I switched off the light. After a minute I got up. I could hear the clock ticking. I muffled it with a second sweater and returned it to its drawer. I turned over and back, sat up for water, lay down again. But when I closed my eyes, it was not Antonio I saw but his sons, living their promising, hurtful lives. Maddy would never know them. They made no difference to her now. Through her, they were part of me.

31

We went to this amazing concert. Do you like Chopin? It’s so sad! In a good way. I used to play Chopin on the piano. Maybe that’s why I still love it. You know what we were saying about being a loner? One place I like to be alone is listening to classical music. Or do I? It’s complicated. I want company but at the same time I want to be on my own. More and more. Sometimes I don’t even want to see Jack. Or Fiona and Vicky. Don’t worry, I am fine! Just saying.

Alison bought toffee peanuts from the stand on the Millennium Bridge and we paused between the single chimney of Tate Modern and the dome of St. Paul’s. The cathedral had seemed flat and unreal on our walk from the station, where it was hemmed in by offices and restaurants. From here it inflated magisterially to fill the space behind us.

“This is kind of like the Mall,” I said, “halfway between the Washington Monument and Capitol Hill.”

“No, it’s really not,” said Alison.

“No, it’s not.”

“What I love is the way everything’s jammed together. Oh, look, there’s Starbucks . . . there’s Yo! Sushi . . . there’s your four-hundred-year-old cathedral. It’s like stumbling on the White House when you go to wash your car.”

“We’ve got more space than they do,” I said. On both banks of the river, old and new jostled together without design. “Besides, DC was a planned city. London just happened.” Beneath the railing, chrome supports flared out like the wings of a plane. How did it hold us up? No one knew. We trusted our lives to invisible engineering. When Maddy was born, the machinery of her tiny body alarmed me. Shouldn’t I understand how she was put together, how she worked? Shouldn’t I be in charge of inhaling her air and pumping her blood, keeping everything on track? “Do you know about this bridge?” I asked Alison. “There was some fault. It wobbled when people walked on it. They had to close it the next day.”

“Resonance,” she said. “Oscillation. I remember from high school physics. There was this bridge that twisted around in the wind and fell into Puget Sound.”

“Was there? I’m not up on my bridge disasters.”