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skin all around her mouth had been stained pink from some unknown substance. We looked at each other. Neither of us said anything, but I felt she was observing me with the cool eyes of a scientist, a zoologist perhaps. Her sober gaze was digesting the whole animal, pondering its behavior, and then, without a word, she acted. She lifted up Giraffey and held him out toward me. It wasn’t at all obvious what she intended by the gesture so, rather than take him, I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and patted the filthy creature on the head.
    An instant later I heard Lola call her daughter loudly and urgently and, taking Flora’s hand, which she accepted easily, naturally, I walked with her into the other room to greet Lola and Simon (in Snugli) outside the open screen door. I saw Lola register my face; what it looked like I have no idea—a red-gray mash of tears and mascara, probably—but her brow furrowed for a fraction of a second in sympathy. The young mother looked bedraggled at that moment, almost slovenly, in her cut-off jeans, a pink halter top, and earrings of her own making, two golden birdcages that hung from her earlobes. She had pulled her bleached hair back, and I noticed that she was a little sunburned across her nose. I remember these details because all at once I understood how glad I was to see her, and the emotion I felt has fixed the particulars of the encounter. By then it was around seven-thirty in the evening. Pete was off again and she was going to try to get the children to bed, and then, she said, with an open smile, she had a plan to break out a bottle of wine and eat the quiche she had made that day, and she would love me to join her, and I accepted with an enthusiasm that would have embarrassed me in almost any other circumstance, but which in this instance seemed entirely “normal.” My mother was at her book club discussing Austen’s Emma over a variety of cheeses, and I had no obligations of any kind.
    And so that was the night we tackled the double bedtime together. On my side, this involved a complex strategy of rocking, bouncing, and occasionally shaking the just-nrsed Simon, who seemed to have developed paroxysms in the gut vicinity. The little red man squirmed with discomfort, spat milk on my shoulder, and then, after straining mightily, let out in one heavenly, propulsive motion a gob of creamy yellow shit into his diaper, which I happily cleaned while examining his tiny, adorable penis and surprisingly consequential testicles and tucking up his bottom in a Pamper, and then I found a rocking chair, into which we settled, and I rocked and lullabyed the small scion of the family into the arms or, rather, the lap of Morpheus. Meanwhile, Lola waged a parallel campaign with the chattering, not-yet-four fruitcake, Flora, who dillydallied and shammed and bargained her way toward what Sir Thomas Browne once called the “Brother of Death.” Valiantly, how valiantly she fought the loss of consciousness with every possible ruse: bedtime stories and glasses of water and just one more song until she, too, exhausted from the rigors of battle, collapsed, knuckle of curled index finger inside her mouth, free arm flung out across bedspread featuring large purple dinosaur, while Giraffey and his companion, a peroxide beast stolen from the head of slumbering warrior, kept vigil from the bedside table.
    Lola and I ate the quiche and slowly got potted over the course of several hours. She lay on the sofa, birdcages catching the light, her tanned, round legs stretched out in front of her. From time to time she wiggled her bare feet, with their slightly dirtied soles, as if she were reminding herself that they were still attached to her ankles. By eleven o’clock I had discovered that Pete was a problem, “even though I love him.” Lola had been informed of my marital fiasco and a tear or two had dripped down both of our noses. We had laughed about our Problems as well, chortled loudly over their