Do you remember that blonde girl? Sort of pointy?”

“From the party.”

“Right. Erin. She quit. She’s pregnant, so she quit. Can you imagine? The arrogance! She’s going to lose her mind. She has no idea what’s in store.”

Ana nodded. She began to cough violently, retreating to her office. She found her briefcase and, turning out her light, stopped and looked again out the window at the office opposite hers. She half-expected the man to be standing there still caught in his reverie, but the lights in his office were out. Ana clicked off her own.

She decided to walk home, in the direction of the hospital. Ana couldn’t see the need for drama, for the rush home in the taxi. This uninvited e-mail would not ruin her plan for the early evening.

The sun had set and once in a while she passed an office worker in costume: a witch carried a briefcase in one hand. A man in a suit wore devil horns.

The lobby of the hospital was crowded with people in face masks, and at first, Ana thought this was simply a part of Halloween. Then she realized they were real; was there a new infection for her to be afraid of? She couldn’t muster anxiety over theoretical viruses, even when the security guard insisted she accept a squirt of hand sanitizer. In the crowded elevator, every person but Ana had a white cotton mask across the mouth, staring straight ahead. Ana coughed. Around her, pieces of faces cringed.

Ana found Sarah’s room easily. The other beds in the ward were empty; one was stripped to the mattress, another was missing an occupant but maintained the veneer of a dorm room, with magazines caught in the sheets, and photos taped above the bed. Fresh flowers sat on the bedside table.

Sarah’s table was empty.

Ana’s eyes followed the path of the tube jutting from Sarah’s neck collar to the machine, blurting its rising and falling noises. Her jaws hung open, dry at the corners. But the stitches were gone, leaving a web of pale red lines.

Ana removed from her bag the two framed photos of Finn she had taken from Sarah’s house those weeks ago. She placed them on the table next to the bed, adjusted the pictures so Finn was facing Sarah. Ana pulled a chair from the wall and moved close to the bed. It wasn’t only work that had kept her from the hospital until now. What she had feared the most was exactly what she felt, finally sitting next to her friend: that Sarah was a sign of Finn’s future sadness. This barely breathing body was an absence that Finn would have to endure, and Ana and James would never be enough to sooth that agony. All the warm rooms and square meals would never stand in for this body that made him, that loved him from that first breath.

Ana smoothed the sheet by Sarah’s face, pressing down on the cool mattress. She remembered the warm chaos of Sarah’s house, the dirt and disorder and Sarah’s huge, unplugged laugh. She wanted to tell her about the madness in her own life, but it was nothing compared to the madness that was waiting for Sarah if she woke. She should tell her about Finn instead. But there was too much to tell, and around her, from the hallway, the murmurs of the ill.

Instead, she whispered: “I can’t do it.” And then: “I don’t want to do it.” And then: “I miss you.”

She leaned down and left a small kiss on her friend’s forehead.

“I’m sorry,” said Ana.

A nurse entered, black hair in cornrows.

“Are you James’s wife?” she asked. Ana startled at the familiarity, wiping her eyes.

“Yes.”

“She’s doing much better,” said the nurse. “Look.” Ana looked down at the bed. The second finger on Sarah’s right hand moved slightly, as if beckoning her. Ana gasped. The finger went flat again.

“She can hear you. At least, I think she can, and so does your husband,” said the nurse. “Your husband was right to hold off on moving her into long-term care.” Ana absorbed this information. She was quick to cover up her confusion – decisions, life-changing decisions had been made, and Ana, once again, unconsulted.

“When was he – how often is he here?”

“He’s here every couple of days,” she said. “It does help her.”

Ana nodded. She pulled herself to standing position, still nodding. The nurse suddenly seemed to realize that she may have betrayed a secret, and mumbled a few incomprehensible words before rushing from the room.

Holding herself steady, Ana closed the door hard. Her vision blurry, she banged into the nurse’s desk on her way down the hall, and a plastic pumpkin came tumbling to the ground. She kept walking.


James took the call as he walked toward the daycare. He had a video camera in one hand, the cell in the other. Doug announced himself in his usual way: “Jaaaaaames,” he said.

“Hi, Doug.”

“How goes it? You didn’t come to dinner.”

James was tempted to scurry for an excuse, but he didn’t. He thought about the CDs at home for Finn. He wanted to see if they could find the song. “Yeah, sorry, man. Ana’s been sick. It’s busy.”

He shouldn’t have worried; that part of the conversation had been pretence. Doug said: “I have a proposition for you.” The words came at him in the same kind of indecipherable rush that his firing had: “We’re doing this doc and we need a producer.” James was nearly at the daycare. He could hear the shouting of children in the yard, mismatched sounds of terror and laughter.

“You know what? I can’t talk right now—”

“Don’t you want to hear what it’s about? You’ll love this—”

James stopped him. “I’m picking up my – I’m picking up Finn right now. It’s Halloween. So can I call you back tomorrow? Is that cool?” The shrieking got louder. “Doug, you know what? You’re going out on me. This phone is shit. I’ll call you tomorrow. Thanks for thinking of me, man.”

Finn had his coat over his panda suit. He was waiting at the door for him, vibrating with excitement.

“Camera!” he called, pointing at the camera. James took his hand. They walked along the street quietly.

After a block, James said: “You know, I used to have a job. That’s a little factoid about me that you may not know.” He cautioned Finn to look both ways at the crosswalk. They continued on.

“I don’t know if I really want that job anymore. But today I was thinking: a camera is a very useful thing. Beautiful even. And I can’t think of anyone I’d rather make a movie with. Do you want to make a movie?”

Finn looked up at him and nodded.

“Let’s make a movie,” said James.

All the way home, James took footage of Finn. Finn ran up staircases. Finn sat on a manhole. Finn kicked at leaves. He stopped every few minutes to look at James’s footage, entranced by his own image in the camera’s small window.

