The door to Finn’s room was open. Ana peered in at him, so small on the double bed. In the light from the hall, she saw that he had kicked off the quilt and lay sprawled on his stomach like a starfish, his back rising and falling. Ana shut the door, but after walking down the staircase, she questioned this gesture, wondered what fears he might have in him that only light could slay. She returned, opened it slightly. The boy had flipped onto his back, his arms still sprawled.
Outside, Ana felt the crack of the day opening wide as she ran. The streets were cold; she should have worn gloves, a hat warmer than the baseball cap on her head. She ran north, up the slight hill, past the houses that were beginning to rattle and stir. A light on here, a light there. She saw an old gray woman at a window, sipping from a mug. This woman lived only three houses from Ana, but Ana had never seen her on the street, did not know her name. She ran a little faster.
By the brothel house, a bag of garbage sat inside a recycling bin. It was always the dirtiest house on the block, the darkest. She could imagine, though, that when it went up for sale, it would go for near a million, just for the property itself, which had a huge parking pad at the side and a long elegant oak. The house would be razed. Something new would rise in its place, probably a modern echo of the houses around here, a gray concrete and glass structure with a winking Victorian sloped roof. A yard surrounded by imported grasses, sustainable and expensive. Ana could see in her mind’s eye exactly this oncoming glass house and thought: Fingerprints. All those fingerprints.
As she crossed Harbord, she saw the lights flicker on in a coffee shop. Her heart was beating fast now, and her fingers weren’t cold anymore. She never ran with music because she wanted to hear the city, really hear it, and she did. A dog barking, the whir of the streetcar. She thought of her work, of all the patent violations waiting for her. She passed an older couple, their arms linked cautiously, galoshes on their feet in anticipation of some weather Ana did not know was coming. They walked slowly. Ana tried to imagine herself and James as old as this, as entwined and frail.
What she had not imagined when she married was that love would turn out to be in constant movement, that it crept alongside most of the time but sometimes dove down, down into depths that Ana did not fear, but found repulsive, black, unwelcome. She knew that what they had was substantial, that it would rise again, break the surface to the light, but she was still angered by how often it left her. She had not known that she would have this in common with her own parents, who finally missed it too much, who could not bear its absence, and so split apart. But Ana did not want that. She did not want to be too weak to keep up with love. She needed to be stronger, to call it back to her. But she was so afraid, afraid of what it had become while it was away from her, afraid of what had gathered along its spine in the murk below, afraid she would not recognize its shape when it returned.
She thought of Finn, sleeping, and was relieved not to be there when he awoke. What was it in her? She wanted Finn safe, she wanted him clean, she wanted him fed, happy. She wanted all the things you want for any other person, known or unknown, simply because you are both human, and alive together at this shared moment. But that was not the same as mothering. She knew it was not. She thought of Sarah with him, and she could not match her. She could not match her sonar, the way her eye was always on him even as she spoke, that every gesture was infused with Finn, for Finn, about Finn, in spite of Finn. Then she realized that James was like this now, too. James had developed the same animal instinct. Yesterday, James had handed the boy his sippy cup before Finn asked for it. He changed him fast and exactly when it needed to be done. Finn stood in front of James in the morning, waiting for James to zip his jacket. Why could she not feel his needs in the same way? When would it come?
Ana sprinted around the park, passing the same homeless woman in her sleeping bag twice. Another runner overtook her, striding on great long legs like a spider. Ana didn’t want to trail him and turned away from the park, taking an eastern street, past houses more expensive and older than her own, with beveled glass windows and huge stoops. The streetlights were old-fashioned, fake gas lamps. The sun was high now, the frost melted. Everything around her caught in an autumn gleam.
And then she had an image of her mother with her reading glasses on. The two of them, mother and daughter, toe to toe on the couch in the rental apartment with books on their laps. The images came at her like a deck of cards being shuffled: Her mother stroking her hair when her father left, whispering—but what? What did she say? Ana remembered only the stroking and the dimming of the roar when she was resting against her mother, looking up at the African violets.
And then: Her mother taking her to a party where she met Mordecai Richler, and in the cab home, her mother said, “Something to tell your children about.”
She had been loved. She had known a mother’s love, its touch and glance. And so, then, she could now recognize its absence.
What had she expected, exactly? Why had she endured all those gynecological appointments at 7:30 in the morning, on her way to her work, day after day? James would talk about what would come after, when the appointments bore out: pee-wee baseball games, and summers out of the city, and the kind of idyllic childhood his brother could never pull off for his own kids even with all that money. And Ana had thought: Yes, if I do it, if I build it, then I will live in it, and it will become a home, a life. It will. It will. She ran. But now they had Finn and she thought: It is possible to fail at this. It is possible to fail at loving a child. Why doesn’t anyone tell you that?
At the house, James was cooing into Finn’s ear, then leading his sleepy body to the bathroom, changing his wet Pull-Up, wiping him down. James had decided to move him from diapers to Pull-Ups. He had been accumulating information on toilet training from the Internet and had bought a potty. He felt ready to usher Finn to the next stage. For now, the potty sat unused in the corner of the bathroom with a rubber duck on it.
It was a good morning: no fussing, no anger. They hummed along, eating cereal together at the kitchen island, Finn’s legs swinging. Ana barreled into this, covered in sweat, panting.
“Ana!” said Finn. James could sense something fierce in her this morning. She let off a hum of agitation. She waved before heading upstairs. When Ana returned, quickly, she was dressed and made up. James and Finn were now on the ground surrounded by plastic dinosaurs. Finn wore pajamas, and James his equivalent: boxers and a thin, shapeless Nick Cave T-shirt.
“He goes, yeah, kill! Kill! He goes nooooo!” said Finn.
Ana ate her yogurt.
“We have to go to Mike’s tonight,” said James, grunting as he rolled onto his back.
“Oh, God. What time?”
Ana picked up the empty cereal dishes from the counter, wondering what would happen if she didn’t. Would they be sitting there at the end of the day when she returned from work? How much would get done if she didn’t do it? She could never bring herself to attempt this experiment, knowing her own fury when James failed her.
After putting away the dishes and wiping the counter, Ana moved through the room, putting drawings in a drawer, making a stack out of the loose books. A broken crayon stopped her; she got a broom, a dustbin.
“I’ll do it,” James murmured, lying on his back. “Go to work.”
Ana rattled the garbage can loudly.
“Have a good day,” she said. Finn looked up as the door slammed shut.
“You never replied to our Thanksgiving video!” Jennifer spoke with her back to James and Ana. As she rooted in the refrigerator, her behind, round and denim-clad, appeared like a separate comic act: the talking behind. She emerged upright, a little flushed, holding an armload of juice boxes. James leaned in and shut the refrigerator door, which was covered in the same white recessed paneling as the cabinets. The kitchen held two refrigerators—one for cans of soda and beer, the other for food; wine was in its own separate climate-controlled refrigerator—but stealthily. All the appliances were hidden away. The kitchen had reached a point where mess was self-eviscerating.