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What do you do when you've survived the worst thing in the world? I'm looking for a box of garbage bags in the pantry, and counting my blessings: I live in a large, new house; my wife makes love to me frequently, and with zest and imagination; and my two young children haven't yet grown to the age when scorn replaces admiration. I sit at the kitchen table, and pull bags out of the box one at a time and cut them along their seams-down one side and across the bottom. My life feels larger now, more secure, as if the house provides a greater bulwark against the rage of the world outside. After I've emptied the box, I back the mini-van out of the garage and lay eight sheets of black plastic on the cold cement floor. I love the petroleum, fertilizer, and pesticides smells of my garage; for some reason, they remind me of my father. He is a son-of-a-bitch, a genuine bastard, and I love him fiercely because I gave him everything I had. I open the door to the kitchen and stick my head in. Alex, I say, get your coat on. Alex looks up from his Gameboy, his fingers punching buttons. Hurry up, Alex. I want to show you what work looks like. I smile and close the door, and count another blessing: the profundity of my love for my children still has the power to surprise me. Alex joins me, looking in his puffy white Gore-Tex jacket and matching gloves like a miniature Michelin Man. I explain that without strips of duct tape of the correct length, our project will fail. Alex glows with enjoyment at being asked to help. When I've finished taping the bags together, he counts out eight more. When we we're done, we have five large sheets of silver-striped black plastic. These we roll as neatly as we can into a bundle. I had three children, but the oldest, Sally, died eighteen months ago, the victim of a disease the name of which I've chosen to forget. It is some compound of malignant Latinate syllables that ends in -oma, but what difference does it make, the name? She might as well have been ripped apart by pit bulls, or blown up by an Arab with a bomb under his jacket. And if you want to know how it could possibly mean more, try this: my first wife Claire tested her urine in a dozen and a half home pregnancy tests. In those last desperate months, she bought ovulation predictors, so we could know her day of greatest fertility, and even that failed. Oh, how we fucked, purposefully, joylessly. Claire kept a calendar in the drawer of her bedside table. After I'd finished and withered, rolled over and either s_link_ed into the shower or gone back to sleep, and after she'd lain on her back hugging her knees, she pulled the calendar out of the drawer and marked the day with a red X. After we'd succeeded by other means, I counted those Xs. 232 times we'd failed. She had a laparoscopy, her abdomen blown up like a balloon and invaded by a fiber optic camera. I came in cup, and been relieved when the tests came back, and it wasn't me. Alex and I carry the two-section aluminum ladder into the front yard, the dead lawn crunching under our feet. Deep in the sky above us a jet airplane cuts twin vapor-trail furrows against the grain of the sun's early light, flying south. The pale yellow stucco of our house picks up scarlet and purple hues as dawn gives way to morning. Our neighbor across the street is stringing Christmas lights. Alex helps me slide the ladder sections out to full height. While Alex steadies the ladder, I wrap the first palm tree. Dad, it got down to 23° last night. Alex is seven. He's a bright kid, wise for his age, so compassionate it could break your heart, but with a good sense of humor, too. He looks like his mother: dark eyes and hair, olive skin. Of everyone I know and love-mother, father, sisters, wives-no one was as kind as Alex when Sally died. What's your point, Alex? An adolescent salamander is called an eft, Alex says. He shrugs and rubs snot onto the back of his glove, and then steps away from the ladder. What' s your point, Dad? I look down from the ladder's second-highest rung, and watch my son spin around and around in the yellow grass. After about a dozen spins, Alex lifts his arms, and then falls backwards. When I think of Claire, I remember her laughing, holding out to me the last of the home pregnancy tests, its + sign bold and regal in its purpleness. This was after the appointment with the reproductive endocrinologist and the alphabet soup of acronyms-IVF, GIFT, ART, BET, ICSI, and after the nightly shots of Pergonal and hCG into her hip. The shots were supposed to make her superovulate, and they worked. Via, once again, the miracle of fiber optics, I watched on closed circuit TV while the doctor retrieved the eggs. My wife, in stirrups and sedated, wasn't able to enjoy the carnival atmosphere as the doctor counted the retrieved eggs and commented on their robustness. The doctor placed the eggs in a petri dish, and mixed them with my sperm. After an incubation period of 48 