But when they got to the park, Finn stopped suddenly.

“What now?” he said.

James put the camera down on a picnic table and stood next to Finn, both caught in the camera’s square eye.

“Now this!” And James beat his chest and began yelling up to the sky. “RARARRARA!” A few trick-or-treaters ran past, giggling, trailed by a mother who glanced at James nervously. James jumped up and down. “RARARARARRR!” he screamed. He made gorilla sounds, scratching his armpits and leaping in the air. Finn looked up at him, grinning. “RARARA!” said Finn. He beat his own small hands against his panda chest and ran around James in circles. “RARARARR!” he called, too, circling and circling and circling.





HALLOWEEN NIGHT



It happened because the door was open. The sun had just set and the trick-or-treaters arrived immediately, released with the darkness. A baby butterfly in the arms of her father. A trio of Chinese kids on the verge of adolescence who hadn’t bothered with costumes.

“Do a trick,” James demanded. The kids looked at him blankly. Finally, the tallest one began singing Happy Birthday in a thick accent. James cut him off.

“Never mind. Forget it.” James handed each of them two miniature chocolate bars from a blue glass bowl.

The doorbell kept ringing. James decided to prop the door open with a chair, leaving the bowl of candy on top.

“Ready!” said Finn. It was true. He stood in front of James, arms at his side, grinning broadly, his face shrunken by the fluffiness of the panda hood. The legs hung over the boots, raggedy and odd.

“I’ve got to take a leak. I’ll be right back,” said James.

Finn hopped on the couch and stared out the window at the creatures on parade in the falling dark. James was gone for less than a minute – forty seconds? Thirty seconds? He would be asked for the exact number of seconds several times. He zipped up his fly as he emerged from the bathroom below the stairwell. No, he had not washed his hands, because he was rushing, because he was aware of the boy alone.

“Ready Freddy? Let’s get some loot!” He emerged into the living room to find the white leather couch empty.

“Finny?” called James. He moved quickly through the rooms, his eyes landing on the open front door. A Spiderman appeared in the space, his finger on the bell.

James shoved past him and onto the porch.

“Trick—”

“Just take it,” said James. He looked down at a mother on the sidewalk.

“Did you see a panda? I can’t find my – there’s a boy – he’s two—”The woman shook her head.

“Your son?”

James didn’t answer. “He’s in a panda costume—” James said this as he walked backwards into the house. “Finn! Finny!” He began opening cupboards, closets. Without hesitating, the woman followed James inside.

“When did you last see him?” she called to James, who had sprinted up the staircase. The woman crouched down, checking under the couch. Spiderman, a few years older than Finn, opened closets and cupboards, too, following James’s lead.

“I’ll check the basement. Is your wife here?” The woman called up the stairs. James peered down at her, a stranger with a kind, unyielding look, the firmness of a beloved librarian.

“She’s on her way home from work. Yes, yes, check the basement.”

She did that, too – how long? How long these footsteps – and returned to the main floor.

“Upstairs again,” said James. He led her up to the long, dark floors of the hall, into the white bedroom.

The woman said: “You have a beautiful home. It’s so clean!” Then she put her hands to her mouth: “I’m sorry. That was inappropriate.”

“It’s fine.” James had a sensation in his stomach of bread leavening, something expanding, moving up into his chest.

Spiderman followed, homing in on the guest bedroom that was only half transformed into a child’s room. He picked up Finn’s Moo blanket, twirling it around by the head. Quickly, his mother pulled it from his hand and laid it across the quilt.

“I’m calling my husband,” she said, pulling a cell phone from her jacket.

James nodded. Finn could not be found. The house was stuffed with his absence. James could smell him, peppery and sweet; he could hear him howling outside to come back in, straining at the windows. He put his hands out for his hair, his warm skin – and then dropped them to his sides.

James ran outside, jogged up the street calling: “Finn! Finn!” Small children moved aside, and he leaned down, walking crouched, trying to see their faces, to see through the masks and hoods. None was Finn. James went the other way, south, weeding through the bodies. He was out of breath, sweating in the cold. None was Finn.

James ran back to his porch, certain Finn would be there, waiting, but there was only a man on the front steps, hulking and peering through the open door. Chuckles. Spiderman clung to his leg.

“My wife called me,” he said.

A stream of fairies and princesses moved up the stairs. The sun had set now; the sky was black. The trick-or-treaters wore bright armbands on their wrists and ankles. Some waved glow sticks, artefacts from parties James had once attended. Spiderman passed out candy from Ana’s bowl.

James could not meet Chuckles’s eyes. He began to speak, tumbling: “He was here. I went to the bathroom—”

“Do you have a picture?”

James nodded. He floated up to the guest room, and took the photo of Finn with Marcus and Sarah that rested on the bedside table, a boy being hugged on both sides by his mother and father. He glanced at it, at the breadth of Finn’s smile. He went into the bedroom and grabbed his camera, too, with the footage from the afternoon.

Chuckles said nothing about the parents in the picture.

“My buddy’s a cop. Hang on.” He dialled his cell phone, speaking into the earpiece that was permanently clipped to his skull like a hearing aid.

On the street, Sandra Pereira, Chuckles’s wife, was standing at the centre of a circle of adults. Chuckles handed her the photo. They glanced back at James, fear bouncing back and forth between them. They looked focused, ready, as if they had been practicing for this. Sandra returned to James on the porch and drilled him: What was Finn wearing? How tall? How heavy? Where did he like to go?

James pressed a button on his camera and they watched Finn on the small screen, jumping and yelling in his panda suit, bouncing in the leaves. Chuckles appeared and watched, too. Sandra put a hand on James’s shoulder and squeezed.

James turned off the camera and went through Sandra’s questions, one by one. He knew every answer.



