‘Do you want to go back to work?’ I asked.

She was silent for a long time. We both sat and watched the question turn stale in the air between us. I realised then that the answer was yes. That she missed work terribly, but was too ashamed to admit it. Financially we could survive on my salary, which meant, at least in her mind, that a return to work would equate to failure. An admittance that Phineas’s love alone could not sustain her. A ridiculous notion that she herself was somehow bankrupt, devoid of the compassion that women such as Helen, who had stayed at home full-time, were clearly so capable of.

‘No,’ she said finally. ‘No. He’s too young to leave.’

She decided instead that she would embark on a series of home renovations: painting and wallpapering the upstairs rooms while he slept, remodelling the kitchen and, perhaps her favourite of all, transforming the garden.

She planted multi-tiered beds of ornamental grass, blue fescue, lily turf and Japanese sedge, which would sway in the breeze and give the impression that the house was a boat at sea. From auction websites she found antique bird boxes and feeders, which she elevated on poles and lined along a gravel path bordered by black-eyed Susan and phlox.

On the porch she hung a wooden swing so that Phineas could sit outside and eat lunch while the insects and wildlife teemed round him. And at the foot of the garden, at the end of the gravel path, she built a vegetable patch, which over the course of several years she taught him to harvest.

It was only after school began that Simone allowed herself to return to work. I remember thinking then how fortunate I had been to have been born a man. To be able to live as the breadwinner not by discussion or election, but by assumption. I knew that I would never have been able to bear staying home in the way that she had. And though I had always insisted that Simone was free to decide whether she returned to work or not, I would have been lying if I’d said her decision hadn’t benefitted me greatly. That by sheer grace of my gender I had avoided that messy discussion, that sad admittance that being a father alone would never have been enough to satisfy me completely.

XX

The illness burns like a fever along the northwest coast, its tendrils slowly creeping inland. The government repurposes arenas and sport centres as quarantine zones. They erect roadside checkpoints. They build firebreaks by evacuating entire neighbourhoods, yet still the illness spreads. Weeks pass. Each day new outbreaks are reported. Rioting and violence follow the announcements like a chemical stain.

By early summer the flames have crossed entire states. We begin to feel the radiant heat. It bears down on us, the air close as if our bodies have been wrapped in cellophane. Despite assurances that the sickness isn’t airborne, people leave their houses wearing respirator masks. Deliveries become less frequent. I see squad cars parked outside of local grocery stores.