was sucking the wind out of her. She grew dizzy and yawned enormously, struggling to fill her lungs as she tied shoelaces or read a favorite story one more time. Now, with Constantine watching all three children in the back yard, she breathed quietly while she finished cutting out the rabbit’s second ear. She lifted both ears and placed them at jaunty angles atop the rabbit’s spherical head. Yes, it would match the picture in the magazine. The gouge could be filled with icing.
It was nearly dusk. On the rear facades of the row houses lay a deep-colored light so tranquil that even this modest block in Elizabeth looked inspired and utterly empty, like a holy city of the dead. Sun slanted into orderly back yards, pulling shadows out of swingsets and aluminum lawn chairs. Someone flicked on a porch lamp, which shone pale yellow against the molten blue sky, and someone else three houses down turned on a lawn sprinkler, sending beads of water arcing up into the cooling air.
Constantine had gotten this far. He’d joined another crew, made a little more each week, and somehow there was enough money for this place, three bedrooms upstairs and a scrap of back yard. The neighborhood was lousy, mostly coloreds and Spanish, but at moments like this even a bad neighborhood could feel like part of a larger plan, an expanding and deepening future.
The final sliver of sun disappeared behind the paper mill, with only Constantine to see it. Susan sat on the ground playing an elaborate game with Billy, something she’d invented, involving dice and several stuffed animals and the tiny plastic hotels from the Monopoly set. Billy’s attention kept wandering and Susan kept summoning it back, briskly indignant as a nurse. Constantine knew that soon she would slap her brother in righteous impatience, for he was an airy child, subject to endless distractions. He sometimes lost track of the real and stared with dumb fascination at an insect or a fallen leaf or simply at the empty space in front of his own eyes. Constantine walked in circles with Zoe, whispering nonsense to her, the only way he knew of calming her when she grew discontented. In a short-lived fit of nostalgia he had insisted on naming her Zoe, after his grandmother. Now he regretted it. Mary had favored American names like Joan or Patricia. Now, as Zoe proved to be a dark spirit, racked by indecipherable miseries, he wondered if he’d made a foreigner’s life for her with something as simple as a name.
When the sun had fully set he took the children inside, before their fight gathered its final momentum. Zoe was fretful but not yet lost. If he could get them all reestablished in the house, they would once again be in Mary’s realm, and subject to her more certain powers of comfort and control. He said to Susan and Billy, “Come on, kids, it’s getting dark out here.” He refused their pleas for five more minutes. He helped them pick up the tiny hotels, agreeing that they could finish the game in the living room. When he hustled them through the back door into the kitchen Mary looked up from the counter in surprise and annoyance. She was frosting a cake.
“Back already?” she said.
“Sun’s gone down,” he said. “It’s getting too cold for them out there.”
She nodded, yawned, and returned to her work. Constantine followed Susan and Billy into the living room, put Zoe down on the floor, at which she immediately started howling. He helped Susan and Billy put the red plastic hotels back into their proper order on the green pile carpet, where they kept toppling over.
“We can’t play it in here,” Susan said.
“I hate this game,” Billy added.
“Play,” Constantine said. “And no fights. Dinner will be in a few minutes.”
He picked Zoe up again. He told her everything was all right, she was his little girl, an angel sent down from heaven, but her cries continued. He carried her back into the kitchen.
“How’s dinner coming?” he asked.
“Dinner,” Mary said. “It’s after six, isn’t it?”
“It’s six forty-five. The kids are getting cranky.”
She yawned again, gripping the edge of the counter as if the linoleum was unsteady under her feet. Before her lay a cake shaped like a rabbit, covered with white coconut icing that simulated fur.
“That’s nice,” he said, bouncing his wailing daughter in his arms. “Look, Zoe. Look, sweetheart. A bunny.”
Mary smoothed the icing with a spatula and slipped a frigid glance