Everybody Has Everything

She thought of Fi

Ana sprinted around the park, passing the same homeless woman in her sleeping bag twice. Another ru

And then she had an image of her mother with her reading glasses on. The two of them, mother and daughter, toe to toe on the couch in the rental apartment with books on their laps. The images came at her like a deck of cards being shuffled: Her mother stroking her hair when her father left, whispering—but what? What did she say? Ana remembered only the stroking and the dimming of the roar when she was resting against her mother, looking up at the African violets.

And then: Her mother taking her to a party where she met Mordecai Richler, and in the cab home, her mother said, “Something to tell your children about.”

She had been loved. She had known a mother’s love, its touch and glance. And so, then, she could now recognize its absence.

What had she expected, exactly? Why had she endured all those gynecological appointments at 7:30 in the morning, on her way to her work, day after day? James would talk about what would come after, when the appointments bore out: pee-wee baseball games, and summers out of the city, and the kind of idyllic childhood his brother could never pull off for his own kids even with all that money. And Ana had thought: Yes, if I do it, if I build it, then I will live in it, and it will become a home, a life. It will. It will. She ran. But now they had Fi

At the house, James was cooing into Fi

It was a good morning: no fussing, no anger. They hummed along, eating cereal together at the kitchen island, Fi

“Ana!” said Fi

“He goes, yeah, kill! Kill! He goes nooooo!” said Fi

Ana ate her yogurt.

“We have to go to Mike’s tonight,” said James, grunting as he rolled onto his back.

“Oh, God. What time?”

Ana picked up the empty cereal dishes from the counter, wondering what would happen if she didn’t. Would they be sitting there at the end of the day when she returned from work? How much would get done if she didn’t do it? She could never bring herself to attempt this experiment, knowing her own fury when James failed her.

After putting away the dishes and wiping the counter, Ana moved through the room, putting drawings in a drawer, making a stack out of the loose books. A broken crayon stopped her; she got a broom, a dustbin.

“I’ll do it,” James murmured, lying on his back. “Go to work.”

Ana rattled the garbage can loudly.

“Have a good day,” she said. Fi

“You never replied to our Thanksgiving video!” Je

“There,” said Je

As if summoned, Mike appeared beside his wife. Ana was always struck by their physical similarity, except in opposite sizes. Both had a kind of ruddy plai

It had been silently agreed, years ago, that James was a bad uncle, not only for lack of trying, but because he couldn’t stay on top of the volume of accomplishment that rushed out of the large brick house. Everyone was gifted. Everyone was a genius. What happened to such people in adulthood? No one ever said: Meet my friend, Dave. He won an award for Best Handwriting. The future pointlessness of all these accolades made it hard for James to respond in the present. Driving home from evenings at Mike and Je

“Can we help?” Ana asked, nodding toward the woman at the sink, her apron tied tight around her waist, dividing her body like the twisted end of a wrapped candy. The plates from di