The buzzer was broken. Ana knocked loudly. No one came to the door. She stood on the porch, glancing at the stained seats from the car, wondered if there was a key hidden inside one of the tears. Then she tried the handle of the door, and with a turn, it opened.

The shoes remained in their jumble. Today the hallway smelled of vinegar. She moved up the staircase, hand on the loose rail. She could hear the explosions, the sound of gunfire and battle. She knocked.

“Come in!” a voice called. Ana opened the door. Charlie’s roommate was on the couch, console in hand, thumbs flying. Charlie sat next to him, attached by a chord to his own plastic box. He glanced at her once, blankly, then again with recognition. Startled, he dropped the box.

“Ana!” He stood.

“No! Chuck! Keep going!” shouted Russell, grabbing for Charlie’s box, trying to work two of them, one in each hand.

“What are you doing here? I mean, it’s fine, it’s great—”

“I wanted to give you something,” said Ana.

“NOOOO!” Russell shouted. “NOOOO!” His forehead was slick with sweat.

“Okay, this is – the kitchen’s a mess—” said Charlie.

“Should we go to your room?” He opened his eyes wide, nodded. Ana followed him down a corridor.

“Sit down,” he said. The bed, tidily made, filled almost the entire room, so Ana sat on the edge of it. A white curtain covered the window. Charlie grabbed a wadded T-shirt from the sheets and tossed it into the old armoire.

“You don’t have much stuff,” said Ana.

“Really? I always feel like I have too much.”

He stood in front of her, and then sat down. They were shoulder to shoulder, as if sitting on a bus. Ana reached into her purse and pulled out a brown paper bag.

“Here,” she said. Charlie removed a black notebook. He flipped through its empty lined pages.

“Thank you. I’m not sure – what made you—”

“I saw it. I don’t think you should get a BlackBerry. I think this is better.”

Charlie laughed. “A one-woman campaign against technology.”

“It’s also a bribe,” said Ana. “I might be going away for a little while. I’m not sure. I want you to take care of my mother. Will you do that for me? Will you just keep an eye on her until I get back?”

“Of course,” he said. “I’m always looking out for her, Ana. Even if you didn’t ask me, I would.” He tried to catch her eye, but she was gazing at the curtain. “Where are you going?”

Ana saw upon the white canvas of the curtain faint lines like rivers, crossing and cutting.

“I don’t know,” she said. She could feel Charlie’s arm near hers, the fraction of space between them. She could imagine her hands on his neck, the roughness of his jaw. She could feel it without doing it, even the aftershocks, the mess. And then she thought: No, it’s not true: in fact, you don’t know how this will turn out. She had always tried so hard to anticipate every step before it landed, but now she didn’t even know who would be in her home, or where that home would be. And that thought set her freight free.

Ana stood.

“Thank you,” she said, turning for the door.

“Ana, wait—” But she was gone, through the battle and the electronic bloodshed, past the man on the couch who was wailing now as if he were injured.

Outside, she moved fast through the trick-or-treaters. The sound of fireworks had begun, explosions in the distance, some nearby, but untraceable, popping from alleys and behind cars. The sky, far away, was streaked hot red.


James knew Finn’s height, his weight, the colour of his socks. He repeated these things.

Ana turned onto their block. She watched a man and woman walking quickly, knocking on one door and the next, like urgent trick-or-treaters without a child. Then she saw the crowd on the sidewalk in front of the house, James in the centre. She sped up, and then slowed down. Should she rush toward this dark thing in front of her? Yes, she decided. Finally, yes, and she broke into a jog.

Ana was next to James. He looked at her blurrily.

“You’re the mother?” asked Sandra.

“What?” asked Ana.

“Yes. Basically,” interrupted James. “Finn is – I can’t find him.”

Ana blinked, took in this information. “When—”

“About forty-five minutes ago. I don’t know. An hour. They’re looking.”

“Who? Who are these people?” asked Ana.

“Neighbours, I guess,” said James.

Ana went inside the living room, and saw a man in construction overalls on the phone. Chuckles looked even browner against the white furniture. He held out a hand.

“Mario Pereira,” he said. His hand was gentle in Ana’s. “Pleased to meet you. My buddy’s a cop. They’re on their way.”

“Cop,” Ana repeated, letting the blunt magnitude of the word settle. “When are they coming? Did you look everywhere?” But Mario had turned, was speaking into the Bluetooth, passing on the colour of Finn’s boots.

James followed Ana as she moved through the house, bending to peer below tables, into cupboards.

“He’s probably hiding in the basement,” she said, trying to coax the words out normally.

“People are looking,” said James. He corrected himself: “We have looked.”

In the kitchen, the back lights were on the porch, flooding the yard. Ana and James saw it as if for the first time. The workers had finished. The limestone pieces fit together like the jagged countries on a map. The knee-high grasses around the perimeter swayed.

But there were two people in the back yard, strangers, a young couple in their twenties.

Ana opened the French doors.

The girl, wearing a loosely knit hat topped by a large pink flower rushed to Ana, grabbed her hand.

“We’ll find him, don’t worry,” she said. “I’m Erica. That’s David. We rent the apartment next door.”

“Yes,” said Ana. “I’ve seen you. Thank you.” David was shaking James’s hand. James was looking over his shoulder, eyes on the tall grass swaying.

“We looked in every inch of this yard,” said Erica quietly. “Several times.”

James walked around them, off the limestone and into the garden.

“Dude, he’s not in there,” said David. The bored, rock star voice struck James as untrustworthy, and he kept moving, pushing apart the grasses, squatting in the shadows. Nothing.

He sprang up and left the two of them, rushing inside. All the doors were open, front, back. A chill had entered the house.

“I’m Sandra Pereira, Mario’s wife.” She extended a hand and Ana thought quickly: I have shaken too many hands today – but the hand landed, instead, on Ana’s shoulder. The woman’s voice was grave: “The police are here.”

