I wanted to have the days made into something that could be gotten rid of, like curtains that turned out after all to be the wrong kind of grey. All the weeks then, all the days, leaving in May, coming in June, and curling down and deeper as July and August slid heavily over the top of us, could be returned, discreetly, and with the proper excuse. Wrong shade, I could have written on a company form. Not as advertised.

We were moving now though through the deepest part of August, and of course there was no and never any turning back. The air was thick with rain and heavy and hot with storms. I was like a sailor being pulled under the water along the bottom of a big old ship, each day was scraping above me, all the hours, each one of them, were barnacles tearing open my back. I ran over to E’s bed and shook her by the shoulder. Wake up, I said. Wake up! The day is coming whether we want it to or not! She opened her eyes and hugged me and I became real for a moment. We went to the park.

I packed up B and E and we jumped through the back window. We sat by the pump and I unpacked the little boxes with things inside to eat. Cucumbers and grapes. Crackers with seeds and crackers with no seeds. We sat for a long time before anyone else came but eventually Nell arrived and I realized then that I’d been waiting for her. She set her blanket down very close to mine even though the park was empty and there was plenty of space.

She unwound her wrap and plucked out the baby and set him down on the blanket, kicked off her shoes and lay down next to him, the baby, and next to me too in a way. Then she propped herself up a bit and turned to me and said what could have been almost anything. Her turning to me, talking, after all the afternoons I’d been watching her, well, it was exhilarating. A bit like jumping into a cold lake. You can’t imagine it before it happens, the feeling. But there was no reply that I could make of course. I caught, I thought, the word for children and so I smiled a bit when she stopped talking. Her eyes told me she’d said something funny. She frowned and tried again and then I had to say, I’m sorry I don’t speak French. The words spilled all over the place like groceries from a ripped bag, and that was it I realized. That was as far as I could get. I was like a swimmer turning back to shore. I couldn’t go any further towards her. What had I been expecting to happen?

I called E back and packed us up and left. We had to get to the market anyway, we had to. I was going to cook a real dinner tonight and we would eat oranges for dessert that would be so sweet that we would remember them for ever. We would find oranges at the market that could not be gotten anywhere else.