I smelled him and remembered how I’d put myself to sleep the night before with a story about him taking me out into the woods where there was this old tennis court no one used anymore and him teaching me to play and afterward kissing me, a tender, delicate kiss, not the gross kind you saw on TV when it looked like the two people were trying to eat the same piece of candy, and remembering that story—even more than Hugh himself—gave me a nervous stomach and I couldn’t take another bite of egg.

Hugh wanted to come with us to the animal farm. His mother told him he couldn’t, that she needed him to move some furniture for her. He pressed her on what furniture and why couldn’t Charlie do it and she wasn’t prepared for the fight. She left the room abruptly.

He leaned over to me, his smell stronger now. “My mother thinks you are trying to bedevil me.”

“Hugh, stop it,” Kay said. “Jesus. Carol, that is not what my mother thinks.” She was pouring more Cheerios for Elsie. “Bedevil,” she said and held it in for about ten seconds then broke into a fit of laughter. Hugh joined her and for a while all you could hear was the little snaps of their throats.

David’s Animal Farm wasn’t a farm. It was more like an amusement park for animal lovers. You bought tokens for the dispensers of food, which were just bubble gum machines filled with pellets. The pellets tumbled into your hands and baby goats and sheep would come running over and you put your hand out flat and felt their big black lips delicately nibble them up. Hugh squatted next to one of the machines, put Stevie on one knee and Elsie on the other, and gave them a steady flow of pellets. Soon they were surrounded by goats. Hugh started putting the pellets in his ear and on his nose and the goats mauled his face with their rubbery lips and Stevie and Elsie giggled madly until someone in a David’s T-shirt told him to stop. They also sold milk in baby bottles to feed the littlest goats. We got bottles for the kids and I sat on the ground with Elsie and we held the bottle together as a tiny black-and-white goat sucked the milk down.

Hugh tried to put his face where our goat was. “I want to be a baby goat. Feed me!”

But he was quiet on the way home. Kay tried to get him to talk but he would only answer with one or two words. I was in back with Stevie and Elsie who wanted to sing, and while we sang I heard Kay say, “You scare me when you get like this.”

We went through town, past our apartment, then out on the neck toward the Point.

“Why did they put these sorry little shitholes right here?” Hugh said. “Nice road, crappy house. Sorry about that.”