It would be different if I hadn’t had the miscarriage. With him I had worked out the whole emotional scenario. He would grow in my body and grow, until I was ready to burst, and then I would push him out in blood and pain and they would cut the cord, but the connection would still be there, and as he grew into boy and man he would still be me, flesh of my flesh as they say. This one and I have only two cells in common, one of them altered and one of them fooled, but in genetic terms she is more me than any natural child could be, and so how am I supposed to feel toward her? I love her with an irrational intensity. I know a lot of the love is referred pain, for the boy who died without a name, with only a hint of life, more or less reverently recycled. They asked me whether I wanted a ceremony and in my stupid rage I said no. It might have put him to rest. Given me some peace.

Night before last I sat down by the herb garden in the darkness, and I realized that with every breath I was breathing him. A few molecules of him, cycling through the air, and I tried to take some comfort in that, but you follow it to its logical conclusion and it becomes grotesque. Next season I’ll eat a piece of cabbage or goat and it will be partly him, which is to say partly me, and it will pass through and become soil again, or nutrient solution, and I realized that he and I and all of us aboard this can are trivially immortal, through the noble agency of shit. In and out of these temporary bodies.

I was late, having gone back to the office for the button recorder. The three of them were halfway through their meal, a pasta primavera. I opened my box and it was still warm.

“What do you think?” I said.

“Sam is fine with me,” Evelyn said. “I don’t know him all that well, but I’ve always thought he was nice. Trust your judgment anyhow.”

“I don’t know whether to trust my own judgment. Dan? You’ve had some time to think about it.”

He pushed the food around on his plate. “I wouldn’t object. Anything that makes you happy.” John nodded without saying anything.

“Thanks.” I took a bite. “Pasta with guilt sauce.”

“I do mean it. This is a hard time for you.”

“Let me be the devil’s advocate,” Evy said. “Why do you want to marry him? Why can’t you just be like me and Larry? Or Dan and what’s-her-name.”

“I forget,” Daniel said. “Changes every week.”

“It wasn’t my idea. He’s the one who wants to get married; I’d just as soon keep it informal.”