She thought of Finn, sleeping, and was relieved not to be there when he awoke. What was it in her? She wanted Finn safe, she wanted him clean, she wanted him fed, happy. She wanted all the things you want for any other person, known or unknown, simply because you are both human, and alive together at this shared moment. But that was not the same as mothering. She knew it was not. She thought of Sarah with him, and she could not match her. She could not match her sonar, the way her eye was always on him even as she spoke, that every gesture was infused with Finn, for Finn, about Finn, in spite of Finn. Then she realized that James was like this now, too. James had developed the same animal instinct. Yesterday, James had handed the boy his sippy cup before Finn asked for it. He changed him fast and exactly when it needed to be done. Finn stood in front of James in the morning, waiting for James to zip his jacket. Why could she not feel his needs in the same way? When would it come?

Ana sprinted around the park, passing the same homeless woman in her sleeping bag twice. Another runner overtook her, striding on great long legs like a spider. Ana didn’t want to trail him and turned away from the park, taking an eastern street, past houses more expensive and older than her own, with beveled glass windows and huge stoops. The streetlights were old-fashioned, fake gas lamps. The sun was high now, the frost melted. Everything around her caught in an autumn gleam.

And then she had an image of her mother with her reading glasses on. The two of them, mother and daughter, toe to toe on the couch in the rental apartment with books on their laps. The images came at her like a deck of cards being shuffled: Her mother stroking her hair when her father left, whispering—but what? What did she say? Ana remembered only the stroking and the dimming of the roar when she was resting against her mother, looking up at the African violets.

And then: Her mother taking her to a party where she met Mordecai Richler, and in the cab home, her mother said, “Something to tell your children about.”

She had been loved. She had known a mother’s love, its touch and glance. And so, then, she could now recognize its absence.

What had she expected, exactly? Why had she endured all those gynecological appointments at 7:30 in the morning, on her way to her work, day after day? James would talk about what would come after, when the appointments bore out: pee-wee baseball games, and summers out of the city, and the kind of idyllic childhood his brother could never pull off for his own kids even with all that money. And Ana had thought: Yes, if I do it, if I build it, then I will live in it, and it will become a home, a life. It will. It will. She ran. But now they had Finn and she thought: It is possible to fail at this. It is possible to fail at loving a child. Why doesn’t anyone tell you that?

At the house, James was cooing into Finn’s ear, then leading his sleepy body to the bathroom, changing his wet Pull-Up, wiping him down. James had decided to move him from diapers to Pull-Ups. He had been accumulating information on toilet training from the Internet and had bought a potty. He felt ready to usher Finn to the next stage. For now, the potty sat unused in the corner of the bathroom with a rubber duck on it.

It was a good morning: no fussing, no anger. They hummed along, eating cereal together at the kitchen island, Finn’s legs swinging. Ana barreled into this, covered in sweat, panting.

“Ana!” said Finn. James could sense something fierce in her this morning. She let off a hum of agitation. She waved before heading upstairs. When Ana returned, quickly, she was dressed and made up. James and Finn were now on the ground surrounded by plastic dinosaurs. Finn wore pajamas, and James his equivalent: boxers and a thin, shapeless Nick Cave T-shirt.

“He goes, yeah, kill! Kill! He goes nooooo!” said Finn.

Ana ate her yogurt.

“We have to go to Mike’s tonight,” said James, grunting as he rolled onto his back.

“Oh, God. What time?”

Ana picked up the empty cereal dishes from the counter, wondering what would happen if she didn’t. Would they be sitting there at the end of the day when she returned from work? How much would get done if she didn’t do it? She could never bring herself to attempt this experiment, knowing her own fury when James failed her.

After putting away the dishes and wiping the counter, Ana moved through the room, putting drawings in a drawer, making a stack out of the loose books. A broken crayon stopped her; she got a broom, a dustbin.

“I’ll do it,” James murmured, lying on his back. “Go to work.”

Ana rattled the garbage can loudly.

“Have a good day,” she said. Finn looked up as the door slammed shut.

“You never replied to our Thanksgiving video!” Jennifer spoke with her back to James and Ana. As she rooted in the refrigerator, her behind, round and denim-clad, appeared like a separate comic act: the talking behind. She emerged upright, a little flushed, holding an armload of juice boxes. James leaned in and shut the refrigerator door, which was covered in the same white recessed paneling as the cabinets. The kitchen held two refrigerators—one for cans of soda and beer, the other for food; wine was in its own separate climate-controlled refrigerator—but stealthily. All the appliances were hidden away. The kitchen had reached a point where mess was self-eviscerating.

“There,” said Jennifer, and just the slightest hint of Newfoundland leaked out: “Dhere.” The children gathered around, the two girls and Finn, who was wearing fairy wings. The three heads bobbed and sucked the juice, then scattered. “We made it on this website. I can’t remember what it’s called. Didn’t you get it? Sophie’s head was on the turkey? Olivia’s this big tree …” James and Ana shook their heads, murmuring shared obliviousness. “Oh, darn it. I’ll see if Mike can find it before you go. It was hilarious. I really thought I put you on the list …”

As if summoned, Mike appeared beside his wife. Ana was always struck by their physical similarity, except in opposite sizes. Both had a kind of ruddy plainness, with wide unblinking eyes and a smattering of freckles across the bridges of their noses. Mike was taller than James, though years at the computer had caused him to fold at the neck, collapsing his upper half. Jennifer was the kind of small that made Ana feel gargantuan; she had a little-boy body except for her large breasts, breasts that had been feeding babies for years, it seemed. Their eldest, Jake, was sleeping at a friend’s house, a reward for completing a tournament of some kind.

It had been silently agreed, years ago, that James was a bad uncle, not only for lack of trying, but because he couldn’t stay on top of the volume of accomplishment that rushed out of the large brick house. Everyone was gifted. Everyone was a genius. What happened to such people in adulthood? No one ever said: Meet my friend, Dave. He won an award for Best Handwriting. The future pointlessness of all these accolades made it hard for James to respond in the present. Driving home from evenings at Mike and Jennifer’s, fuming, he delivered the same anecdote: “Studies have proven it’s the B students who run the world.” But that morning, when he saw Finn scribble on a piece of cardboard and hold it up for offer, he understood, just a little, the full force of parental pride, the greed for a child’s future. He understood, for the first time, why his brother and his wife bored others so relentlessly.

“Can we help?” Ana asked, nodding toward the woman at the sink, her apron tied tight around her waist, dividing her body like the twisted end of a wrapped candy. The plates from dinner formed a tall pile, tilted at an angle from all the uneaten food between them. The carcass of a large chicken spilled its bones greasily over the edge of a white serving plate.