Everybody Has Everything

While she thumbed through a magazine, the pictures shifting and sliding in front of her eyes, James guided Fi

Fi

“A wad of toilet paper someone stuffed in the lock.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s called graffiti.”

“What’s that?”

“It says: ‘Blow me.’ ”

“Ha!” Fi

Without a changing table, James was reduced to pulling off Fi

“Wait here.” At the sink, James tried to dampen a wipe with water. It began to disintegrate in his hand, forming small globules.

A man entered the bathroom and nodded, began peeing in the urinal.

“What’s that?” cried Fi

“It’s someone …” James hesitated. The man’s girth had not escaped him, nor the fact that he was wearing a sleeveless jean jacket with no shirt underneath. The word “peeing,” which sat on the edge of James’s tongue, didn’t seem adequate to the task, suddenly.

“Going”—he considered the word—“urinating.”

“Tinkle?” shouted Fi

“Yes,” said James, entering the stall quickly and shutting the door. He wiped the boy with a paper towel.

“Do you want to try to pee in the toilet? We should get moving on this issue.”

Fi

“Toilet?”

“Don’t the big kids at daycare use the potty? Big kids go peepee in the toilet?”

James was speaking in a tiny voice, trying not to be heard by the giant, who washed his hands at the sink, though James realized the giant could easily peer over the stall if he were so inclined.

James whispered again: “Let’s go pee in the toilet. Maybe later we can buy you some underwear.”

“Spider-Man underwear?” Fi

“Sure, sure,” said James. “Want to pee in the toilet? You can sit.”

Fi

“Another time,” said James, strapping the Velcro on Fi

The urinator left the bathroom, and James hoisted Fi

When he got to the car, Ana was in the front seat, staring at the row of garbage and recycling cans in front of the car.

“Thanks for your help back there,” said James, strapping Fi

Ana said nothing.

“I can’t do everything,” he said, backing out of the space quickly.

Ana reached down between her legs and into her purse. The dog in her hand was small, brown, not unlike the one James had bought Fi

James looked at his wife. Her head was turned so he couldn’t read her expression. He had a strange thought: Now the dog James had bought was second rate, older and lesser. James had been elbowed aside.

“Now he’s going to think if he cries, he gets what he wants,” said James.

Facing the window, Ana said: “God forbid.”

James took the beer, because he was offered the beer, and because it was his father doing the offering. His parents had switched roles in old age: His father fussed and hovered while his mother sat with Ana and talked to her about budget cutbacks at the library. James’s father looked like a peer of Fi

“Two hands,” said James offhandedly to Fi

“I should have looked for one of those—you know. What are they called, Diana? With the lids?” asked James’s father.

“Sippy cups,” said James’s mom, who then turned to continue her real talk with Ana.

“That’s right. Mike’s girls always leave a few behind, but I don’t know where they went.”

“He’s happy to use a cup, Dad,” said James. Fi

“Where Dad?” he asked. James braced himself.

“He’s not here, Fi

“He’s not used to such a big house,” said Diana, directing the conversation back into a foursome.

Fi

On his way out the front door at the end of those university weekends, James’s father would take his son aside, place a bundle of twenties in his hand, rolled up to look smaller than they were.

“Diana, don’t we have those puzzles? Didn’t Je

“In the basement, I think,” she said. Wesley pushed himself up from the couch, struggling a little against the bursitis, the sciatica, all the rest. He froze for a beat halfway up and steadied himself, like a diver on a board. James averted his eyes. There were disk issues, James recalled. He had not asked after these issues in a while and now felt too ashamed to draw attention to what he didn’t know.