table toward her, reaching for her hands. She kept them at her sides, hidden.
“Being with you was good for me because it was like being alone. You – you were your own planet. I could just watch you from down here. But now – you’re something different. You’re so small now,” said Ana.
James bent his head. He knew this was true; something had broken off from him, some potency that they had both pretended was not required. But what it had been replaced with was better, he thought, what it was replaced with was Finn. He, James, had in him, the possibility of something hallowed.
And then – the alley – the girl—
He expected the explanation to come up in him, to tumble from his lips, but there was nothing. He struggled: “I’m not good at being old, Ana. I don’t feel old, but I’m old, and I hate it,” said James. “I don’t know why I do the things I do. Nothing is wrong in my life. Nothing is wrong. We have everything. We even have a kid now.”
Ana shook her head. “You have a kid. You’re the father,” she said, rising to her feet.
He grabbed for her, knocking the glass of wine. It fell from the table, shattering on the tile.
“I wanted it. Ana, I wanted to be a father. I need it—”
“What do you think it’s giving you, James? Wisdom? It doesn’t change who you are.”
“It does, Ana.”
Ana shook her wrist free of James’s hand. “It was a great gift they gave us, really, these people we didn’t really know. The ultimate audition.”
She began pacing the room. She was still wearing her work clothes, and her black stockings made no sound as she moved back and forth, never glancing at James. She stepped through the wine, leaving footprints.
“Watch the glass,” said James.
The wine spread across the floor and suddenly, as if emerging from the dark puddle, James saw a future without Ana in it. He could call Doug about a job. He could sacrifice something. For the first time, he could see himself with Finn, two guys in a crowded apartment. Elsewhere.
It was ruthless in this way, the shift. It started only with this image, this ability to see a life even if it did not exist, like one of Finn’s picture books, like a segment for his TV show. It gathered momentum.
“Do you love me?” asked Ana.
She could not mean this, thought James, she could not be serious that in the end, he had to choose. When he considered the question, he knew the answer, he knew it by its weight, the scales of history upon it. The entire past of them, the creation of them, the idea of them, bore down upon him. But he could not answer.
Ana had her own picture in her head: the whiteness of a bed.
“You love him more,” she said. James crumpled against the wall, and slid to the floor, his feet out in front of him. His head slumped. Now he was crying, and Ana remembered: James is a crier. Ana knew that this was the kind of useless detail she would carry with her forever, long after they ended.
“It’s okay,” said Ana. “It’s okay. I don’t know if I love you anymore either.”
James shook his head. “I hadn’t answered yet,” he said.
“Oh, James,” said Ana. “You did. You answer it all the time. And it’s okay. We’re not enough. It’s too weak, this life we made. It can’t carry what we’re asking it to carry.” She crouched, ran her fingers over his slumped head: “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“Ana—”
She began to pick up the broken glass. She made a stack of it on the counter. She took a piece of newspaper from the recycling bin and wrapped the glass in it.
“You are so careful,” he said.
She nodded, her hand on the newspaper, pressing down, feeling a slow searing pain in her palm.
As she did this, James came behind her with a cloth and began wiping up the wine, all of Ana’s dark footprints vanishing.
By the time Ann Silvan arrived, Ana had showered. They sat on the couch, side by side, Ana’s hair dripping down her neck, onto the collar of her sweatshirt. They answered more questions. Ann smelled of dinner. She apologized for not coming faster; her own daughter was ill from Halloween candy. Her demeanour had changed. She was warmer, less wary. Something had been proven in the handling of the averted disaster. They were publicly competent at last,