The police were a young man and woman, almost as young as the couple in the back yard. They looked awkward in the white club chairs opposite Ana and James. The woman sat right on the edge, her ponytail swaying.

“When did you last see your son?” asked the male officer.

“He’s not our son. We’re his guardians. His father died,” James was growing angry at this question, the complication in it.

“You adopted him?”

“No, not yet,” said James. Ana absorbed the last word of the sentence. Everything had been decided somehow, when she wasn’t looking.

“His mother’s in the hospital. You can call his social worker if you want,” said Ana.

James blinked at her.

“It doesn’t really matter right now. The main thing is, we need to find him,” he said.

Ana was scrolling through her cell phone for the number of Ann Silvan.

“Here’s the social worker’s number.” She handed the phone to the woman cop.

“Ana—” said James. Her trust in authority made James’s stomach churn. In the look on his face, pained and nauseated, Ana saw suddenly what he was afraid of, saw holes that they might slip inside, court rooms, a boy removed. But had she not recognized this possibility when she handed over the number? Perhaps she had. Perhaps she was orchestrating a quick, swift conclusion. Was she now this kind of person? But no, she told herself, I just want to do it above board. I just want to be honest.

And James next to her, could feel her cycling through these thoughts, could see her abiding every formality, filling in every blank, and he loathed her, he loathed her. She was risking everything.

They sat there as the police officers spoke, and both Ana and James silently arrived at the exact same thought, bristling with shame: I am not sure what I am capable of anymore.

James said the things he had said several times in the past hour, perfecting his description of Finn. Each time he said it out loud – the panda suit, the black boots, the yellow-and-grey-striped T-shirt underneath – the horror grew a little more pronounced. Finn became smaller, farther away from him. The outside became darker.

“What do you do in cases like this?” asked Ana. “How will you find him?”

“We’ll engage all resources, ma’am,” said the woman cop. The woman cop spoke to Ana, and the man to James.

“What does that mean?”

“We’ll need to interview you both,” said the male cop.

“Now?” asked James. “I need to look. I need to be out there.”

In concert, the cops’ faces had narrowed from sympathetic to something distant, aloof. This shift began around the time James had mentioned the fact that they weren’t Finn’s parents. Ana saw them through the eyes of the police. She saw the house, white and empty (the housekeeper had come today, it was so damned clean), the childless couple within it, tourists to parenting. What had they done to deserve this boy? What did they know of little boys? She thought of Marcus, young and at the hands of his father, the scar below his lip. She thought of unknown little boys lured to drainpipes by bearded men. She saw James at the bottom of the ladder of images just because he was a man with a beard sitting next to his barren wife.

“Do we need to get a lawyer?” she asked. “I’m a lawyer. I can make a call.”

James turned to her. “What? That seems a little premature.”

“We’re not arresting you,” said the female cop. “We just need some information.”

“I think we should get a lawyer,” said Ana. “I’ll call Elspeth. No – I’ll call Rick.”

“What are you talking about? Ana, my God,” he turned to the officers, both of whom had assumed a studied blankness. “We’re happy to talk to you. We’re doing it right now.”

Ana said nothing.

“If it’s all right, I’ll talk to you in the kitchen,” said the male police officer, standing. James followed him.

“Can we shut the door?” the officer looked around for a door.

“Open concept,” said James. He led him to the breakfast nook by the garden, where two people continued to search behind plants that had been searched behind already.

The officer took out a small notebook, clicked his pen. James began to sweat, rivulets from his Adam’s apple down to his chest hair.

The officer asked him the time, the outfit, the names of friends. James moved through each question dully, feeling the water seeping through his shirt, approaching his sweater. His beard began to itch from the sweat.

“So he’s your nephew?” said the cop.

“No. He’s the son of a friend who died. His mother’s in the hospital.” The cop nodded, wrote in his blue scratch.

“And is everything okay with him here? Any fights or anything out of the ordinary this morning?” The bluntness of the question surprised James. He expected it to be gently bracketed: I’m sorry to ask you this, but …

“Yes. I mean, as okay as it can be. His father died. He’s living with strangers—” The cop paused, began to write.

“Don’t write that down. We’re not strangers. You know what I mean. We’re not family. We’re not his real family. But we love him like he’s our real family. Please don’t write the word strangers—” James was exploding with the need to get out of the kitchen, on to the streets. He could find him, he was certain. Finn would want to be found by James. He would rise like a gas from the cracks in the sidewalks, pull himself up from the gutters where he was hiding, and make himself solid and seen for James. “Please let me go look for him.”

The woman cop grinned at Ana, like a girlfriend happy the husbands have left the kitchen.

Ana found the constant shifts in the woman’s demeanour ridiculous, something studied on television. She craned her neck and saw James facing the cop across the nook table far away. They could be two guys waiting for the coffee to drip, except for the cop’s head bowed as he wrote.

“When did you last see Finn?” asked the cop, still smiling.

“This morning. No, last night. I was gone before he got up.”

“So your husband got him up?”

“Yes.”

“He fed him, dressed him, took him to school?”

“He doesn’t go to school. He goes to daycare three days a week. James took him.”

“We’ll need to get the number of the daycare,” the cop clicked her pen, flipped open a rubbery notepad like a small medical chart. She wrote something, shielding the paper from Ana. “So Mr. Ridgemore took him to daycare. Does he do that most days?”

“I told you. Three days a week.”

“I mean, he’s the one who gets him up?”

“I have to be at work very early. James works from home.”

“What does he do again?” she asked this in a false voice, the “again” a silly little effort at intimacy.

“He’s a writer.”

“Lucky you. Husband does all the hard stuff, huh?” she smiled. Her teeth were too small for her mouth. Ana wanted to snap them off, one by one.

“Did he call you today? Tell you anything about the boy?”

“Like what?”

“Did they have a fight? Anything unusual?”

“No. I don’t think I heard from him today.” The cop raised her eyebrow.

