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To honor his dead wife’s wishes he won’t let television raise his child, meaning that unless Oliver’s paying for a sitter, cooking dinner’s not a real option, at least not until Doe’s like six or seven. The real-world translation: half-opened take-out containers, a fridge that wafts with strange smells, a kitchen sink piling with used dishes.

Relying on one or two distressingly attractive, semicompetent young women fresh out of art school who earn extra spending money through sitter work. Learning to have more sitters. To have a list of backups. To juggle their schedules. The girls are always looking for a real job, counting down the days to some internship, nurturing a relationship with his daughter but, as the job continues, showing up later and later. Doe wide-eyed, listening as Oliver explains still another departure; Doe’s eyes not as wide, the child becoming accustomed to this whole attachment-abandonment cycle: you trust people, you believe in them, they leave, you have no control.

Another tantrum; constantly determined to show that her will is greater than his; overturning her chocolate milk. From the other booths around him come the stares, men who’ve brought
their
young children to this diner at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning—hoping to kill some clock this long weekend day. Faces entering the first pangs of middle age. As they watch Doe’s meltdown, each man shows a certain sympathy, but also betrays something else. Coming from a place deeper than sympathy: a terror that is pure, whole.

But a learning curve can also work for adults, and Oliver moves from the overmatched griever, lashing back at the other diners with a look of vehemence (
What do you want? I had this thrust upon me. That’s a different animal from your divorce
)
.
He ferments into the panicky uptight dad who jerks across the table and lifts his daughter too hard, scaring her,
What did you do now? Look at this. Jesus, Doe.
He becomes the beaten man with his face in his hands, listening to his girl cry and wishing so hard that he could disappear. And then he survives, evolves: lifting his daughter out of the path of the pool of milk so her clothes don’t get more muddied; pulling more napkins from the holder, telling her it is fine, and wiping away the mess.

And that name, yet again, always that name. The child falls and cries and says it. She doesn’t get the desired amount of sprinkles on her donut and blubbers
, I want Mama
. She doesn’t want to clean up her toys,
Mama.
Wants to stay in the playground longer,
I want Mama.
Wants to play yet another imaginative game with her classmates where they are the brothers and sisters, and who is she?
Mommy Mommy.

And then he’s survived until that sweet soft-ice-cream-pleasant and best time of the night, when they are in bed together and she is comfy under the comforter and flirty and loving toward him, gazing at him with what seems unabated love, paying attention to stories and pulling on his ear with affection. He’s read two full stories and she’s rubbing at her eyes with her little hands and it is time for lights-out, that part of the evening where he knows it will start.

I want Mama,
she says.

The hope has been that each time Alice tells her daughter
Mommy is in your heart. You are in Mommy’s heart,
Doe absorbs these words, they are lodged in her, somewhere.

Oliver tells his daughter to take a deep breath. He tells her to feel the warm syrup of Mommy’s love spreading through her. He tells Doe to take another breath and start with the top of her head, now down into her forehead, the syrup of Mommy’s love spreading behind her eyes.

The girl tries. Her lids open now. The whites of her eyes are large and liquid. Wide hazel irises focus on him. “Why can’t I go to Mommy?

“I know Mommy is in the sky,” she says.

Her voice is light, underdeveloped, committed. “We can take a plane.”

He allows himself the time to blink, composing himself.

“The sky is so very big,” he answers.

She is undeterred, promising: “I would search every cloud.”

