KATE

THAT NIGHT, WHILE I WAS GIVING THE BOYS A BUBBLE BATH, TIM BURST THROUGH the bathroom door, startling me. Teddy thrust out his sudsy arms, and both boys shouted, “Daddy, Daddy!” I left them in the bathroom. There was dinner to fix.

As sometimes happened, Tim had too much energy. Because he’d left the house early and hadn’t seen the boys yet, his day with them was just starting, which explained his need to overcompensate. I knew from the shouting and splashing in the bathroom that it wouldn’t be easy getting the boys to bed.

It wasn’t, and later, I was the one insisting Teddy and Sam go to sleep. Or else. Or else what? Or else there’ll be problems. Or else no special treats tomorrow. Or else no videos for a week. I was running out of or elses. Standing in the dark hallway, Tim sighed heavily. I knew what he was thinking—You’re too harsh—but I would have none of it, saying, “Easy to judge when you’ve been out all day.” Finally, and that’s another part of this I always seem to forget, there is always a finally, after a valiant fight, night won, and the boys were down.

It was past nine o’clock. A slant of light from the hall cut across their tiny room, and Tim and I stood in the doorway. As we stared at the boys, whose shapes could be vaguely made out, I remembered something Tim once said: Children fall asleep so you can love them again.

But there were dirty dishes in the sink, toys scattered in every room, pillows and clothes and other general stuff that needed to be put away.

As we tried to finish straightening up, each chore led to another chore—bagging up the trash became sorting newspapers and plastic bottles for the weekly recycling pickup; sorting mail became paying bills, which became looking for the checkbook, which became calling our bank’s automated phone line to get an accurate balance, punching in account numbers and codes, which became punching in the wrong password, which became hanging up and starting the process all over. When finished with the friendly tape-recorded voice, after having transferred nearly our entire savings account into checking, I wrote out checks for the bills we could afford to pay, left the unpaid bills for later, which led to a search for the newly purchased sheet of stamps, which were not in their regular spot, because we’d never decided on a spot for stamps. “I know they’re around here somewhere,” Tim said. Twenty minutes later, he found half a roll of stamps, but because of a recent postage increase, he had to paste two on each bill, muttering, “What’s an extra stamp for rich people like us?,” which made me laugh, although I could have gone the other way.

It was sometime after eleven P.M. when I came into our room and found Tim already in bed. He’d propped himself up with extra pillows and powered up our laptop and gone online. I put on my flannel nightgown, climbed in on my side, and waited for him to finish.