35.

The next morning a nurse griped to someone outside our door over the sound of clattering dishes.

“Without saying anything, she just took it from me,” she said. I opened my eyes and saw Ian sprawled across my chest on his side; he felt cooler, less clammy, and he had a content pucker on his lips. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. Things felt strangely, wonderfully calm between me and him. A feeling hit me that I’d always somehow known him, or if not him, his spirit; I felt like his spirit had always been with me, climbing the stairwells at school, crossing Fourteenth Street, drinking a soda inside the movie theater on Third Avenue. But I wished I could look down and see his leg healed, the damage I’d done erased.

Will walked into the room with his mother a couple of hours later. He handed me Ian’s striped onesie and a pair of white socks, then went straight to the windowsill where my jacket was. “Do you have anything else? Mom’s going to drive us home.”

I lay Ian in front of me on the mattress to change his diaper and get him dressed. The doctor had said to keep his leg uncovered and I wondered how I was going to keep him warm against the October chill. Loose blankets, I decided. Will was staring at Ian’s leg from across the room.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I know it looks horrible, but there’s a topical anesthetic in the cream, so it’s not hurting him, right? Otherwise he’d be screaming.”

“Do you want to go wash up or anything?” Mrs. Weston stood next to the bed with her hands on her hips, at the ready. Be positive, I laughed to myself. I finished changing Ian and handed him to her, my shirt still open, not caring what she saw. “Ooh, poor baby,” she said, taking him gingerly.

“Mom, I’ll hold him,” Will said, walking quickly over. “Why don’t you go get the car and bring it around and we’ll meet you downstairs.”

“One day,” I said, on my way to the bathroom, “I’ll stop beating myself up about this, at least I hope I will.” I tried to catch Will’s eye, but he was looking down at the table, at the instructions that came with the medication.

The elevator stopped at every floor on the way down.

“Hi,” I said, leaning toward Will. “Missed you last night. Glad we’re going home.”

“Me too,” he said, staring at the elevator numbers as they lit up and dinged.

I got into the backseat, where Will had already laid Ian’s car seat. I wondered how the hell I was going to get the strap over his leg.

“Just do one side,” Will said. “You don’t have a choice.” Then he went around and got in front next to his mother. “Take it easy, Mom,” he said. “I don’t want him banging around back there. He’s been through enough.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Weston said as she sped down Seventh Avenue.

Ian’s leg was smeared with greasy cream and covered with thick, gauzy bandages. He looked like a tiny maimed soldier. Someone honked behind us and Mrs. Weston swerved, trying to get out of the way.

“Forget about him,” Will said sharply. “Just focus on taking it slow.” I remembered Will saying Mrs. Weston was a shitty driver, that she’d point to something she saw out the window and then steer toward it.

“Did they send you home with anything?” she asked.

“Just more cream,” I said. “The doctor said I should call if Ian seemed distressed or feverish but that the pain should be subsiding.”

“Yeah, half his leg was almost scalded off,” Will said. “But it shouldn’t hurt a bit by now.”

“It wasn’t scalded off,” I said. “The doctor’s more concerned with potential infection at this point. Making sure the leg stays clean. He said any scars from the burn will heal completely within a year.”

“Sure, he’s young,” Will scoffed, turning the radio on. “He’ll get over it.”

“I think your cells do multiply more quickly, the younger you are,” Mrs. Weston said, catching my eye in the rearview mirror. Was she actually sticking up for me?

“Yeah, well, he’ll only need a hundred billion or so.” Will sat back and gripped his knees.

“Did I ever tell you about when I spilled coffee on Roy?” Mrs. Weston said.

“Uh-uh.” Will stared out the window.

“This whole thing made me think of it,” she said. “We’d just gotten a new coffee percolator, I think it was a late wedding present, and I was trying to figure out how to use it and the whole thing exploded.”

“Oh no,” I said.

“Yup. The whole thing blew, and bits of grinds and hot water sort of showered on top of his head,” she said cheerfully. “Bits of coffee grinds on his cheeks, it looked like razor stubble.”

“How bad was it?” I asked. “Was he burned badly?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I don’t remember. I don’t even remember what we did. Can you believe that?” She stopped suddenly at a red light.

“Watch it!” Will said, gritting his teeth. Ian jumped in his sleep as the car heaved to a stop. I loved those flinches. Like he was sending out little smoke signals of alertness and life while he slept.

We got into the house and I sat down to give Ian the boob while Will and his mom took the gauze pads and other stuff from the hospital out of the paper bag. I pointed to the big square pillow on the armchair, the one I used to lay Ian across.

