We make a home for the child and the child grows to fill it. He is six months old, then a year. He is two and can already catch a ball. I shut my eyes for the briefest of moments and when they reopen he has learnt to read and write. He turns five. We throw a large party with streamers and paper hats. He has his mother’s compassion, her sense for people. At night we indulge his love of folktales.

Then, one day, he is gone from us and my dreams take the form of impossible realities. I imagine a future where he is still alive. Where years have passed and he is now a teenager. I dream that my hair thins but thankfully doesn’t disappear completely. And when Simone survives a cancer scare we celebrate with a return trip to Europe, our angsty son in tow.

We find the peaks harder to climb. The cobbles wreak havoc on our feet. The history seems a little less electric, somehow. A little less alive with possibility. Secretly I feel as though the horizon of my life may have begun to recede.

But in our quieter moments it’s as if nothing has changed. We drag Phineas to monument after endless monument. He stands taller each day, the human summation of our love. He exhales loudly when we insist on including him in photographs, and in bars and cafés we notice his attention drawn elsewhere, to girls with accents and tattoos and sundresses.

I watch him and remember the day he took his first steps. I thumb my knuckles and think of all the steps since then. Somehow, I tell myself, I thought I’d have known more by now.

Simone takes my hand and wraps it in hers. She smiles at me, the light of her face enveloping us both, and I lose track of the boy.

‘Phineas?’ I call out. ‘Where is Phineas?’

When I wake it is morning. The bed is wet with sweat on both sides.

She rolls to face me.

‘I dreamt we were at sea,’ she says.

VIII

I watch the humanitarian crisis in Oregon unfold through newspaper headlines and televised coverage. There is an unending stream of social media updates and amateur video footage. Slowly I become familiar with the geography of the place. The names of its cities and towns. Its streets and thoroughfares.

I’m introduced to the increasingly tired and dishevelled congregation that represents its local government. They stand behind makeshift podiums in municipal buildings and school gymnasiums. They rub the bridges of their noses and shift on the balls of their feet outside medical centres and firehouses.

The illness spreads quickly, entrenching itself. It becomes increasingly clear that the authorities are fighting a war of attrition. Through daily press conferences I watch their professional demeanour unravel much like their attire: ties loosen, buttons come undone, shirts untuck.

Under the blinding light of the cameras I watch as the situation slowly takes its toll on their bodies. I see their stooped shoulders, their waxy skin, the vacancy in their eyes. I begin to refer to them on a first-name basis. Slowly a kinship develops, a compassionate allowance. Like a distant relative, I fret over their well-being.