Wilson sips his wine. “It was nothing,” he says. He sighs. “You had me worried with that look.”

“What look?”

“I don’t know. Whatever look it was.”

Ruth hesitates. “I saw Mrs. Mason today. She can’t go back to school in January.”

“What?”

“Not unless she’s speaking.”

“They can’t.”

“They can. Can and are. We have got to get her speaking by then. I don’t know what else we’ll do!”

“Christ,” Wilson says. And he says again all he can think to say. “They can’t.”

“Wilson.”

The idea frightens Wilson inordinately; it is as if the ever-thinning carpet they’ve been floating on has disintegrated completely, leaving them in a terrible free fall. Even though Isabelle isn’t attending school now, she is at least associated with a school, doing the homework a school assigns; she has at least a modicum of normalcy in her life. For the school to deny her that, for the school to give up on her—it angers him that they would see her as a lost cause this way. She is not a lost cause, he thinks, and he will not give up on her. His mind begins to race: through his mind flash images of women with long, sagging breasts and collared necks, of flies buzzing around the carcass of a zebra, of plains so vast you can almost see the earth begin to curve; he thinks of Isabelle’s lion lying folded on his dresser.

“Maybe,” he says, his mouth dry, “maybe we should go in January. I mean, if she’s not speaking. But if she hasn’t spoken in nine months, why would she now? What’s going to change in a month? We should think about that. January. It might help.”

“What?”

“Africa!” he says. “I spoke with the travel agent today, just to test the waters. I mean, since we were thinking about it. And I went and looked through some travel books. I was thinking June initially, like you said, but hell, a trip like that might just do it!” He’s not sure why it is he feels this way, but Africa—the idea of it, the images this afternoon, Isabelle’s drawing—Africa is full of promise. It is bright. It is open. It is huger than silence. It is all that is left.

“Since we were thinking about it? Wilson, what are you talking about?”

“It was your idea,” he says. “The other night. You brought it up.”

“Africa? Wilson, I was making conversation.”

They are silent. The flame on the candle by the sink shrinks and sputters out as Wilson watches.

“Africa is not the answer, Wil.”

“Then what is?”