Maybe her ambition for this project had been too narrow. Pauline Anderton and Great American Nobodies. She should have recognized the difficulty of selling the idea. She should have expanded her ambition. She shouldn’t have let Dale fill her with optimism. The television screen finally sizzled to life. The public TV station was broadcasting one of those chipper children’s shows which everyone raved about and which Gerald, at age four, had declared “moronic.” Watching a pack of blobby creatures roll down a green and purple hill while mumbling nonsense syllables, she had to agree. Yet, at the time, his rejection of the show had felt like one more rejection of her. She hit the channel button a few more times until she landed on a morning news show and killed the sound. The screen was filled with maps with graphics of clouds and weather fronts swirling above them. It used to be that she saw these reports as mere predictions of temperature and precipitation; now she regarded them as diagnostic reports on the health of the planet.

She dialed her home number. Gerald picked up on the first ring, a cranky “Hello,” as if she’d interrupted him at an important chore.

“Hi, honey,” she said. “It’s me.”

“Hi . . . mom.”

He was getting better at avoiding her first name, but there was still this slight hesitation.

“You and daddy weren’t home when I called last night. Did you go out to dinner?”

“We went to the Cambodian place.”

She could picture the two of them, sitting at one of the small corner tables in the restaurant’s basement, quietly discussing food or computers or some book Thomas had given Gerald to read, as serious and engaged as a couple of grad students.

“Did you have a good day at school yesterday, sweetie?”

“Yes, except I wasn’t sure who was going to pick me up, since you weren’t here, and then I got sick and couldn’t go to my piano lesson after all.”

“Gerald! That’s not like you. What happened?” Gerald had the most amazing constitution his pediatrician had ever seen. So far, he’d avoided all the major childhood illnesses, along with colds, flus, and ear and throat infections.

“I don’t know. I just felt funny. So I went to the nurse’s office and took a nap and then Thomas told me I didn’t have to go to the lesson.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie. Are you all right now?”

“I woke up a little iffy, but I think I’m starting to feel better.”