“Really? I got two kids, eight and ten, boy and a girl. If their dad’s with them, I’m calling every ten minutes: How are they? What’d you screw up? What’d I miss?” she was grinning. “They go to my mom’s after school. We never had to put them in daycare. We’re lucky like that.”

Ana said nothing, attempting to dissect this line of questioning, wondering if it was a strategy of some kind, or if the strain of contempt was how mothers were expected to talk to one another.

The cop held her gaze steady. After a moment of silence, she said: “Is there anything you want to say that you can’t tell me in front of your husband?”

Ana’s disdain for this cop and her simple view of the world rose up in her throat: the beautiful house must have the dungeon in the basement. The beautiful wife must barely survive the monstrous husband.

“There’s nothing I can’t say in front of him.”

The woman cop looked at Ana expectantly. Ana was meant to crucify him now, and she could have. She thought of the e-mail, and the secret visits to Sarah’s room. But she said: “James is a good father to this boy.”

The cop nodded. She didn’t write anything in her notebook.

“You should write that down: He’s a father to that boy. He would never neglect him. He would never hurt him. This is a freak occurrence, something that must happen every Halloween. Children try to get candy, they try to make their way without their parents, right? That’s what kids do.”

“Absolutely, Ms. Laframboise. Is there someone we can call to corroborate your being at work today?”

Ana found Elspeth’s number on her cell phone and handed it to the cop.

“Now please,” said Ana. “Can you stop talking and find him?”


Voices echoed up and down the street: “Finn! Finn! Finn!” People James had never seen before were crouched under cars, banging on doorways.

James saw Chuckles’s shadow looming, black on black night. He went to him.

“We’ve checked every house on that side of the street where people are home,” Chuckles said. “We need to finish this side, then cross over.”

They were in front of the brothel house. The windows were dark, almost invisible. An empty cat food tin, congealed, lay on the patchy grass by James’s foot.

“I think this house is a brothel,” said James. “I think there’s sex trafficking going on in there.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” said Chuckles.

James shook his head. He sounded insane. He always sounded insane around this guy. “Ah, f*ck! I don’t know. I have no idea what I’m talking about.” He went to the door and banged hard. No answer. He banged again. Chuckles stood behind him, saying nothing.

“Come on!” James kicked at the door, and his swollen foot shot heat up his leg. “F*ck! Mother f*cker!” He jumped up and down on his good foot, grabbing at his damaged toes.

Chuckles stepped in front of James and rang a doorbell.

“I didn’t see the bell,” said James.

The door flew open. A warm yellow light flooded the stoop, and churning music escaped, accordions and guitars and incomprehensible foreign moaning. A young woman stood in front of them with thin brown hair wearing sweatpants with the word “Juicy” crawling up one thigh.

“Yes?” she said.

Chuckles was forceful: “We’re looking for a kid. A kid’s missing. He’s almost three, blonde. Have you seen him?”

She peered behind the men, at the police car down the street.

“You are missing a boy? Lots of kids come to the door tonight but I don’t have candy. I don’t know. My English not so good. I sorry. You are police?” she said.

“No. He’s my son,” said James, not tripping on the word at all. “We’re just trying to find him. You’re not going to get in trouble.”

“No trouble. I have papers. I am legal. You want to come in?”

James nodded. He moved inside and stood in the living room while Chuckles wandered through the rest of house. If the girl objected, she said nothing about Chuckles’s explorations.

The living room contained nothing but an old couch, pink and faded. Books and notebooks lay scattered across the floor, English language text books, books with titles in unidentifiable, swirling script. On the fireplace sat a row of empty wine bottles enclosed in candle wax. The thin curtains were nailed to the windows, above the moulding.

“You live alone?” asked James, scanning for nooks and crannies and Finn inside them.

“No. We are three girls, all from Georgia. We come as nannies but it doesn’t work out for us. Now we are students. I am legal. My friends are not here.” She looked at him, squinted. “You live on the street also, yes? I see you. You want one drink?”

“No, thank you,” said James. After months of speculating, this reality seemed worse, somehow: there was no one to be liberated here, no Russian pimps, no gangsters. Just girls. Pretty girls. Students who don’t mind a little squalor and can’t take their garbage out on the right days. Girls he would have tried to f*ck two decades ago.

“Sit, please,” but James could not. He stood in the middle of the room, smelling something pungent, the music loud enough to block his thoughts.

“What do you do?” she asked.

“Do?”

“For job.”

James looked at her. “I’m unemployed,” he said.

She nodded. “Is very difficult time. Economy.”

Chuckles appeared.

“I don’t see anything,” he said.

“You, sir, you want drink?” Chuckles glanced at James.

“No thanks, lady.”

James reached into his pocket and held up the photo of Finn, Sarah and Marcus. The girl took it in her hands and held it close to her face.

“He is very beautiful, yes.” She passed it back. “Wait here.” She disappeared through a door. James avoided looking at Chuckles, knowing the relationship couldn’t sustain too much extra meaning.

The girl re-emerged, swiping her hair from her face. She held out a photo: a young girl, the hostess, only a few years ago. She sat on her knees between two boys, each on the edge of adulthood, wispy facial hair and acne. Above them stood her parents, tall and unsmiling. A Christmas tree covered in tinsel took up the background. The father’s downward smile matched his moustache. The mother had one arm on the girl’s shoulder, the other dangling uselessly at her side. They all wore cheap-looking sweaters. The photo was glossy, with fingerprints on the edges.

“This is my family,” said the girl. “My brother was hurt. You know about the war?”

James stared at that arm, that hanging arm.

“Of course,” he said. “What happened?”

“Oh, is a grenade, you know. He doesn’t look like this now, but he is fine. It is a miracle.”

Chuckles cleared his throat.

“Is sad, yes. But my parents are still in Georgia. This is the good news. And I think they will come here, and stay on this street. You can meet them.”

