—

The disappearing minutes of the newborn are water over a stone. When I walked with Biddy I had passing daydreams about turning a corner and seeing Kosmos. I was sometimes lonely in the sleepless first months, when my arms ached and my breasts were full, when I lived in minutes and not hours. I used to walk with her to Mam’s apartment across the park or to Jacques Payac’s office on Bathurst Street or to the mothers’ groups where I listened to young women complaining about their partners not helping enough and about feeling sticky and exhausted and not wanting to be touched. This was strange to me. I wanted to be touched. I told them I freelanced, that Mam came every day, that, in fact, I did not get tired of her help. She had a knack with babies, knew how to create calm. Sometimes when I was with her and the baby I felt a strange déjà vu, and I wondered if I were remembering my own baby time. Biddy must have felt it too because she was settled and curious and watched everything, sovereign over our tiny world. She was easy to soothe and distract. Sometimes late at night after she was asleep, Mam walked across the park. If I was reading or writing she did not come in, only said, Hello, just out for a walk.

But other times she sat with me on the porch for a while.

Are you lonely? she would ask.

I don’t have time to be lonely. You?

She said, Not really.

Do you miss being married?

I could not bear to ask her if she missed my father.

We listened to the cry of a nightjar in the park, to the city’s low thrum.

She said, The happiest years were when you and your brother were young. The happiness did diminish with time. We shared less that was new and more that was habit. But we kept trying. Started dancing.

Why did you get married?

I wanted children. After the war, people were glad to be alive. I lost my first love and I wanted to get on with life. But I wonder now why I thought my autonomy was worth less than his.

I had to remind myself that she was not betraying my father. She was only telling her own story.

She said, They told women to make room for the men, to give up their jobs for the men coming home. We thought it was the right thing. It was good for your father.

She looked into the darkness and said, At least young women don’t have to get stuck in that image anymore.

But he was my beloved father. I had thought he was perfect.

—

I told Biddy about Kosmos as soon as she could talk and I showed her the only picture I had of the two of us, standing in front of his motorcycle near the Bastille. We called him Tata. I told her we would find him someday. I embellished the stories because what I had was thin. I could not tell her that we had spent as much time as we could in bed. I told her that we had lived in Paris together, that we had watched the sunrise over Notre-Dame and walked along the Seine. I told her he loved music, especially Ravel, and I had some recordings I could give her, and that he worked in theatre. She wanted more. I told her about my little room overlooking the rooftops and that he loved the balcony. I told her about the churches we visited and the Place des Vosges. I had to tell her more about Paris than about him because that was all I had. I told her someday we would visit his country. He loved the bridges in his country and on them were stone couches where people met each other suspended over fast-running mountain rivers and they listened to the water below.