There was a woman coming toward my car. She was holding tightly to the left wrist of a little girl with blonde hair, the same colour as her own. She was walking quickly and the little girl was crying, pulled occasionally off her feet and stumbling with the pressure of keeping up with the woman. The little girl’s face was red and blotched with tears, and her eyes were squeezed almost shut, her mouth open crying protest; the woman’s face was pale, determined, closed, compressed. They were beside the car, and I could hear the weeping of the little girl, almost hysterical with the pain of failing to make the woman hear. The woman was refusing to pay attention, although it was paining her, too, one could see that.

They were past before I recognized them: they were Katie and I, just once, I only let it happen once. It was several years ago, before Katie started school, and we had gone downtown to shop, a rare occasion, and both of us had gotten tired, of the walking and the stores and all the things and people, and also of each other, too long together under strain. Katie had begun to cry, softly, like a whimper, simply exhausted, and the sound had maddened me, snapped something so that I grabbed at her arm and began dragging her, forcing both of us to plunge into more stores, Katie crying progressively louder, my face, I could feel it, getting tighter, wanting, really wanting, to hurt her, blind, not thinking. The rage died when we got home and I was hopelessly ashamed, trying to make it up to her. But she pulled away from me, ran upstairs, too exhausted then for tears, and it was several days before we were normal again. Afterwards I was just a little frightened, of her and for her. Of her, I guess, because now she knew this thing about me, and for her because I’d seen it too.

That woman and the little girl were Katie and I, and suddenly I was out of the car, striding easily into the stores, for I had recognized something of myself and I could be among them. I was human too — I remembered now.

In the hardware store, an old dark wooden place filled incongruously with shiny things like toasters and frying pans and bright bits of metal, an old man served me; stooped and shrunken and thin, he looked disjointed and vague, as if he did not really belong there. A younger man, plumpish and dark-haired, watched him, frowning.