James imagined this, all the Georgians in his white living room, Ana passing flutes of Prosecco to spill on their polyester sweaters.

“I hope I do meet them,” said James. “Thank you.” Chuckles could sense that James was unable to move now; he put a hand firmly on the centre of his back, guiding him to the door.

To the girl, Chuckles said: “He’s at number ninety-four. Come by if you hear anything, please.”

She nodded, pushing her hair behind her ears.

“Yes, I will,” she said at the door. “Yes, we are neighbours. So I will look for the boy.”

The girl stood in the doorway with her arms wrapped around her torso, watching the men, one supported by the other.

They completed the street, door to door, ahead of the police, their pleas generating alarmed faces and offers of help. Neighbours put on their coats and followed them. Mothers stood on porches and watched them walk away, teary, grasping their children’s hands.

James crossed the street and continued south, banging on doors, while Chuckles stayed a few steps behind him, working his cell phone.

Finally, it was too late for trick-or-treaters, and the children vanished from the streets. Pumpkins were extinguished.

At the top of James and Ana’s block, a police officer ran a piece of yellow tape between two stop signs. No cars were permitted to drive on the road, and people gathered under the streetlights, organizing into groups to descend onto the streets beyond. A few of the adults were in costume. One middle-aged man was trailing mummy bandages. Ana, staring through the picture window, her arms wrapped tight around her body, recognized the mother of that new baby. She was dressed as Pippi Longstocking. The woman walked from car to car, peering in windows, the wire in the wig of red braids holding them in the air like smiles.

It had been nearly three hours.

James’s foot was throbbing, his stomach churning with hunger. He was far from home, so far that he couldn’t imagine Finn could have made it through the traffic alive. But he had no thought of stopping. Finn was somewhere, and he would find him.

Suddenly, Chuckles cried out. James turned. Chuckles was close behind, running, holding up his phone. His face was alight.

“Get home!” he yelled.

James broke into a run on his beaten toes. He tried to push aside the thought of the worst ending, ignoring the distant wail of an ambulance. It could not go that way, back to the morgue, back to the drawers in the bottom of a city hospital.

Then Sandra was coming toward him, jogging past the skinny Victorian houses, deking between the hovering people.

“You didn’t answer your cell phone!” she called.

“I didn’t hear it—” said James, and then he saw her face: joy. “We found him! We found him! Come home!”

He limped and dragged as fast as he could until he reached his house, the picture window framing a crowd of strangers. In the centre, Ana. And Finn, his head buried in her shoulder, the panda hood slack around his neck.

James pushed through the wall of people.

“He was in Mario’s van, can you believe it? He fell asleep in there,” called Sandra to his back.

“Oh my God, I left it open. Jesus Christ—” said Chuckles somewhere in the din of voices. But James couldn’t answer. He looked at Ana, and he could not identify the expression on her face.

“Finny,” said James, moving his own body around both Ana’s and Finn’s, collecting their bodies in his arms. Somehow, in the crush of limbs, Finn shifted and came apart from Ana, attaching himself at James’s neck. James took in his scent, the warmth of him, and the two stood separately, breathlessly.

“Don’t ever do that again,” whispered James. “You scared us so much. You scared us to death.”

“Okay,” said Finn.

When James lifted his head from the boy, Ana had already moved across the room, and stood talking to the police officer.

The crowd began to thin. The young couple from next door waved as they left.

“I can’t thank you—” said James and Sandra shushed him, taking her husband’s hand. Their son, the boy in the Spiderman costume, grabbed the final handful of candy from the blue glass bowl.



The bath was hot with lavender sweetness. James used Ana’s special bubble bath. He rubbed the washcloth over Finn’s shoulders. The boy did not feel fragile to him. This is new, thought James; he had always worried he would break him.

Ana sat on the toilet behind them, holding a white towel. James glanced at her and thought, ah, there’s the broken body. Her thinness shocked him.

He returned to Finn and began his patter: “What’s the boat do? Does the boat go pshew?” James picked up a yogurt container, flew it through the sky.

Finn squealed. “No! That’s airplane! Boat stays in water!”

“Ah, like this?” said James, driving the yogurt container along the side of the tub. “Vroom, vroom.”

“Noooo!” Finn was laughing now, his shoulders sprinkled with soapsuds. “That’s car!”

“Oh, I see,” said James. “This is a boat. Delicious!” He pretended to eat the yogurt container. Finn could barely contain himself, laughter pealed out of him. James glanced at Ana. She wasn’t smiling.

“Finn show you,” said Finn. He dropped the container on the water’s surface. It floated. “See?”

The phone rang. Ana handed the towel to James and left the bathroom.

James finished the routine: the small toothbrush, the Pull-Up, the flannel pyjamas covered in monkeys.

He sat on the bed and read to Finn a book about a mole looking for love. He laid the boy down, moved his hands along the sides of the body as if encasing him in a tomb. Then he leaned in, nose to nose.

“You can’t go anywhere without me, or without Ana,” said James. “Do you know that now? I was so worried.”

Finn wriggled his arms out of the quilt and reached for James’s face.

“Okay,” he said.

“What were you doing anyway? Why did you leave?”

A look moved across Finn’s face, inquisitive and pained. James braced himself. “I look for mommy,” whispered Finn.

James’s throat constricted. He put his hands on the boy’s face. He kissed one eyelid, then the other. “Yeah? You thought she was outside?” he asked. Finn nodded.

“I go home now?” he asked.

James took his hands from Finn’s cheeks, pulled at his beard.

“I don’t know, Finny. Your mommy’s really sick. You might have to stay here with us for a long time. Would that be okay?”

Finn searched James’s face. He didn’t reply.

“We would love to have you. We would be – honoured to have you live with us,” said James. His voice dropped to a whisper. “We could have this extraordinary life. We can do anything. I think it’s possible.” He stroked his arm.

