Doug’s office is full of primitive masks. I focused on a cone of ropy hair as he told us about the Amazonian tribe which, when too much went wrong, sent someone out to kill a jaguar and bury it under the headman’s house. I said, “We can do in the hamster.” “Hamster?” said Doug. “Murph,” said Beth. “Buzzy’s hamster.” Doug looked reproachful, as if his not knowing about the hamster made him wonder what else she’d withheld. Not long after, the hamster died of natural causes. I felt it was my fault. If you were driving beside us, stalled at the entrance to the West Side Highway, it would never occur to you that in our trunk is a half-frozen hamster we are on our way to bury on my sister’s farm. When you saw our quiet children, our twelve-year-old daughter, Holly, our six-year-old son, Buzzy, you would think they are better than your kids and wonder how we do it. How could you know that the children’s silence scares us, though Beth—in that quiet voice, in which, from their infancy, she half pretended they couldn’t hear—says, “Aren’t the kids being great?
