The tattoo appeared in one of her poems, a reference to the way your children’s bodies escaped you as they got older. How tenderly she had bandaged it as it blistered and seeped a yellowish fluid a week into Beth’s nineteenth year. How relieved she’d felt when the blistering and seeping was over and the tattoo itself appeared, black edges clean and sharp, almost shiny with health. She had marveled, removing the last bandage, at the way her daughter’s skin had regenerated and healed. “Hallelujah,” Beth had said, twisting around to check herself in the bathroom mirror. It was how their family always greeted good news, though at the time Janine wondered if it was appropriately applied to good news delivered, in a foreign tongue, via tattoo.

Now she thought, eating mashed potatoes gummy and gray with soy milk: Hallelujah!

Forking up salty beans and gristly meat: Hallelujah!

Watching her younger daughter slouch over her plate, watching the older talk with her hands in that new way she had, spying a glistening green bean seed caught in her husband’s mustache: Hallelujah!

Praise Him! she thought, and in that moment, three weeks from Thanksgiving, an hour past sunset, in the imperfection of her forty-third year, she loved everything.

3

A week after Marianne finished notifying accepted students, Eric called to say he’d been offered a longer teaching contract. He didn’t want to stay in Dubai—he’d much rather be in Florida, with her—but there was a bonus to consider, plus he thought that he would finally make some headway with his novel.

“I’ll be able to put all my attention into the Ranch when I get home,” he told her.

“When?” Marianne wanted to know, but he must not have heard her because now he was going on about the way an international experience helped him see America more clearly, which was of some use to his new book. “When, Eric? When are you coming back?”

“Oh,” he said, as if surprised to be interrupted. “Early March. I’ll fly straight to Tampa.”

“Classes start in March,” she said. “And I still haven’t met your aunt.”

“That’s a good sign—a sign she trusts us,” he said. “Have you been getting paychecks?”

“Yes, but that’s not the point.” She wasn’t sure what the point was—that she wanted, needed supervision? At her school in Brooklyn, every time the classroom teacher would duck out to get coffee or go to the copier or the bathroom, she’d get nervous and sweaty, which was a little like how she felt now, all the time. But, she remembered, the teacher’s return hardly improved things. “And you’re coming in March?”