Jillian

doesn’t think you’re disgusting, Megan. She doesn’t think like that.”
Megan started crying.
“Oh, come on, what? What?”
Megan kept crying, and Randy kept saying “What?”
“I wish you’d say something,” said Randy.
Megan’s throat squeezed shut every time she almost started saying something. She opened her mouth, which he couldn’t see with her head in his lap, then closed it, opened it, then closed it.
“Come on,” he said.
“What do you mean she doesn’t think like that?” Megan shouted. “I think like that. I think she’s disgusting and you know it, you know I think like that, so what do you mean she doesn’t think like that? What, do you think I should just go ahead and try to be more like Carrie? Should I get myself some abstract ambitions and start designing events calendars?”
“Oh, come on.”
Megan wailed.
She’s not always like this, thought Randy. “Why are you being like this?” he asked.
“Because I’m dying!” she said. Then she stopped crying.
“Here. Let me get you a Kleenex,” said Randy, scooting out from under her head.
She sat up straight and mucus ran down her face.
“Here,” said Randy. He handed her a tissue.
Megan felt like an idiot, but she also felt a little better. She was embarrassed and got up from the floor without making eye contact with Randy. She walked to the bathroom while blowing her nose. Randy sat back down.
“I look like a Harlequin Baby,” shouted Megan. Randy started laughing. Megan started laughing. Megan came out of the bathroom and looked at Randy.
“I’m still mad at you,” said Megan.
“Why?”
“Because you love Carrie the turd.”
Randy winced and said, “Come on.”
Later, he brought her juice and Tylenol in bed. He didn’t want to feel like they were arguing anymore.
“How’s Jillian?” he asked. A peace offering.
Megan sighed. “She continues to be a thick strand in the malevolent web of my daily routine.”

5
Jillian and her baby were sitting on the couch having dinner and Jillian felt hollow like she sometimes did. Just a body thing, really. They were watching America’s Funniest Home Videos, and Adam was very involved. Babies and dogs and dogs and cats and dogs and women at barbecues interacted with each other in hilarious combinations, and her son, who had no idea at all about Carla, laughed through his pasta at all the fun the people and animals were having. As she watched Adam watch, she was struck with a vague idea about the promise of life (as represented by the babies onscreen) and about not giving up on passions. While she looked at Adam, she understood that he was a baby with passions.
Jillian reflected on some of her youthful passions, and she was taken by a feeling of total integration. Not just the integration of her body and mind, but also a synthesis of that integrated self with the room, the atmosphere, and with the general chronology and flow of time and events, universally speaking. This was a feeling she sometimes got from motivational phrases, and she knew it to be the feeling of God. Whatever thought was in her mind when she got this feeling, she knew she owed it to God to follow.
“I’m not going to give up on my dream,” she whispered. She had a flash as bright as reality—no, brighter—of walking the dog, and maybe the dog would be big enough for Adam to ride like a tiny pony, or maybe she could get out the stroller and the dog could pull Adam, but either way the dog and boy were happy and her hands were empty and flapping at her sides.
“Yes, I’ll do it,” she whispered.
So what about Carla? Carla was in the past.
“Hey, Adam,” she said. “Which do you like better, doggies or kitties?”
“Doggies!” he said, but he said it like “d’ah-gaze,” and lifted his arms above his head and made fists of his hands, which resulted in the knocking over of his dinner onto the floor.
Mommy scooped it back into his bowl and set it on the coffee table, thinking one day she’d yell, “The dog, the dog!” when food got knocked on the floor.
Adam was put to bed. Jillian got into her own bed and rearranged the bras and other dirty clothes that were mixed in with the covers so there’d be room for her to sit and, later, sleep comfortably. She looked until she found a website called Pups of Love, which was a rescue center for dogs who had been sexually abused—dogs who had belonged to pet-store breeders and had been pregnant their whole lives. Some of them were still puppies themselves. A one-year-old? Isn’t that still a puppy? Some of these one-year-olds had birthed dozens of babies. She watched half a video and started sobbing. This is definitely it, she thought. And the adoption fee was a fraction of what the Humane Society wanted, so she’d have extra money for other things.
Jillian had a dream that night that she was riding an enormous dog through a meadow. The dog was running at full speed and its mouth was frothing. The breeze caught the froth from the dog’s mouth and splattered her in the face with it. The froth ran across her cheeks and her hair, which was rippling wildly in the breeze, until it separated from her and the dog, hung in the air for a minute, then fell gently onto a patch of little yellow flowers. The meadow was endless and the dog’s energy was endless and the sky had a few nice, white clouds.
•   •   •
That night, Megan had a dream that it was her birthday, and Randy took her to Chuck E. Cheese. They were in the arcade and Megan started to play a video game that was underneath a Skee-Ball table. The controller was a large, soft red ball that, when she squeezed it, activated little cartoon mice that really beat the shit out of each other. She sat under the Skee-Ball table for a very long time,