He flicked his cigarette butt into the garden.
In the car, Ana had a small white mint in her hand. As she held it out to him, James remembered all the women who had held out a hand to him over the years, uncurling a palm to reveal a joint, an ecstasy tab, a condom, a ZIP drive.
“Let’s go,” said Ana.
* * *
At 2:47, a sound, deep and dark. A moan, gathering strength as it awoke, fattening into a full scream.
James got up first, running down the hall in his boxer shorts, turning on lights, trying to flood it out. Ana was behind, walking quickly, arms around her torso.
“Finny, Finny,” said James. He could hear him but not see him, his eyes scanning the room, the empty bed, the quilt on the ground. And then he saw the boy, limp and piled in a corner on the floor, his head next to a bookshelf. The sound had returned to a moan by then, gaining momentum, like a police car getting closer.
“Finny,” said James. He gathered him up off the floor. His body softened in James’s arms.
The moan became a whimper, and then the whimper silenced.
Ana put the quilt on the bed and turned back the top in a triangle.
Slowly, James placed Finn on the bed. Instantly, the boy flopped toward him, hands up, the moan returned. James sat on the bed, rubbed his hand along Finn’s back, feeling his spine through the thin material of the borrowed pajamas. The boy quieted again, his breathing slowed.
James felt like he knew exactly what Finn was seeing, because he was seeing it, too: the wall coming toward him, the stupid thump of bodies on a dashboard, the shattered glass. Or maybe it was just a kid’s monster, a purple one with bony knees. Finn didn’t have the language. There was no way in.
“I’m going to stay here for a while,” James whispered.
Ana nodded, useless again. She straightened the cushions on the floor surrounding the bed, then left them alone.
Finn ran up ahead of James, stopping at the fence enclosing the playground. James glanced down at the piece of paper in his hand with the address on it and then up at the sign: FAMILY PLACE DAYCARE. He had walked by the gray stone building, a former elementary school, many times and never considered who was inside. So Finn was changing the city for him, too. James remembered that when he finally bought a car, auto body shops seemed to suddenly spring up everywhere, tucked between the buildings in the neighborhood where he lived, previously unneeded and therefore invisible.
Early in the morning, when the sun was just rising and Ana and Finn still lay sleeping in their separate rooms, James had walked to Sarah and Marcus’s. He had a key, and implicit permission, but a neighbor appeared immediately on her porch next door, peering at him. They had met before—James remembered that she was a teacher, like Sarah, and Marcus complained that while she was going through her divorce, she whaled on some kind of brass instrument at all hours of the night. The neighbor informed him that she was looking after the cat (There was a cat! thought James, stung by all he couldn’t remember) and had put a lamp on a timer. “I suppose you’ll be taking care of the rest,” she said.
James nodded weakly.
Inside, the one lamp made everything seem darker. James felt criminal. He couldn’t bear to look around. He would find the address of the daycare only and leave the rest to Ana. He tiptoed through the domestic scramble of dishes and strewn clothes. On the fridge he found a handwritten list of phone numbers: M at Work, M: cell, S: cell, Dr. Garfield, and Family Place Daycare. He took the paper, picturing himself on some future day carrying Finn, hot with fever, into the office of this Dr. Garfield.
Now, at the gate of the daycare, James looked around: So this was where Finn spent his three days a week away from Sarah.
“James open gate?” Finn called. The cheap black sneakers from the social worker looked gigantic and theoretical on his feet, an idea of sneakers sketched in a factory by someone who had never seen them.
Finn led James inside the building by the hand, toward a hook marked with the name FINN in a laminate square. Finn had already removed his red hoodie and dropped it on the floor, then his baseball hat, a breadcrumb trail behind him as he ran down the hallway in a race with a smaller black-haired girl. James was a beat behind, picking up after Finn, putting the coat and hat on the hook, walking quickly to keep up.
A woman did the same, collecting her daughter’s droppings. James glanced at her hair; it must have been a style at one point, but now it was just a shape, a rectangle. Her eyes were padded with exhaustion. James turned on a smile and tried to catch her eye, hoping to share a moment of parental chaos. But she looked straight ahead and strode away, putting distance between them.
The classroom was a whorl of sound, high-pitched. One wall was covered in paper plates painted different colors: some splattered, some entirely solid, one or two with just a brushstroke. James moved closer, scanning for Finn’s name like he would at a gallery opening.
“You must be with Finn,” said a voice next to him, a man with two gold hoops in his ears and a glowing bald head. He held out his hand: “I’m Bruce, one of the educators in the preschool room.”
“I’m James,” he said, surprised by the man’s strong grip. “Finn’s—” They looked at each other, waiting. “Guardian, I suppose.”
Bruce nodded knowingly and ushered James to the sink, out of range of the children.
“We heard what happened from the social worker, and we’re all so unbelievably, unbelievably sorry,” he said.
“Oh, I believe you’re sorry,” said James with an awkward laugh. He became glib when nervous. But Bruce was not the kind of person to be hindered by other people’s responses. He continued.
“I want you to know that I personally have taken a training seminar in children’s grief, and everyone is on alert,” said Bruce. “Sad to say, but it’s not the first time we’ve had a child lose a parent.” James glanced at the circle of kids sitting cross-legged on a blue carpet, eyes upon a young woman reading a book out loud: “Olivia likes to try on everything!” Their size was incompatible with Bruce’s admission; how could these children possibly contain such sadness? Where would it go?
“Where do you take that kind of seminar?” asked James. At the five-minute mark, he had learned that Bruce had a B.A. in social work, and an Early Childhood Education Certificate. He hated the caseload as a social worker and always wanted to run a daycare, but it’s unusual for men to work with children in this day and age with all the suspicion, and on and on and on.
Oh, how much people will share. James saw Bruce naked in animal form, snarling and crouched in waiting, praying to be asked to spring upright and grunt out a story.
“How is Sarah doing, anyway?” asked Bruce, laying a hand on James’s forearm.
James was struck by guilt: He had not been thinking of Sarah. He had considered the situation decided.
“We have to wait. The prognosis is still vague.”
Bruce nodded. “Just keep us informed.”
“Same here,” he said, gesturing toward Finn, who had separated himself from the circle of readers and was stacking plastic animals: a bear riding a tiger; a hippopotamus astride a dinosaur.
“I’d like to live in that world,” said James.
“Pardon me?”
“A world where a tiger gives a ride to a bear. You know, everyone helping one another out.” He was joking, but Bruce lit up.
“If only!” he said.
James turned to find Finn, anticipating his first public sendoff. But the boy was captivated by the stacking animals, frowning as each pair toppled.
Suddenly, Bruce let out a chirp: “You know, James, I remember you from TV, right? Aren’t you on TV?”
“I used to be.”
Bruce clapped his hands together.
“Ha! I knew it! You know, we have a lot of famous people at this daycare. Ruby’s mom wrote that cookbook, the one about organic baby food? And in the kindergarten room, there’s a little boy named Luke whose mom was in that miniseries, the one about the hockey wives?”