inside her torso.
Ana gestured at Finn, running ahead again. “You’re going out.”
“I promised him. We’re working on this movie and—” James rubbed his face, fumbling in Ana’s presence.
“Should I go to the house? Is Sarah there?” asked Ana.
“She is, but she’s sleeping. She won’t get up for another couple of hours.”
“Oh,” said Ana, looking down at the flowers in her hand. They seemed suddenly ridiculous.
“Do you – you could come to the park with us, and then, you know – come back after—” James had wondered how he would feel at such a meeting, and now he knew: He was famished for her. He didn’t want her to go yet. He needed to show her that he was not the bleeding mess she’d left in November, and that even then, he hadn’t been the mess she’d presumed. He wanted a chance.
Ana smiled. “I’ll come,” she said.
Finn reappeared and chatted as the three walked to the park. He and James had banter: “Tell Ana about the goose at the farm.” “It had a bad foot!” said Finn. “Tell Ana about your favourite colour.” “Green!” “What things are green?”
Ana was impressed. He had found his gift. For the first time, she didn’t feel excluded. It wasn’t her failure, it was their victory.
She thought suddenly how in all their time together, there must have been a moment where that other life would have been possible. If they had been able to have a child easily, or accidentally, then maybe the propulsion would have kept them aloft. They would have been like everybody else, never looking down because they wouldn’t have had to. But without either of them noticing, that moment had passed. Motherhood had passed. They got this instead.
Ana felt the sun on her face, and heard the sounds of other people’s children, and she didn’t want to mourn anymore.
She stood back, holding the pink flowers and James’s bag as he pushed Finn in the swing. Then his phone rang, and he called to her: “Can you take over?”
“Sure, sure,” she said, putting the bag on a bench.
“Higher, Ana!” cried Finn, as Ana pushed him, glancing at James, pacing under the tree with his phone. She startled at the sight of James’s arm in his T-shirt, the twist of muscle and lean forearm. She knew every inch of that arm, and felt like she was seeing a part of her own body that had been hidden away under a cast for months.
“It was Doug,” said James, putting his BlackBerry in his pocket, returning to take over. But Finn had found a daycare friend and was immersed in sandcastle building. Ana and James sat on a bench, side by side.
“You look good,” said James.
“So do you. No more beard.”
James touched his chin. “Do I look younger?”
Ana laughed. “Not really. Sorry.”
“Dammit.”
Finn was placing twigs in the castle, making arms or antennae.
“How’s Sarah?”
“She’s a miracle patient. The brain just kicked in. Where the connections were damaged from the accident, her brain made new connections. No one really knows why.”
Ana nodded. “I do.”
“Why?” asked James.
“She needed to get back to Finn.”
They watched him frowning while he built, as if everything depended on the height of this castle. He worked so earnestly that Ana felt like applauding. Maybe he whould be an engineer, like his father.
James looked at her looking at Finn. She was smiling at first, and then she tilted her head, and it was as if she was looking through Finn, and through all the children in the playground, and through the parents, too, spectral along the park’s edges. She was looking ahead of them all, into old age and after, as if she had set her eyes on what was waiting there, and made peace with it. And James wanted to be with her while she went, weakening and old, to where they would all end up, the parents and the children.
He wanted her, wanted her under his fingernails, in his mouth. “I’m so sorry,” he said.
“I am, too. James, I—”
“Watch!” Finn shouted. He lifted his fists and pounded his castle, over and over. Then he looked at them and grinned.
“We had a marriage,” said Ana, eyes on Finn.
James said: “I know.”
“Don’t forget. It wasn’t just accumulation. It was sacred.”
James nodded vigorously. “I know.”
“I miss that the most,” she said, moving her foot back and forth in a straight line in the grass. “That’s what it is to be married: you offer up your life, and the other person takes it. I miss that offering.”
James