hours, all twelve of the eggs had been fertilized. The doctor was excited. We marveled at our luck. The three embryos deemed most viable were returned to the womb. The rest were frozen. Alex and I put the ladder back, and go in through the kitchen door. My wife Kim is standing at the counter, drinking a cup of coffee. She's wearing a purple turtleneck sweater under Texas Christian University sweatshirt, and a new pair of high heel boots, hewn from a shiny, smooth black leather that for some reason reminds me of equestrianism and deviant sex. I put my arm around her and pull her to me, bury my face in her clean, dark hair, and breathe deeply. I love those boots, I murmur. She pulls away and chides me for mussing her hair. Though it's Saturday, she has an appointment with a client, and wants to look her best. I'm sad to see her leave. I'm feeling frisky this morning. The holidays are on the horizon, and the heaviness I've felt since Sally died is lifting. I'd be lost without Kim, and she knows it. Her power over me is tremendous. They say power corrupts, though, and I believe it, but so what? What can she do to me that hasn't already been done? Claire was Kim's polar opposite, a tough cookie who crumbled, but who could blame her? The gynecologist confirmed our hopes, but we had to wait 10 weeks for the ultrasound. Then, our baby was only a throbbing echo in Claire's womb. 12 weeks later, the heartbeat was still there, but now we could distinguish arms and legs, and proclaim it a girl, and start deciding on names. But still, Claire blamed herself for putting us through two years of grinding uncertainty. When my daughter Kylie comes home from spending the night at a friend's house, she, Alex, and I play a Sony Playstation NFL 2001 tournament. Kylie is the Broncos, Alex is Vikings, and I am the Ravens. In the front yard, the wind is picking up. Look, Alex says, pointing out the window. A palm branch strains against the plastic, until finally, a duct-taped seam breaks, and the branch emerges. It reminds me of that thing we saw on the Discovery Channel, Kylie says. the hatching of an ostrich. Kylie is ten. Like me, she's moody and shy, but unlike me, she hasn't learned to overcome it. I'm enjoying myself. The house smells of coffee and toast. My children site beside me and radiate warmth. But then Randy Moss beats Duane Starks on a slant pattern over the middle, and my cell phone rings. I hate Randy Moss, I say. There was a moment I'd experienced with each my children, the moment they'd met my gaze with a matter-of-factness that let me know they recognized me. With Lucy, this moment came when she was seven weeks old. I was in her room. She'd awaken hungry, and I was feeding her a bottle of breast milk. The house was silent except for my whispers. The nursery was dark except for the soft glow of a nightlight. She'd spit up on her onesy, and smelled vaguely of Parmesan cheese. (Can anyone resist the smell of a baby?) She turned her head away from the bottle, and looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. As she was my first, I was wholly unprepared. When I think of her now, unaided by a photograph, that's the image I get. The cell phone call is from my boss. I am a salesman, a great salesman, a salesman in the way a pro ball p_layer_ is an athlete. Selling is the easiest thing in the world to me, easier than counting money. My boss needs me in San Diego, and I figure I'll be gone four days, three nights. Without thinking, I pull the Jack Welch biography off the bookshelf and reach for a Ziploc baggy. I sit down at my desk and pull enough out of the baggy for one day. To be safe, I double the size of the pile, and then double it again, and again. I place a sheet of printer paper over it, and go to the kitchen. I find a box of cellophane in the pantry, and tear off a small sheet. I close the door to my study behind myself and turn the lock. I flatten the cellophane on the desk, and place the pile on top. I fold the edges of the cellophane, and then roll it into a wad about the size of a triple-A battery. I put the Ziploc baggy against the back of the shelf, and slide the Jack Welch biography back to its original position. Flying to San Diego in the morning, I say, standing at the door to the study. My heart is pounding. I've just made a decision, and now I'm flustered. Alex is lying on the ottoman, and Kylie has gone to her room. Ah, the life of the business traveler, I sigh, trying to calm down. Tapping on a laptop at 30,000 feet. Avis, Hertz, Enterprise, 'Taxi!' OK, Dad, Alex says. Sheraton, Hilton, Ramada, I grin. HBO, mini-bar, porn. Waking up at three a.m., 'Where am I, Tampa?' Rolling over on a hard-on, dialing 1 for the front desk, 'I need a 6:00 wake up call!' I'm ashamed for allowing my son to see me this way, but I can't stop. I'm feeling large now. God help me, I do love it so. The jostle of the Starbucks condiment counter. Then it's handshakes and smiles all
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