“I go home,” said Finn.

James pulled the boy from the mattress, engulfed him. He assumed Finn was crying, but when he placed him back on the bed, he saw that he was wrong; only James had been crying.

With his head on the pillow, Finn’s eyelids fell, and he was asleep.


Ana was sitting in the kitchen nook, surrounded by dark windows. Her hands were clasped in front of her on the empty table.

James filled a glass with red wine.

“Want one?”

Ana shook her head.

He stood at a distance, leaning against the island in the middle of the room.

“Who called?”

“Ann. The police called her,” said Ana. “She’s coming by in an hour.”

James stared at her. “Did she say anything? Does she think it’s unsafe here for Finn?”

“I don’t know. She said it was procedure.”

“Procedure,” James paused, sipped his wine. “F*cking bureaucrats.”

Ana could not look at him. She could feel him standing there with Finn on his side. Their allegiance was suffocating. It had filled the house, crowded her out.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” said Ana. She felt strange as she spoke, dry.

James put down his wine.

“What do you mean?”

Ana looked out the window.

“I don’t want to be a mother,” she said blandly. James breathed. He saw her suddenly as something barely held together, like a stack of sticks that happened to be piled up on the chair. She was a liar. There was a lie in their house. Anger welled up in him.

“Why did we spend two years with your legs in the goddamned stirrups then, huh? Why did we spend thirty thousand dollars? What the f*ck are you talking about?”

“We didn’t spend it. I spent it. It was my money,” said Ana. “You wanted me that way.”

James stared at her. “You don’t get to say that.”

“I don’t? What do I get to say, then?” Ana turned from the window and locked James’s eyes. “How about: Who are you sleeping with? Or who did you f*ck? Was it in the bathroom at the club, like last time? Was it that classy? Or is it something real? Is it love, James? Are you in love with Ruth the temp?” The word love was twisted and wretched.

Then she turned back to the window, her voice returning to flat.

“Never mind, actually.” Ana continued, in the same blank voice: “I’m not sure what I’m looking at. I recognize this house. I think I do.”

“Ana—” said James. “Ana, it was nothing. And it wasn’t Ruth. This girl – this woman I worked with – not even sex, I swear—”

She waved her hand. “I don’t want to know,” she said.

James stammered, “What do you want me to say?”

“You never asked me what I wanted. We just kept moving somehow. We were grabbing at things as we moved along, and it seemed like the right moment, so we grabbed at a baby. But what if I never wanted that?”

“Don’t conflate this. You’re angry—”

“Yes, I’m angry,” said Ana. A blackness rustled in the yard.

“You did want a baby, you did. We both wanted it—”

“No,” said Ana. “I was relieved. I was so relieved. I went up to Lake Superior and I stayed in that hotel—”

“—when you lost the baby—”

“But it didn’t feel like a loss. It felt like a reprieve.”

James shook his head. “Don’t say it—”

Ana continued: “And a woman – if you’re a woman – you can’t say that out loud. Did you know that? You cannot say it—” Ana began to weep. Her body rippled, her face went liquid. James stared at her. He had not seen her cry in years. “Because it makes you monstrous. To not want to be a mother is a monstrous thing for a woman. It’s grotesque.”

“Don’t cry, Ana, please,” said James. He leaned across the table toward her, reaching for her hands. She kept them at her sides, hidden.

“Being with you was good for me because it was like being alone. You – you were your own planet. I could just watch you from down here. But now – you’re something different. You’re so small now,” said Ana.

James bent his head. He knew this was true; something had broken off from him, some potency that they had both pretended was not required. But what it had been replaced with was better, he thought, what it was replaced with was Finn. He, James, had in him, the possibility of something hallowed.

And then – the alley – the girl—

He expected the explanation to come up in him, to tumble from his lips, but there was nothing. He struggled: “I’m not good at being old, Ana. I don’t feel old, but I’m old, and I hate it,” said James. “I don’t know why I do the things I do. Nothing is wrong in my life. Nothing is wrong. We have everything. We even have a kid now.”

Ana shook her head. “You have a kid. You’re the father,” she said, rising to her feet.

He grabbed for her, knocking the glass of wine. It fell from the table, shattering on the tile.

“I wanted it. Ana, I wanted to be a father. I need it—”

“What do you think it’s giving you, James? Wisdom? It doesn’t change who you are.”

“It does, Ana.”

Ana shook her wrist free of James’s hand. “It was a great gift they gave us, really, these people we didn’t really know. The ultimate audition.”

She began pacing the room. She was still wearing her work clothes, and her black stockings made no sound as she moved back and forth, never glancing at James. She stepped through the wine, leaving footprints.

“Watch the glass,” said James.

The wine spread across the floor and suddenly, as if emerging from the dark puddle, James saw a future without Ana in it. He could call Doug about a job. He could sacrifice something. For the first time, he could see himself with Finn, two guys in a crowded apartment. Elsewhere.

It was ruthless in this way, the shift. It started only with this image, this ability to see a life even if it did not exist, like one of Finn’s picture books, like a segment for his TV show. It gathered momentum.

“Do you love me?” asked Ana.

She could not mean this, thought James, she could not be serious that in the end, he had to choose. When he considered the question, he knew the answer, he knew it by its weight, the scales of history upon it. The entire past of them, the creation of them, the idea of them, bore down upon him. But he could not answer.

Ana had her own picture in her head: the whiteness of a bed.

“You love him more,” she said. James crumpled against the wall, and slid to the floor, his feet out in front of him. His head slumped. Now he was crying, and Ana remembered: James is a crier. Ana knew that this was the kind of useless detail she would carry with her forever, long after they ended.

“It’s okay,” said Ana. “It’s okay. I don’t know if I love you anymore either.”

James shook his head. “I hadn’t answered yet,” he said.

