“Yes. Then there’s nothing you can do?”

“About what? We’re doing everything we can.”

“If his brain was hurt? You can’t fix that?”

“I wish you hadn’t read that medical dictionary.” He stared away. “A little knowledge.”

“A little knowledge what? He’s my baby. I have to know what’s going on. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t think you’re telling me what you know.”

“What else do you want to know? He’s a fine baby, a fine child. There isn’t anything else to know. The sleepiness will get better. It’s going to take time. We do what we can, Rhoda. That’s all we can do.”

“All right. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m so bad.”

“Thanks for your help.” Malcolm put down his magazine and came to the doctor’s side. “We know you’re trying.”

“Your baby’s all right. This was just a test so we’ll know what’s happened.”

“Give him here.” I had turned to Klane. She got up and walked toward me. A flat clear light was all across the black marble floor. She walked across it in her majesty and handed Jimmy to me. I took him from her arms. “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks for everything.”

The next three months we watched and waited. June and July and August came and went. Malcolm got a raise. Hilton got pregnant and almost lost the baby and had to be put to bed for weeks. Karla and Speed went to Mexico for a vacation and came home with souvenirs and stories about tequila. My tan got darker. Jimmy quit sleeping all the time. He still slept too long in the afternoons and fell asleep in the high chair when I fed him, but he seemed better. Every day I said to Klane, “Do you think he’s better?”

“He’s okay,” she would answer. “He’s fine. Yeah, he’s just fine.”

It was sometime that summer that I discovered Freud. “Read Freud,” Derry had told me. I had taken to calling her on the phone when I was especially unhappy or had a bad hangover or got in the mood to dream of wisdom or courage or a life that was not pervaded by Cape jasmine and sex and gin. “Read Freud, read Jung, read Margaret Mead. And don’t drink so much, Rhoda. It clouds your brain. It makes you dumb. You’ll never solve your other problems until you quit doing that.”