“Yes. Tell me what concerns you. Have you noticed a change?”

She looks away, blushes. She’s wearing a gray T-shirt over her tiny jeans, no more than a size four, I’d guess—you’d never know she recently had a baby. She wears no shoes. Purple toenail polish, most of it chipped off. Plenty of makeup, including a glittery eye shadow. Her blond hair is twisted up and held in place with a long, silver barrette. She’s a pretty girl. And smarter than she knows. I wish she’d look up from her life and reach for something.

“I haven’t seen no change because I haven’t exactly been checking out the equipment. I don’t want to give him a complex or something.”

“Well, he’s fine. Completely normal. How’s he doing otherwise? Eating okay? Sleeping more?”

She looks at him, runs her finger along his cheek. “He’s okay.” She shrugs. “He’s not that interesting, really.”

“Is that what you really think, Grace?”

She smiles.

“Is it?”

“He ain’t interesting that you can, like, talk about him to someone else. You can’t say, oh he said this and he said that.”

“No, he doesn’t talk yet. But he does do some interesting things, doesn’t he?”

She picks him up, sits on her bed, lays him out gently along the length of her lap. “I seen him the other day just … watching. He’s going to be way smarter than me.” She slides her fingers into his tiny hands. “Watch this.” She pulls up and her baby hangs on grimly. “Strong.”

“That’s a reflex,” I say. “That will disappear.”

She looks up at me, stricken.

“Oh, the ability will come back. But he’ll be doing it because he wants to.”

“Well, that will be even better.” She looks past me, out the window. “What’s it like outside?” Her longing is so subtle. In some ways, she’s very grown up. Certainly she has displayed admirable equanimity in coming to terms with all she’s had to give up. She was a cheerleader; she still wears the little silver megaphone around her neck. Posters of rock stars are on her wall, tickets to concerts she attended. Bottles of cheap perfume and tubes of lipstick are lined up on her dresser, along with plastic cases of blusher and eye shadow, held together by rubber bands. Stuffed animals are on her bed, yellowing paperbacks beside it. She reads every night. Mostly romances, but she will try other things. I brought her an Anne Tyler once, and Grace said the characters were strange, but she liked it.

“It’s nice out,” I tell her. “Not as hot as yesterday. Why don’t you take Kurt out? Put him in his stroller and take him for a walk?”

“Well, he bends over like a rag doll in that thing.”

“He’s fine.”