I took a shower. Steam filled the little room, beading on the sink, the mirror. I let the water run over my skin until it began to lose its heat. I dried myself slowly, obstinately taking my time. I wrapped my hair in a towel and opened the bathroom door. B was crying in his crib, E was calling for me.

After lunch we escaped out the window to the little park. I couldn’t face the front door, the concierge, the freshly scrubbed walk, the garbage bins. None of it. The surfaces would be clean now of course of footprints, of fingerprints, of breath. Restored, and I didn’t want to see them restored. I didn’t want to see it cleaned up somehow, what I had done. Besides, it was quicker to go to the park through the window, more direct. If we went through the window we could be there so much faster, there, in the park where we could love each other and play.

So when we left, we slid out of the apartment through the back window and dropped down to the soft green grass that wasn’t ours, that was on the wrong side of the little fence. We’re so fast! I said to E, to make her run across the grass. Look at us! I said to her, holding her hand, holding B in my other arm, his soft little baby head pressed to my chest. No one can catch us! We’re birds, we’re flying!

Well we were a bit like birds just then I suppose, the way they hop hop hop before they fly. Anyway I tried to make it into a game. The game of course being designed to make her hurry, to make her just the right amount of afraid. The fox will eat the baby birds who fall behind, I told her while we streaked across the lawn. The greedy greedy fox will gobble them up.

When we got to the park, I set B down on our blanket and gave him a toy to play with. I settled E with her tools, her pail, and listened to her list of endless duties regarding the proper care of her animals. The baby giraffe was feeling poorly. E seemed pleased to announce this. She flew off to bury it neck-deep in sand. A treatment, she said.

The mother giraffe will be worried, I said. Take her too. E refused and this hurt me somehow. Smiling, I took the mother giraffe to the edge of the sandbox and set her down next to the baby. There, I said, now she can watch. E moved her game to the other side of the sandbox leaving the mother giraffe staring out at nothing, balanced on her spindly plastic legs. It bothered me, really bothered me, to see her like that. I even felt for a moment as if my own eyes were made of paint, as if I were trying desperately to see past a thick smear of acrylic, move legs that would never move, as if my baby might depend on me doing this impossible thing. It was a horrible feeling. E buried the baby, covering its head with a final shovelful of sand. It would almost certainly be lost.