could just make them out under the sun canopy Bruce had already pulled over them, made of some navy-blue nylon that cast them into a safe gloom. No possibility of skin damage under there.
“Are you sure I can’t help you?” Knox said. She had the feeling of lighting a long fuse for the purpose of finding out how powerful the explosive was that lay at the end of it; getting Bruce to engage was surely better than remaining passive if she was going to be snapped at.
“It’s sort of like changing a tire, I think,” Bruce huffed. “Only one person can do it.”
“Okay.”
When they reached the bottom of the brownstone steps at last, having carried the stroller down together, urging each other not to let it tip, Knox said, “Do you want me to take them to the appointment by myself? I think I can handle it.” She wasn’t at all sure she could handle it and felt a bloom of anxiety, as well as surprise, when Bruce drew himself up to his full height, looked past her toward the end of the block, and seemed to consider her offer. A street cleaner approached while she waited; she wondered how the boys were reacting to the noise, heat, and sensation that had assaulted them as soon as they’d been hauled outside. Had she remembered their bottles? Yes.
“No. They’re getting shots today. An MMR, I think, and the DTaP. I’d feel bad not being there.”
Knox had to shield her eyes from glare in order to look into his face. His beard had gotten fuller over the course of these few days, and his eyes looked red rimmed, whether from fatigue, or some darker emotion, she couldn’t be sure. He pursed his lips, exhaled. He’d put on a denim-blue T-shirt and a pair of battered corduroys, some shoes that looked more appropriate for the office than a hot stroll through the Village. Perhaps they’d been the only pair he could find. Knox felt struck by her ability to see him in that moment as a kind of archetype: man in crisis. She wondered how she looked; she’d purposefully avoided mirrors for the last few days, not that she spent a lot of time gazing in them at home. How many times had Bruce left the house in the preceding week? She knew he’d run the trash to the curb. He’d popped out for some paper towels the other night.
The words came before she had a chance to check herself against overstepping. “I can do all the talking. If you’re afraid. If we see … anyone you know.”
Bruce seemed about to speak, but didn’t. He nodded, then raised his shirttail and wiped it quickly against his forehead, where Knox could make out a glitter of sweat. His stomach was exposed only for a moment, long, with a light stripe of hair bisecting it at the middle, almost concave at its center, muscled at the sides. The glimpse of it evoked a gentleness in Knox that she put immediately to one side; it would embarrass Bruce, and there on the sidewalk, they stood close enough to each other that Knox was prey to the ridiculous notion that he could read her thoughts. Though she had nothing to hide; she’d merely realized that she had the power to help him, right now, and, just as she’d been in the habit of with Charlotte, this power helped her to see whomever she wielded it over in a better light, behave like a better person, she thought, than she naturally was.
“HI,” the boys’ doctor said when she entered the exam room. She was attractive in a bohemian, born-in-the-neighborhood sort of way, Knox thought, dressed in a snug halter top and vivid flowered skirt, sandals that looked as if they’d been tooled in some Greek marketplace in the seventies. She paused in front of the standing scale and held her arms out to Bruce. He entered them and stood in her embrace for a few seconds while Knox extricated Ben from his onesie. Bruce’s face was pale.
“And you are,” she said, after rubbing Bruce’s bare arms as if they were cold, giving him a last long, fraught glance. The bangles on her wrist chimed against one another as she extended her hand to Knox.
“I’m the sister,” Knox said, shaking. The doctor’s hand was cold and dry. “The sister-in-law. The aunt.”
“Well, it’s good you’re here. These guys need lots of calm, happy adults around them, after what they’ve been