One of the bottles I didn’t break though, a small one, grey-green, about the size of my index finger with a red cut-glass top the size of a knuckle bone. I slipped it into the pocket of my dress. Hah! Because I had also been a child, because I was still capable of thoughtlessness, of recklessness, of a little bit of life. Inside the bottle it smelled like mist and moss clinging to some mountain rock. It smelled like the last tiny bit of morning.

I left the bathroom and collected E and we went back into the living room. There was light everywhere there, still in all the right places. We were washed in it as we came out from the hall. There they are, M said.

M’s boss’s wife was holding the baby, bouncing her a little against her shoulder, running her hand along her back, humming. They sort of blurred together, baby and mother, there where her lips and cheek touched the soft swoop of her mother’s neck. They were like a paperclip, made of one long line. The simplest thing done exactly right.

M was standing at a window with M’s boss, looking out over the lake. The afternoon was over. We made our excuses, said thank you thank you thank you and we’ll have to do this again soon. Then we were through the door and out into the hall. B was slipped into his stroller asleep and didn’t wake and while we climbed into the elevator smiling and waving back towards the door we looked every one of us like wonderful people and best families.

Don’t forget to have the arrangements made for you, M’s boss said. We’ve got to get out there Monday. I’ll call Aurelie and let her know. She’s going to have a hard time finding first-class tickets for both of us I think, but I imagine she’ll work some magic for you. M laughed a bit. M was so good-natured. M knew just when to play along. M’s boss said, All right then and winked at me. M’s boss’s wife said something to me about the children and made a nice face. I made my nice face then and wished her good luck on her trip and with the baby.

We were almost done. We were all horses coming round the final turn. Our sides steaming and bloody maybe but we could all see the finish line now. M shut us all up tight inside the birdcage elevator. We went creakily down, and then we were out again on the street.

13

M pushed the stroller down the sidewalk. B slept like a picture of a baby. The lake was so blue and beautiful and I put my arm around M’s waist and E ran on ahead of us. I leaned into him a little, just testing really, a foot on a frozen lake in March. He looked down at me and smiled.

If only we could have been exactly like we must have looked to other people. If only we could be like pictures, all light-caught surface with nothing inside. All emptied out and perfect. M and I could hold hands every Saturday for a hundred years and always be the same. We could match each other step for step with nothing in between us, or perhaps we wouldn’t move at all.