An immediate horizon

B
UT THE DAILY
grit of responsibilities took back over, their self-contained, hermetic little bubble resealing. Alice made sure she was on the phone first thing to schedule or confirm her follow-ups with Eisenstatt (Friday, the following Tuesday). She called nurses with questions about medicines, pharmacies to ask about dosages. She eventually got off the phone and into her day, usually with simple arm rotations and stretches, a basic tai chi routine if she was up to it. Then vitamin supplements, including one of Sparrow’s warmed liquid packages of special Eastern herbs and blends. (It was supposed to fill Alice with vitality, but tasted like hot barf.) She might attempt a cursory bite of breakfast. She did her best to feed Doe spoonfuls of apple mush, made sure to clean her face with a warm wet cloth, even unhooked the baby from the high chair and brought her to the floor and let Doe use her pajamaed legs—along with the wooden sewing table leg—as leverage, the child still not yet walking, but happily in that place where she was trying to stand and move around. Alice still moved fairly well herself, although she had to be shrewd about just how much back-and-forth she could handle. Hot flashes intruded, six or seven a day, the most ridiculous side effect. She was freezing all the time and then—out of nowhere—felt her body flushing with fire? Alice compensated as best she could, with layers of ice compresses, occupying her mind, typing notes to herself on the cute new gray PowerBook Oliver had bought her, sometimes just running her hand over the trackball, enjoying its smoothness, the arrow cursor corresponding with zips and zags across the screen. She called friends, though conversations had to stay short. And Oliver helped on this front, not so much eavesdropping as checking in, he claimed, sussing out who she was talking with and how things were going. Alice could be overly generous, once even having some kind of counseling session with this weird guy she’d met in the hospital hallway, so Oliver had to keep the reins tight, especially considering how many friends wanted to be in touch with her. If the phone seemed slack to her ear, and Alice wasn’t answering so much, and didn’t seem engaged, Oliver would lean into the cordless and apologize as best he could. He’d explain she needed a break.

Writing thank-you notes also drained her. Even leafing through compact discs was a slog. On the plus side, Alice didn’t mourn being done with changing Morrisey’s litter (a corollary existed between proximity to cat litter and patients coming out of remission). Nor did she spend huge amounts of time bemoaning the loss of the private rituals involved with using a hand razor to shave her legs (the risk of bleeding out was too high; she’d have to make do with an electric razor). Her time went for more important matters, each day, all these wonderful friends, arriving into their hermetic and low-lit bubble: Susannah and Suzie and Sue, Christina, Jana, Julie, Karen, Mary Beth, Jess, Sarah Jay and her husband, Isidro, Marc and Marie, Crystal, Jynne, Fiona, Alison and Cindy, Sean and Daphne (with their little ones, Owen and Mira, in tow), and David, and Matt, Patty and Josh: core loved ones who’d been invited or volunteered, not just signing up for Tilda’s schedule of visitations, but
adhering
to the crazy thing, never complaining about getting the required flu vaccine shot (single dose only, no clusters, mists, or live vaccines); who clearly understood they couldn’t come up if suffering from the slightest cold, or if they’d recently been ill, or even recently had been hanging around someone sick. Sitting next to Alice at her sewing table; reclining on the couch beside her; knitting a scarf and talking about patterns; distracting and entertaining and charming her; providing opinions when she asked for them; volunteering thoughts when she did not; trying to hide any somber or worried looks, or not at all hiding their concern; getting philosophical and deep with her while joining in and doing those weird arm stretches; rubbing moisturizer into her skin; refilling that water cup; taking her into their confidence; idly gossiping; coming into the realization that she’d been sitting in that chair this long because she did not have the gas to get up and move—all of this while Alice slyly hustled them at pinochle. In this manner her days passed, divided into small portions of pleasant visits, right up until she needed a nap (a happening that, with any luck, coincided with Doe’s sleep schedule), at which point most visitors offered to run errands, take the baby on a little adventure, do laundry, or perhaps didn’t get the hint it was time to go, but instead sat and watched her sleeping body, taking in the enormity, just what was happening to this hollowed woman.

