She wants the yellow clicker with the parrot on it she was given when we bought the shoes. I go to what is the equivalent of her toy box, which looks like a tall, floor-level safe that is set into the wall. It’s a home fur vault, a kind of sealed closet where furs can be stored for the summer. Nancy owns no furs, and with the modest income of her office work and my playing, she probably never will, so we converted the vault into shelves for the storage of Linney’s books and toys, removing its mechanism so it can never be locked.

I pull the handle and open it. Her clicker is next to her books: The Poor Little Match Girl, Little Nemo in Slumberland, A Visit to Davy Jones’ Locker.

I do my usual Mack Sennett routine for Linney, where I pretend to catch my finger in the door as I close it, and then, as I register pain and suck on my “injured” fingers, I pretend to crush the other hand as well. This proceeds to the mock-squashing of both sets of my toes, my kneecap, both hands, any combination that will cause Linney to create that most lovely of the universe’s inaudible noises, a child laughing so helplessly that he or she cannot produce a sound.

It is a foolish game to play if you’re a man who needs full use of his fingers in order to earn a living, but it makes her happy. She asks me what would happen if my fingers really got stuck; I say I’d open the door. She asks what if the door got locked. I explain it can’t because we had the lock taken out. She asks why. I say because things that lock on the outside but not on the inside are dangerous, like bank safes and the trunks of cars.

She runs down the stairs to play outside with her friends, and we tell her to be back in an hour. Nancy looks up at me, in the same way she did just before the first time we ever made love, when it was Nancy who said that today we should.

An hour later, Nancy and I have spruced ourselves up and laid out dinner. Linney comes in the door. She likes roast potatoes if we mash them for her and the burnt end of the roast beef if it’s cut into squares. These things are all prepared for her and I ask her to sit at the table. She keeps wandering away while my back is turned. She also likes peas with a lot of butter and salt so they taste more like corn, and I set these down for her. In a tradition that we observe because Linney likes it, we join hands at the table, bow our heads, and say grace. Linney usually recites it, but today the honor has fallen to me . . .