Ana gripped the dashboard.
“Can we go, please? Can we just go?”
James clicked the final latch and patted Finn’s head.
They drove out of the parking lot, under the collective glance of the teenage boys, Ana hating herself for her judgment, her fear. She blamed her own parents, their willful ignorance about adulthood, how they chose anything else over it whenever they could. “I love you, kiddo,” said her father once when she returned from the park, eager to show him a dirty dollar bill she’d dug out of the sand. “But man, I wish I could go to India.” And so he had gone, without Ana or her mother, and he’d never really come back.
In the car, James looked at Ana, coiled in silence. He wondered how long her absence would last.
Finn yammered in the backseat, incomprehensible words that James attempted to interpret, responding in a range of theatrical voices. He could make Finn laugh easily, a sound that rang the bells of James’s own pride and moved along the knots of Ana’s spine with a tentacled, creeping dread.
At the north end of the street stood a house that Ana felt certain was a brothel. Its thin, yellow-brown curtains were always shut, even though it was still light at night, and the front yard was dotted with cigarette butts and smeared, discarded plastic bags.
One by one, over their seven years on the street, Ana and James had watched the old Portuguese and Italian couples die off. Sometimes their children moved in, plumbers and contractors who got up before the sun rose, slammed truck doors, and sped off to rebuild houses belonging to people like Ana and James, houses like the rest of the houses on the block. But most of the time, the houses were sold and the Dumpsters arrived. Then came the couples and their children, and the mother eager to meet Ana and James, until the discovery, so soon, that no, they didn’t have kids. Yes, the schools around here were supposed to be good. Yes, it was a big house for two.
The Victorian facades remained, though often painted witty crayon box colors. But inside, walls were coming down.
Ana could see the lack of walls as they drove through the neighborhood. Through large front windows, the uniformity of these renovations revealed itself: the broad loft-like space imposed on the skinny Victorian bones, the pot lights, the marble kitchens at the back looking out onto tiny gardens kept by gardeners. The tacit, unspoken agreement about what was beautiful.
Then there was the brothel, a squatter house than the others, shutterless and plain; the only other detached house on the block besides James and Ana’s.
Last winter, when the city was sunk in snow, she had seen a young woman walk out of the house late at night wearing a gossamer T-shirt and leggings, arms wrapped around her torso, her feet hanging over the heels of her slippers. Her hair was blond and thin, a wild aureole about her head. She had spied Ana, coming home late from work with her attaché case in her hand, the remnants of coffee in a thermos mug in the other. The girl’s eyes were scooped out, set as far back in her head as a blind person’s. She had scowled at Ana and scurried away, out of the streetlight shadow.
This was almost a year ago, in the dead cold, and Ana had seen no other sign of activity from the place.
“We’re home,” said James. “A parking space!”
Ana turned to look at Finn, who was staring out the window, nodding lightly.
James did the unstrapping, and when he pulled Finn out of the back door, holding him to his chest, he saw that Ana had already gone up the street and into the house.
Inside, James placed Finn high up on a barstool at the island in the kitchen. He swung his feet, smiling. Ana’s back was to them both as she flipped the cheese sandwich grilling on the stove.
“Maybe we should sit in the dining room. It seems like he might fall off,” said James.
“But the rug in the—” said Ana, then withdrew. “Whatever you think.”
“Finn stay up!” he cried when James went to lift him. “No! Want to stay here!”
James set him back on the stool, where he wobbled in all directions. Finn picked up the grilled cheese sandwich Ana had cooked for him, taking mouse bites around the edges. Ana and James stood side by side, staring across the island at the boy as if he were a hostage, and any minute the authorities might bang down the door.
Ana began to unpack the groceries. Animal crackers; organic macaroni and cheese; miniature applesauces. All things she had seen at Sarah’s, empty boxes and sticky half-filled containers for Ana to step around. Where should they go? She pulled open drawers and cupboards, finally stuffing the boxes next to the white balsamic, moving aside the olive oil from a trip last spring to Umbria.
“Finish,” said Finn, dropping his sandwich and pulling himself to standing. Within a second, he had his arms high, a diver preparing for his descent. Ana let out a yelping sound, and James rushed toward the boy. Ana breathed quickly; the danger Finn brought with him felt all-encompassing, like the three of them had been submerged together in a water tank of sharks.
She glanced at the hole in the backyard, abandoned again by the workers. The winter before last, old clay pipes had cracked in the depths beneath the back lawn, and the repairs had dragged on and on. Workmen came for a few days and then vanished. Piles of limestone wrapped in cellophane crushed the plants on the perimeter.
“Can you call the guys about the yard?” said Ana.
Finn wandered through the kitchen, opening every cupboard at his eye level.
“What’s in there?” he asked each time. Ana answered: “Oh, I don’t know. Pots …”
“What’s in there?”
“Umm … pipes, from the sink.” She found it difficult to focus on unpacking the groceries with the noise, each question punctuated by a slammed cupboard.
“What’s in there?”
She didn’t answer, macaroni in hand, trying to unravel the question in her head: Should the macaroni and cheese box go by the oil? Really?
“What’s in there?” asked Finn, loudly. “What’s in there?”
Ana turned quickly and snapped: “Just look, Finn. Figure it out.”
“Ana—” said James, but when he saw her face, flashing fury and then trembling into fear, he didn’t say what he’d been about to. “I think it’s probably his bedtime.”
Ana placed the macaroni in the cupboard and closed her eyes. When she opened them, the clock by the garden door said 8:34.
“Is it? Is this when he goes to bed?”
James shrugged. “Aucune idée,” he said.
James walked Finn upstairs, holding his hand. He drew the bath, his finger under the tap, trying to determine the right temperature. Finn sat on the white-tiled ground, removing his small T-shirt, then his sweatpants. Standing only in his diaper, he did a small jump.
“Ana! Is this too hot?” called James, but she couldn’t hear him over her own scrubbing and the sound of the water. “How hot should it be?” James called downstairs. Still no answer. James turned on the cold.
Finn’s plump hands gripped the edge of the tub, his toes lifting off the ground.
“Wait, wait!” The diaper looked like it was barely hanging on, sagging like a smile along his backside. James tore the fasteners and the diaper fell free, relieved, into his hand. It was full of dark shit, round and heavy as a miniature medicine ball. James was embarrassed: Why didn’t I notice? Why did we have him for hours and never think about the diaper?
“Ana!” This time, she appeared, eyes immediately upon the diaper in his hand.
“Okay, okay,” she said. “Don’t move!” She could see Finn, his bum smeared with feces, giggling and moving like an inmate in a Victorian asylum toward the white walls and white towels. “Don’t let him move!”
Ana raced down the stairs, while James held Finn by the hands, but far away from him. She rooted in the cloth grocery bags for wipes, the kind Sarah always had—hypoallergenic, biodegradable, chlorine-free, unscented. Ana grabbed the diapers, too, number 5s, as Mrs. Bailey had told them, and a garbage bag. She sprinted upstairs, a medic attending to the injured, dropping all the gear on the white bathroom floor. Finn and James were still locked in their strange dance, far from the walls. Finn’s toddler penis hung (uncircumcised, noted Ana; quite large, noted James, who thought, then, of Marcus and wondered), a strangely mannish thing out of place on his child’s body.