“Your friend or Rimbaud?”

“Et qui parfois vous baise au front, comme un enfant.”

“Wait! Emmy, come back!” Carl cries out. “I have the right to talk to my own daughter. Bring back Emmy. Damn it!”

“My friend.”

“What happened?”

“He was hurt horribly as a boy. We both were. A felted kind of sadness got the better of him. I feel it sometimes, too. It accumulates in the corners of rooms, like dust and hair. It’s the reason I find it difficult to return to my home country.”

“I don’t get it,” Liam says.

“There’s nothing to get,” the Professor says.

“I mean the poem,” Liam says.

Carl throws down his headphones and slams the laptop shut. He strides over to Jørgen and pushes him off Maddy.

“Not fair!” Jørgen shouts. “It is my turn to empty Madeline tonight.”

“I’ve had a rough day,” Carl says, dropping to his knees. “I need a pick-me-up. You can have one of my turns later.”

“I don’t want one of your turns,” Jørgen says. “I want to have my milk now!” Jørgen pushes back, and Carl falls on his ass. Immediately Carl is up again, grappling Jørgen by the waist in a wrestle hold.

“Stop it!” Maddy calls out. “No one is getting any more milk tonight!” They don’t listen. It takes me, Liam, Reginald, and Seung Hun, just returned from his phone call, to pull the two of them apart. Maddy departs without saying a word.

Carl raises his fists to the rafters and screams. Next, he throws a temper tantrum by trashing the dining room: flinging food, ripping apart pillows and tapestries, smashing chairs until they splinter. This time, none of us dares to interfere. Tomorrow it will all be set right again by the invisible hands that cook our meals and clean our rooms. The walls will be washed. The broken chairs will be broken a second time with an ax and piled by the stove for kindling. Poor Carl. His wife has a restraining order and still calls the cops when she discovers him trying to sneak into the house to beg for forgiveness.

As soon as Carl’s tuckered himself out, I go to Maddy. She’s freshly showered, sitting on the bed with a towel wrapped around her waist.

“I hope you’re pleased with yourself,” I say.

“That’s right,” Maddy says. “Blame the woman.”

“You started it,” I say.

“They’re grown men,” she says. “They can choose whether they want to breastfeed or not.”

“Did those preschoolers have a choice?” I ask her.

“What are you saying I should do?” Maddy asks. “Pour it down the drain?”

“I’m saying everyone should get to drink the milk,” I say, “or no one should.”

“So this is really about you, is what this is about,” she says.

“Maddy,” I say, sitting down next to her. “Madeline. You’re never going to get him back. I’m sorry.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” she says. “You have your own children.”

“We both know that’s not exactly true,” I say.