“Oh, James,” said Ana. “You did. You answer it all the time. And it’s okay. We’re not enough. It’s too weak, this life we made. It can’t carry what we’re asking it to carry.” She crouched, ran her fingers over his slumped head: “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

“Ana—”

She began to pick up the broken glass. She made a stack of it on the counter. She took a piece of newspaper from the recycling bin and wrapped the glass in it.

“You are so careful,” he said.

She nodded, her hand on the newspaper, pressing down, feeling a slow searing pain in her palm.

As she did this, James came behind her with a cloth and began wiping up the wine, all of Ana’s dark footprints vanishing.


By the time Ann Silvan arrived, Ana had showered. They sat on the couch, side by side, Ana’s hair dripping down her neck, onto the collar of her sweatshirt. They answered more questions. Ann smelled of dinner. She apologized for not coming faster; her own daughter was ill from Halloween candy. Her demeanour had changed. She was warmer, less wary. Something had been proven in the handling of the averted disaster. They were publicly competent at last, but privately ruined.

James took her upstairs to look in on Finn. Ann Silvan went to the edge of the bed and leaned over his gently sleeping form. She didn’t wake him. She said she would return in the morning. She told them the police were not concerned, that everything was routine. She told them not to worry.


Ana took almost nothing from the house. A large suitcase stood in front of the James’s desk, where their printer sat. James leaned in the doorway as she ran off her tickets.

Down the hall, Finn napped.

“What about your books?”

“Don’t need them.”

It was the first time she had entered the house in a week, but she’d been in his dreams so much lately that her actual presence made James feel like he was asleep. He was exhausted: sleep came in quick furious bursts, electric with Ana, and then he’d wake and stay that way until the sun came up, looking at his empty room, his empty house.

Ana had been living in a downtown suite that the firm owned. She worked until one or two in the morning and then collapsed into bed. Only when James asked her about the hotel did she realize she couldn’t describe a single physical detail of where she’d been sleeping. Maybe wallpaper?

And now she was going to live in another hotel suite in another city.

“You’ll need your winter jacket,” said James.

“I shipped it.”

Seeing him made her angrier than she had expected. She didn’t flick aside her anger, either, but kept it close, her eyes down, pushing past him with her suitcase jostling his body.

“I’ll take it,” said James.

“Don’t,” she said. They collided a little, disentangled, and made it downstairs with Ana carrying the bag.

“Ana—” said James.

He shadowed her as she did one final sweep of the house, picking up a few letters and a reusable coffee mug. She considered the mug, then put it back down on the edge of a bookshelf where it had left a brown ring. She called a taxi on her cell phone, giving the address with the prickly awareness that she might never say it again.

In the living room, James moved in front of her. “Ana, I’m sorry. I said this in my e-mail: it was nothing, a drunken grope – I was going to tell you – I was even writing it that day—”

Finally, she looked at him, scanning his face angrily. James was relieved to have her eyes; it seemed like progress somehow. “So you get to shed your little story and I get a picture of my husband getting blown by a twenty-year-old?” said Ana. “I don’t want your confession. That’s your burden.”

Ana walked past him, kicking at the mess on the floor, the toys and dirty clothes. The entire house smelled like blackened banana. She opened the door. Leaves spun on the pathway outside.

James suddenly moved in front of her, slamming the door.

“Let me go,” said Ana.

“Ana, I’ve – been thinking—” He moved to grab her arms, then thought better of it and clasped his hands together. “Here’s the thing: We don’t have to live here, right? We could move to one of those small towns outside the city, with a big yard. People are doing that now. We could scale down. Maybe I could do something totally different, get into my music – you can take the train into the city. I’ll look after Finn – just simplify, right? Just get back to the land—”

“We were never on the land, James.” Ana tried to get past him.

“But we could try it. We could leave, and really try being a family—”

Ana threw her hands in front of her face and yelled: “I don’t want it! I don’t want to be raising everybody!” Her jaw clenched. “What if I had gotten pregnant? I’d be here, at home, glued to a baby, and where would you be? Off with some intern?”

“I would never do that to you.”

“But you did it.” She wiped her nose with her sleeve. “For one night, you did what you wanted. You’re always the one who gets to be free.”

“Okay then, let’s go back. Let’s go backwards. We’ll be like we were before, but with Finn—”

“And have more brunches? And go on more holidays? And all the time, you’ll be thinking: My empty wife. My poor empty wife. The one thing you need, the one thing that will make you grow up, I can’t give you. Do you forget that? Do you forget that I don’t make babies?”

“Neither do I! I can’t make babies either, you f*cking idiot!” James yelled. Ana went for the door, opening it. Again, James slammed it shut, blocking it with his body.

“Don’t go – I’m sorry – don’t go—”

“Let me go.”

“Don’t go—” Ana opened the door, and James slammed it again, louder. Ana breathed heavily.

“Ana, look at me.” She wouldn’t, her eyes fixed on floating space. “Don’t leave. You’re always leaving—”

The sound of fist on wood was a dull whack that left no mark, but James pulled his hand away and swore. Shreds of skin flapped from his knuckles, white as sheets. Blood seeped onto his wrist. They both looked down at the useless hand.

“What are you doing? What are you doing?” Tears were streaming down Ana’s face. “I can’t help you.”

She opened the door at last and he followed her, the blood from his hand seeping down his arm now. “Ana!”

The taxi idled outside.

Ana managed to carry the suitcase, and the driver met her halfway up the walk, grabbing one of them, glancing at James with suspicion.

At the same time, Ana and James heard it: Finn crying, distantly, through the open door.

“Ana—” said James, straightening, clutching his ragged fist.

“Go get him,” she said, and she meant it.

But James stood on the walk as the driver loaded her bags, and Ana climbed in. He stayed there as she shut her door, and the car pulled away. Only when he couldn’t see it anymore did he turn and stagger back to the house, and the boy waiting for him.