While she thumbed through a magazine, the pictures shifting and sliding in front of her eyes, James guided Finn into the handicapped stall at Tim Horton’s. There was no hook for Sarah’s diaper bag, a pink-and-blue-striped tote with a small, tasteful label on the pocket: YUMMY MUMMY. James placed it far from the sticky floor surrounding the toilet.

Finn was calmer. He stood, puffy and shellacked with snot, pulling at the toilet paper roll, pointing at random, vaguely disgusting objects that James had never noticed existed in a bathroom stall. “What’s that?”

“A wad of toilet paper someone stuffed in the lock.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s called graffiti.”

“What’s that?”

“It says: ‘Blow me.’ ”

“Ha!” Finn laughed.

Without a changing table, James was reduced to pulling off Finn’s Pull-Up as he stood, which meant shoes had to come off, which in turn meant he was standing in his stocking feet in the sticky circle. James located the wipes, which had been left open, and had become dry and useless.

“Wait here.” At the sink, James tried to dampen a wipe with water. It began to disintegrate in his hand, forming small globules.

A man entered the bathroom and nodded, began peeing in the urinal.

“What’s that?” cried Finn from the bathroom at the sound of the urine rushing with the force of a shaken beer can being dumped down a sink.

“It’s someone …” James hesitated. The man’s girth had not escaped him, nor the fact that he was wearing a sleeveless jean jacket with no shirt underneath. The word “peeing,” which sat on the edge of James’s tongue, didn’t seem adequate to the task, suddenly.

“Going”—he considered the word—“urinating.”

“Tinkle?” shouted Finn, who had flung open the door of the stall and stood naked below the waist, his pants around his ankles, Spider-Man socks pulled up around his calves. He glanced at the man. “Giant go tinkle?”

“Yes,” said James, entering the stall quickly and shutting the door. He wiped the boy with a paper towel.

“Do you want to try to pee in the toilet? We should get moving on this issue.”

Finn looked alarmed.

“Toilet?”

“Don’t the big kids at daycare use the potty? Big kids go peepee in the toilet?”

James was speaking in a tiny voice, trying not to be heard by the giant, who washed his hands at the sink, though James realized the giant could easily peer over the stall if he were so inclined.

James whispered again: “Let’s go pee in the toilet. Maybe later we can buy you some underwear.”

“Spider-Man underwear?” Finn had seen this in the mall with James only a few days before. James marveled at his powers of recollection.

“Sure, sure,” said James. “Want to pee in the toilet? You can sit.”

Finn looked at the toilet, frowning. He shook his head.

“Another time,” said James, strapping the Velcro on Finn’s sneakers that matched his own.

The urinator left the bathroom, and James hoisted Finn to the sink to wash his hands. James took small pleasure in depositing the wet diaper in the garbage and wiping Finn’s face clean with a paper towel. He exited like a victor, pink diaper bag slung over his shoulder, the giant glancing his way with a manly nod as they left the restaurant.

When he got to the car, Ana was in the front seat, staring at the row of garbage and recycling cans in front of the car.

“Thanks for your help back there,” said James, strapping Finn into place.

Ana said nothing.

“I can’t do everything,” he said, backing out of the space quickly.

Ana reached down between her legs and into her purse. The dog in her hand was small, brown, not unlike the one James had bought Finn. She turned and held it out for Finn, who grabbed it, as if starving.

James looked at his wife. Her head was turned so he couldn’t read her expression. He had a strange thought: Now the dog James had bought was second rate, older and lesser. James had been elbowed aside.

“Now he’s going to think if he cries, he gets what he wants,” said James.

Facing the window, Ana said: “God forbid.”

James took the beer, because he was offered the beer, and because it was his father doing the offering. His parents had switched roles in old age: His father fussed and hovered while his mother sat with Ana and talked to her about budget cutbacks at the library. James’s father looked like a peer of Finn’s, in a canary yellow polo shirt so silly it must have been purchased by his wife. He passed drinks around the room with the gentility of a maid.

“Two hands,” said James offhandedly to Finn, who drank his juice from a real actual glass, slowly, wondering at the adult item in his hands.

“I should have looked for one of those—you know. What are they called, Diana? With the lids?” asked James’s father.

“Sippy cups,” said James’s mom, who then turned to continue her real talk with Ana.

“That’s right. Mike’s girls always leave a few behind, but I don’t know where they went.”

“He’s happy to use a cup, Dad,” said James. Finn looked at James.

“Where Dad?” he asked. James braced himself.

“He’s not here, Finny,” he said. This sufficed somehow. Finn put down the juice on the coffee table and began to move about the room, scrutinizing each piece of furniture, the wall, as if he were in a museum. James’s father passed his son a look of sheer sadness.

“He’s not used to such a big house,” said Diana, directing the conversation back into a foursome.

Finn ran his hands along the couch, which was glistening black leather and made James think of a bear’s gleaming fur, a hunter’s prize. The scale of the entire house left James woozy. Even the double garage had rounded arches above the electronic swing doors. The living room with the airplane hangar vaulted ceilings was punctuated, precariously, by a fan that appeared to be dangling down from a thin string. It was never turned on, because it was never hot between these walls; the air was entirely still and perfect. Warm in winter, cool in summer. From the living room, James looked up at the wraparound second-floor balconies. All the doors were shut. The house contained rooms that James had never set foot in. His parents had purchased the place when James and his brother were in university; bizarre timing, as both boys pointed out. James was at his poorest then, taking the train to the new house on the weekends with his laundry. At dinner, he complained of the price of utilities and the gouging landlords in the city. His mother was sanguine: You wanted to live in the city, you live in the city! His father, though he had worked downtown for thirty years, retained a deep fear of the unknown pockets that existed in between his train stop and the office tower, four blocks away. He had once seen a man casually walking along, carrying a package close to his chest. When he got closer, Wesley saw blood escaping through the cracks between the man’s fingers. Bleeding, the man had swooned, smiling a little, as if he’d seen a pretty girl. He fell to his knees not a foot from Wes Ridgemore. When the police officer arrived, he told Wesley: “Stabbing. Happens all the time.” And this was where his son wanted to live.

On his way out the front door at the end of those university weekends, James’s father would take his son aside, place a bundle of twenties in his hand, rolled up to look smaller than they were.

“Diana, don’t we have those puzzles? Didn’t Jenny leave a couple?”

“In the basement, I think,” she said. Wesley pushed himself up from the couch, struggling a little against the bursitis, the sciatica, all the rest. He froze for a beat halfway up and steadied himself, like a diver on a board. James averted his eyes. There were disk issues, James recalled. He had not asked after these issues in a while and now felt too ashamed to draw attention to what he didn’t know.