“Can you pass me that?” I asked Will.

Mrs. Weston rushed over to get it. “Here you go.”

Will went to the sink and threw water on his face and wiped it with the towel hanging on the refrigerator door.

“Are you all set as far as things from the drugstore?” Mrs. Weston sat down next to me on the couch.

“We’re all set,” I said. I looked at her face, remembering again how I’d been afraid of her when I’d first met her. Had she changed or had I? Be positive.

“Okay.” She looked at Will. “You all right, honey? Can I get you guys some sandwiches?”

“I have to get back to school,” Will said. “I’ve already missed too much.”

“They’ll understand, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Weston. “How could they not?”

“Yeah, it’s not every day—”

“Can’t you stick around for a little bit?” I said, cutting him off. Ian started to scream. The burned part of his leg was brushing up against the pillow, so I flipped him to the other side.

“I really can’t,” he said, taking some books out of his backpack and stacking them on the desk. “Is he okay?”

“He’s okay, he just has to lie a certain way, off his leg,” I said.

Mrs. Weston hunched down and kissed Ian’s foot. She patted my leg and gave me a “Hang in there” look. “I’m here and available if you need anything, Thea. Please take me up on it. If you need some time to yourself, to take a nap, to recharge, just call me. Promise?”

“Thank you,” I said.

She fished through her big canvas tote bag for her car keys. “Maybe you could bring him around this weekend and we could watch him for a few hours. Give you guys a break.”

“Let’s see how he’s feeling,” Will said. He stroked Ian’s head for a few seconds and picked his keys up from the table. “I’ll walk out with you.”

When they left, I ordered chicken with broccoli, an egg roll and a carton of rice and ate it all while Ian slept. He slept on and on that night, barely stirring.

I picked up the yellow yarn, still on the lower shelf of the side table, out of a panicky sense of boredom. It had been a while, but I was relieved to find that my stitches didn’t look disastrously different from the last time I’d worked on it. I got all the way up to the top of the triangle—it went faster as the triangle narrowed—and then did the series of chains that made up the tie around the neck, which went faster than I’d remembered. At around midnight, the bikini was done. I held it under Florence’s rickety, red metal reading lamp, the night dust circling around it like little fireflies, and thought, This is pretty cool. I marveled at the details Carmen had written into the pattern—how the strap that tied around the back was just a little bit thicker than the strap that tied around the neck. And how the band at the waist had started to roll over just a little since I’d finished it a few weeks earlier. I couldn’t wait to show it to her.

When I opened my eyes, Will was standing over me and staring. It was one o’clock and I’d fallen asleep with the bikini top splayed across my chest. He picked it up and the ball of yarn dropped onto the floor. He fished around on the floor in the dark, found the ball and put the top and the yarn back on the second shelf of the side table.

“You’re still working on that thing?” he asked.

“I finished it,” I said. “Not that you’d care. Where were you?”

“Studying.”

“You smell like beer,” I said, pulling the blanket up to my shoulders.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked, throwing his coat on the chair.

“Nobody, apparently. It doesn’t occur to you to call? To see how he’s doing, at least?”

“I figured you were taking care of things. Like you’ve been doing so well.”

“Subtle, Will,” I said, leaning up on my elbow. “We had an accident. Deal with it. I am.”

“I didn’t say anything.” He sat by my legs, his sneakers flopping to the floor.

“You don’t have to.”

“Let’s go to sleep,” he said. “You’re tired.”

I lay there waiting for him to drift off, hating him for the stupid, selfish wall he’d put up, hating him for inserting me so deeply and squarely into the middle of the night, awake and alone. Ian woke up and we sat in the chair by the window. He fell asleep at my boob almost immediately and I wondered for the millionth time what to do. Whether to put him back in the Pack ’n Play or wake him up to keep nursing. I peeled the gauze off his leg, praying he wouldn’t scream. I nudged Ian and he startled awake, his jaw starting to move, barely detectable, his arm drifting around my chest, banging it a few times, then drifting up in the air behind him. I wondered if his thoughts were as floaty as his arm. I imagined his thoughts as light phantoms that had no names, just floating and settling, free of synapses or endings. His hand finally settled at my collarbone, and I tried to imagine a future moment when Will wouldn’t look at me as though he didn’t trust me with Ian, when I wouldn’t hate him for looking at me like that. If Will mistrusted me so much, why didn’t he step in? If I was really doing such a terrible job, why didn’t he just take Ian and run away? Ian breathed in sharply; I tried in the dark to decipher the New York Times headlines on the ottoman a few feet away, tried not to think of my own crimes, my honest mistakes.