In this, his memory is transparent crystal—he’s almost there again on the plane ride back from Stockholm. First class. He and his wife are holding hands, hands beginning to vein with age. The endless parade of parties and processions is over. They have laughed together and danced together, along with the other laureates, in a ballroom of red and gold. She sleeps but he can’t, so he watches the in-flight movie. It’s a romantic comedy. They are both exhausted as they take a taxi from the airport back to the house. The road is dark and bumpy and hypnotic. Looking out the window their home comes up on them in the darkness. He pays the cabdriver and assists his sleepy wife out of the back seat. He worries about her. It is December and very cold. The lawn is frosted a ghostly white and their breath comes as fog as they walk up the path to the front door, their suitcases a track of noise behind them in the dark. Put the luggage at the bottom of the hallway stairs. The house is freezing, so find the thermostat and adjust it up. Get out of this suit. Get out of this dress. Brush their teeth. Put socks on. Collapse into bed, but not before resting on the mantle the gold and glamorous Nobel Prize on its stand. Then the lights are turned out and they lie next to each other in the dark. Besides their wizened forms underneath the sheets the house is empty. There is no one to tuck into bed, no turning of a small body from its back to its side, no pajamas to put on one leg at a time, no small hands, no small toes. There is no small bed frame to check under for monsters, there are no children’s books on the mahogany bookcase, no toys left underfoot. There are no bedtime stories, no giggling and soft sleepy yawns, no restless visits in the blue-black of the morning, no small hands, no small toes. There is just the empty altar of the house, a piece of metal on the mantle, their age, and the haunting by a child that never was.