And her more mercurial friends—Golzi, Debb, and Annaka—the lightning bolt wild-childs who were allergic to plans, who weren’t the type to
sign up
for, let alone adhere to, someone else’s spreadsheet, and besides were busy getting fall lines ready for Fashion Week: calling, out of nowhere, asking if it was okay, zipping up with containers of freshly cooked high-protein food that met all of Alice’s dietary standards, or maybe, since they didn’t have the extra time, these were the ones who paid some Village restaurateur to run over a three-star meal. And the dear friend from her high school days who volunteered to come in from out of state (just for a few days, to hang out, run errands, take Doe to Washington Square, whatever Alice needed). And the guys from Oliver’s grad school years, they tried, too, even though they hadn’t been around that many kids and were basically scared of babies, and also had little idea how to cook, clean, or do anything practical. People came, they did what they could, whatever that may have been: hauling over loads of processed deli food that Alice couldn’t eat, bottles of very good wine she was no longer allowed to ingest, baggies of hydroponic that whips and Rottweilers could not keep from her lips. They shot the breeze about television shows, they talked about nothing, enthusiastic and positive in a manner that did not begin to hide their worry, wanting to convey their goodwill, wanting so hard.

It melted Alice, even as a small seed inside couldn’t help feeling resentful. All these people got to feel a little better about themselves, and feel sorry for her, and then leave and go on with their normal lives.

She’d castigate herself for her thoughts. Joke that her predicament wasn’t so bad. She got to sit around and listen to music. She got to talk with these astonishing people. She got to nap and knit. Gratitude made it easier to forgive the few friends who
were
too freaked to visit. The ones like Winnie, who flaked and forgot and didn’t show up for their scheduled day, did it once or twice, burned out, vanished.

To say nothing of the ones who walked in and saw Alice and just lost it
.

Once, at the end of a catch-up coffee, Jeremy said he and his significant other were praying for Alice. Oliver answered with the same Grinchy statements he used when Blaine, breezing in with magazines, casually asked whether he needed anything.
“If you want to actually be helpful, contact the bone marrow donor registry.”
Sometimes he launched into a public service lecture:
At the very least you’d increase the odds for someone out there
.

This day, Alice was unfortunate enough to be around. Placing her hand on Jeremy’s arm, she did her best to short-circuit Oliver’s vitriol.

“Thank you. Any good thoughts have to help.”

—

Alice was still asleep; Oliver picked up the phone on the third ring. “Yo?” The line went dead. Later that afternoon, he was on hold to ask a question to an official at the small business department, and switched over to the call waiting, and promptly became a punch line yet again, hung up on once more.

When he checked their messages, he began noticing those quick clicks, the line going dead as soon as the answering machine started its greeting. Oliver checked the times of the calls—always that low middle of the afternoon, perfect for taking a break from your responsibilities, that dull stretch when you’re just trying to get through.

Why don’t your friends say anything to me? he asked Alice.

She assured him it wasn’t them. She’d mentioned it. Nobody knew a thing.

“What about your little troubadour? From the hallway—weren’t you counseling him on the phone for a while?”

Did she flinch? No. Her breathing stayed even. “I don’t think so. He’s harmless. It has to be a crank call,” Alice continued. “Teenagers get a number and won’t let up. Believe me, I’m annoyed, too.”

Oliver nodded. He’d given this enough attention. And there were bigger fish already on his plate.

—

“Something I want to run past you, Ruggs, if that’s all right.”

Forgoing small talk, or even a greeting, Oliver started in.

“This lawyer who’s been helping me, well, he pointed me to this city program. It offers small businesses employee health insurance. But get this, spouses are eligible. And in-network costs don’t have a ceiling.” Oliver waited. The silence implied consent. “Thing is, we switch Generii onto this plan, it’s going to cost. Which is kind of why I’m calling. We have some money in reserve, but there’s still a ways before the demo’s up and running. Fucking who knows when we hit market. Meaning, you know, joining this plan? On the one hand, it gets Alice that policy and that’s big. But for the business, purely from that perspective, ah—”

“Who do you need me to kill?” Ruggles answered.

When it was Jonathan’s turn to hear the plea, he said, “It’s nice of you to ask, Oli. But really?”

So the fax machine belched, pages curling out, dropped from off the tray, onto the floor.