Mildred gently shook her head. Could he imitate the dour face of faith the nun had worn? No. There was a wastepaper can across the room, and he imagined dropping the child into it. He looked again at the baby. Its sightless eyes were gazing at him. Its lips twitched, a vague and weak suckling motion. Mildred would have been a good mother, he realized now, for the first time.

A giraffe, flowers, palm trees, his own troupe of players, perfect sunlight, friends to love, beautiful girls to dance with, a wife, unlimited freedom. He put his head in his hands and he broke apart into tears.

When he looked up, he saw that his son was awake and regarding him with an empty gaze. Once upon a time, all the times in his life until now, he had thought himself a sailor in an open skiff over the sea of humanity, not immune to its pull but strong enough to guide himself past any cruelty and to defeat it.

But this small body was immune to him, and, no matter what he did, the baby would die. Death was not a cop. The world was larger than he was.

When he had finished crying, it was amazing to him that he was still in the same room. Nothing had changed. Mildred was still in the bed, the baby was still propped up at her side.

He shuffled his feet, rubbed his face with his hands, hid his eyes with a handkerchief, and looked back at his family. A comedy ends with a marriage. A tragedy begins with one.

Sometime later, the light had shifted. The nun came and retrieved the baby, leaving him alone with Mildred, who went to sleep. Her dreams were punctuated with startled little gasps. Chaplin stayed in the chair. The sun set, the lights of the city came on, the night continued, the lights would wink out one by one, the sun would rise, it would set again, regardless.

Three days later, the baby died.

Mildred had called him Charlie Jr., but Chaplin had always wanted a son called Norman, and when she agreed, yes, this child had been Norman, not Charlie, it was to please him, but it was also just slightly terrible, for it was her, too, giving up all hope. There was no child named Charlie Chaplin anymore, not in body, or in name, erased in some way twice. But even directly referring to him was too painful. Then, and for the rest of her life, she referred to him by neither “Norman” nor “Charlie.” Instead she called him “the Little Mouse.”