“But where will Snakey sleep?” Perley asked. “He’ll be cold.”

Karen smiled.

On the floor, I nursed Perley and sang him his shipwreck lullaby until his head fell back off my nipple, milk pooling into Rudy’s shirt. Then I turned to Karen.

“Perley’s not one of your projects,” I whispered. Through the thin partition, we could hear Helen turn over in bed.

“Project?” said Karen. “You’re the one who got all worked up over that orangutan thing, and we’re still stuck with Rudy’s shirts.”

“That’s just a precaution,” I said. “But you’re too hard on him. He’s not one of your elves with some kind of snake magic. He’s a kid. You don’t even let him play.”

“Is that where he learned the word play?” Karen asked. “From you? I was wondering where he learned that concept.”

“Don’t force him to be perfect,” I said, abandoning the whisper.

“But he already is perfect,” Karen said. “It’s my duty to see that he doesn’t shrink down to averageness the way the rest of us have.”

“Maybe you should go back to work, too,” I said. “We could use the money.”

“Who would stay with Perley?” Karen asked.

“When’s the last time you talked to anyone at the clinic?” I asked.

“It won’t be hard for me to pick up shifts when I’m ready,” Karen said. “They’re always shorthanded. Don’t worry.” But she wouldn’t look at me.

“I just want you to have something else to focus on,” I said. “I want you to have fun. And I want Perley to have fun, too.”

“Fun. What is fun?” Karen asked. I waited, then tried to laugh.

“I’m not joking,” Karen said. “What’s fun? Fun is the last thing on my list. Fun can suck it.”

“We used to have fun,” I said. “What about when we met? Remember the sumac tree?”

“That wasn’t fun,” Karen said. “That was something else.”

I got that itchy feeling in my ears, my nose was warm, the tears spilled over, but Karen wouldn’t relent.

“This isn’t a game,” she said. “We’ve got important things to prepare for. We have a chance out here. We have a chance to make sure Perley gets the proper training. We aren’t going to be around forever to protect him. You think things are going to last the way they are? Not likely.” We heard Helen sit up. Then, under the gap at the bottom of the partition, her light came on. I tried to stifle my sobs with the pillow.

“You want my opinion?” Helen asked, sounding as if she were there in the bed with us.

“No,” Karen said.

“Lily overindulges, and you overtrain,” she said. “What the kid needs is to be ignored. Just leave him alone and let him figure things out for himself.”

“I don’t overindulge,” I said.