* * *
After the pigeon, after the bath, after Darley had spent the better part of an hour ordering birthday presents for the nine children with parties in the coming weeks, Darley changed into her pajamas and crawled into bed. Malcolm came home at midnight, letting himself into the apartment and moving silently through the kitchen to the back bathroom, where he showered and brushed his teeth before carefully peeling back the blankets to join her. Half asleep, Darley found him and wrapped her body around his. While she slept alone more often than not, she slept most soundly with their legs intertwined. In the morning, the children treated Malcolm with the reverence usually reserved for astronauts or Olympians, showing him drawings they had made at school that week, performing songs they had learned on the bus, telling long and convoluted stories about someone named Kale, whose older brother had been to a birthday party at a bounce house in Queens where there were more than fifty trampolines.
Malcolm made pancakes from scratch, which created a huge mess, a funny choice when Darley had a bakery box of blueberry muffins from Alice’s Tea Cup, but she sat at the table with a big smile on her face, sipping coffee and watching Hatcher drip syrup down his chin. After breakfast they took their scooters to soccer practice on the plaza, where a dozen kindergartners wore matching red T-shirts and constantly forgot what they were doing and picked the ball up with their hands. Darley had a hundred errands to run, knew she should use this time for a yoga class or tennis with her mom, but she wanted to be with Malcolm, so she snuggled up next to him on the bench and whispered with him about the other parents—the mom who hosted a dinner party at her ten-million-dollar apartment in Cobble Hill but never paid her share for the teacher gift at Christmas; the couple down the street who got a city permit for a block party, but instead of telling the neighbors, invited all their friends and blasted music until two a.m.; the unassuming lawyer who wore Green Bay Packers jerseys all weekend with his kids but then appeared on the front page of The New York Times alongside a Supreme Court justice.
After soccer they took the kids to lunch at Fascati, to the library to check out a dozen books, then to the Broken Toy playground, where they pushed around discarded bicycles. That night Darley fell asleep wrapped around Malcolm and barely moved when he slipped out at four, off to finish a presentation at the office before catching a flight to Rio that night. When Darley’s alarm went off at six, she registered that she felt exhausted. She wanted to stay under the covers, her head thick and heavy, but she forced herself out of bed to make coffee and pack lunch for the kids. She woke them and laid out their clothing, she made their breakfast—avocado toast for Poppy, peanut butter toast for Hatcher, coconut yogurt for Poppy, strawberry yogurt for Hatcher. She pulled on jeans, a loose gray T-shirt, and a baseball cap, snapped helmets under the kids’ chins, and carried both their backpacks as she half walked, half jogged down the sidewalk as they scootered to school. At the gate she checked them in with the security guard and parked their scooters along the wall, dozens and dozens of colorful Micro Minis lining the stone facade like decorations on a gingerbread house. There were plenty of neighborhoods in Brooklyn where you wouldn’t want to leave a scooter outside and unlocked for six hours, but in Darley’s little enclave of the Heights, she felt like she could probably lose her wallet every day for a week and still get it back each time.
At home she tried to rally for the gym, but nothing felt right. Her arms and legs hurt, her neck ached, and even walking from the front door to the kitchen felt like a march through snow or waist-deep slush. She sat down on the sofa and she must have slept, because suddenly she woke and ran to the bathroom and vomited. She lay on the floor, not caring that she was in the kids’ bathroom, that she was lying on top of a spiky Buzz Lightyear action figure, that the yellow bath mat clearly had some pee on it. For the next hour she intermittently vomited and lay dazed and feverish. When she gathered the strength, she hauled herself to her bedroom, where she stripped off her jeans and pulled a trash can next to the bed. At noon she called her mother.
“Darley, I’m just running out, can I call you back?” her mother answered.
“Mom, I think I have the stomach flu. Malcolm is traveling. Can you pick the kids up from school?”
“Oh sweetheart. We’ll figure it out. What time?”
“They get out at two forty-five.”
“Okay, darling, two forty-five.”
At three o’clock, Darley was dozing, sweating and freezing in her damp sheets, when she heard the front door open and close, heard backpacks hit the floor with matching thuds, heard the singing and yelling and clamor that always seemed to surround her children. Knowing they were safely home, Darley drifted back to sleep and dreamed she was in a strange house, walking through room after room, looking for someone, anyone. She woke and vomited again. The clock said seven thirty. As she wiped her mouth with a tissue and tried to decide if she had the strength to walk to the bathroom for water, there was a gentle knock on her bedroom door.
“Come in, Mom,” Darley called out weakly.
“Darley, it’s Berta,” her mother’s housekeeper called out tentatively. “I’m sorry, but I have to go home.”
“Oh, Berta!” Darley sat up, forgetting that she wasn’t wearing pants. “Thank you for being here. Where is my mom?”
“Mrs. Stockton had a crisis with one of her table arrangements. The birds’ nests they sent for her ‘Flights of Fancy’ dinner party had bugs in them, and they ruined all the fruit bowls, but it’s fine. I gave the children pasta and broccoli for dinner, but they are not tired for bed.”
“Thanks so much, Berta.” Darley tried to stand, but another wave of nausea overtook her.
“I’m sorry, but I have to go home for my grandkids.” Berta’s daughter was a nurse who often did late shifts and counted on her mother to fill in.
“Of course, Berta. I’ll call my brother or my sister. Thanks so much for coming over. Can you just turn on a movie before you leave?” Darley knew that if a movie was playing her kids would leave her alone for at least an hour and a half. She couldn’t face them, she worried she’d frighten them （their death obsession didn’t help）， or worse, get them sick.
Berta nodded and closed the door softly. Darley shut her eyes. Georgiana had work in the morning. Cord and Sasha had work in the morning. Darley’s mother, well, Darley’s mother had already shown what she was willing to do. She picked up the phone.
“Soon-ja?”
“Darley, my love, how are you and my babies?”
“I’m not great, Soon-ja, I think I have the stomach flu. I’m vomiting and Malcolm is heading to Brazil for his deal . . .”
“I’ll be right there. I’m getting in the car now. I should be there by nine at the latest. You hang in there, my love, and don’t worry about a thing.”
Darley fell back against her pillow, the sound of cartoon characters singing in high creepy voices seeping into feverish dreams of birds’ nests and pigeons.
In the morning, Darley woke to see the sun already peeking through the blinds. She could hear Soon-ja in the kitchen making breakfast. Her stomach and throat were raw, her eyes felt scratchy with sand, and she was pretty sure she smelled worse than the class hamster they had taken for spring vacation. But she was better. Until she flipped her phone over on her nightstand and saw the text from Malcolm: I’ve been fired.