Then Liam would have to assure them that the paints would wash out, after which he would steer Joshua (or Nathan, or Ben) by the shoulders to the other end of the table. “Here, try the tractor,” he would say. “Run the tractor through this puddle of purple and you can make purple tread marks.”

He never knew ahead of time what the Texture Table would hold, because his hours were eight till three and the next day’s table was not set up until late in the afternoon, after the cleaning staff had come through. So every morning when he arrived, he approached the table feeling mildly curious. After all, it might be a real surprise-something they hadn’t encountered before, a donation from a parent or a local business. Once it was a huge supply of bubble wrap. The children had immediately grasped the possibilities. They had set to work popping, popping bubbles with their little pincer fingers, snap-snap-snap all up and down the table. Even Liam popped a few. There was something very satisfying about it, he found. Then Joshua and his best friend, Danny, conceived a plan to roll up the sheets of wrap and wring them out like dishcloths, popping dozens of bubbles at once, and from there they moved on to setting the rolls on the floor and stamping on them with both feet. “You’re hurting our ears!” the little girls cried, covering their ears with their hands. “Zayda, make them stop!”

Liam was baffled by the children’s unquestioning trust in him. From the first day of school, it was “I have to pee, Zayda,” and “Zayda, will you fix my ponytail?” No doubt at this age they would trust nearly anyone, but Miss Sarah said it also helped that he didn’t act all fake-chirpy with them. “You talk in a normal grumbly voice,” she said. “Kids like it when grownups don’t try too hard.”

Though she herself clearly found Liam a bit lacking.

On Halloween the Texture Table bore pumpkins with their tops cut off, and the children reached in up to their elbows and scooped out fistfuls of seeds and fibers. Then they drew faces on the pumpkins with black markers, because knives, of course, were not allowed.

At Thanksgiving they had gourds of all shapes and colors and sizes, some smooth and some pebbly and warty. (But there wasn’t a lot you could do with gourds, it soon emerged.)

For Hanukkah they made menorahs out of a special clay that could be baked in a regular oven. These were just humped glazed bands with nine holes for candles-nothing fancy. Liam incised the children’s names on the bottoms of their creations, and then while they were having Sharing Time he carried the menorahs in a cardboard box to the kitchen where he and Miss LaSheena, the cook, laid them one by one in the preheated oven. The clumsy little objects-streaky and misshapen, their holes obviously drilled by very small fingers-seemed to give off some of the children’s own fervor and energy. Liam turned over an especially garish purple-and-green affair with five extra holes. Joshua, he read. He might have known.

It came as news to him that small children maintained such a firm social structure. They played consistent roles in their dealings with each other; they held fierce notions of justice; they formed alliances and ad hoc committees and little vigilante groups. Lunches were parodies of grownups’ dinner parties, just with different conversational topics. Danny held forth at length on spaghetti’s resemblance to earthworms, and some of the little girls said, “Eww!” and pushed their plates away, but then Hannah-first clearing her throat importantly-delivered a discourse on a chocolate-covered ant she’d once eaten, while shy little Jake watched everybody admiringly from the sidelines.

At nap time they spread their sleeping bags in rows-Hello Kitty, Batman, Star Wars sleeping bags-and instantaneously conked out, as if done in by the passions of the morning. It was Liam’s job to watch over them while Miss Sarah took her break in the teachers’ lounge. He sat at her desk and surveyed their little flung-down bodies and listened to the silence, which had that ringing quality that comes after too much noise. He could almost hear the noise still: “That’s not fair!” and “Can I have a turn?” and Miss Sarah reading A. A. Milne aloud: “James, James, Morrison, Morrison, Weatherby George Dupree…”

And the chink! of Eunice’s earring as it dropped onto her dinner plate.

He had lost his last chance at love; he knew that. He was nearly sixty-one years old, and he looked around at his current life-the classroom hung with Big Bird posters, his anonymous apartment, his limited circle of acquaintances-and knew this was how it would be all the way till the end.

King John was not a good man, he had his little ways, and sometimes no one spoke to him for days and days and days.

It seemed to be expected each Christmas that he should buy Jonah a gift. This year he settled on a jigsaw puzzle showing a mother and baby giraffe. He believed Jonah had a special fondness for giraffes. The grownups in the family no longer exchanged gifts; or maybe they did exchange gifts but they didn’t tell Liam about it, which was fine with him. Louise and Dougall brought Jonah by on Christmas Eve afternoon, and Liam served instant cocoa with the kind of marshmallows that he knew Jonah preferred-the miniatures rather than the big, puffy ones.

Jonah seemed very big compared with the three-year-olds Liam saw daily. (He was nearly five by now.) He wore a Spider-Man jacket that he refused to take off. Louise said it was an early Christmas present. “We’re trying to spread out the deluge,” she said. “His other grandparents go way overboard.”

“Well, in that case maybe he could open my present early too,” Liam said.

“Can I?” Jonah asked, and Louise said, “Why not.”

She was sitting in an armchair while Dougall, a tubby, soft, blond boy of a man, was squeezed into the rocker. Liam always had the impulse to avert his eyes from Dougall out of kindness; he seemed so uncomfortable in his own body.

Jonah really liked his present. Or at least, he said he did. He said, “Giraffes are my favorite animals, next to elephants.”

“Oh,” Liam said. “I didn’t know about the elephants.”

“Go ahead and give him his present,” Louise told Jonah.

“I have a present?” Liam asked.

“He’s old enough now to learn that giving goes both ways,” Louise said.

“I made it myself,” Jonah told him. He was pulling it from his jacket pocket-a small flat rectangle wrapped in red tissue. “Why don’t I just unwrap it for you,” he said.

“That would be very helpful,” Liam said.

Jonah was so eager that he flung bits of tissue everywhere. Eventually he uncovered a bookmark decorated with pressed leaves. “See,” he said, placing it on Liam’s knee, “first you glue the leaves to the paper and then the teacher sticks this clear stuff over the top of them with her hot shiny metal thinga-majig.”

“That’s called an iron,” Louise said, clutching her hair. “I’m mortified.”

“I’ll use it right away,” Liam told Jonah.

“Do you like it?”

“I not only like it; I need it.”

Jonah looked pleased. “I told you,” he said to his mother.

“He insisted it was you who should get that,” Louise told Liam. “I believe it was originally supposed to be a parent gift.”

“Well, too bad,” Liam said merrily. “It’s mine now.”

Jonah grinned.

“Where’s Kitty?” Dougall asked Liam. (His first utterance since “Hi.”)

“Um, she’s at Damian’s, I believe.”

Louise said, “What do you mean, you believe?”

“Well, actually I know. But she’s due home any second. She said she’d be here for your visit.”

She had promised to help with the entertaining, Liam remembered wistfully. (He sometimes found Dougall a bit difficult to converse with.)

“That girl is running hog wild,” Louise told him.

“Oh, no, no; by and large she’s been very responsible. This is just the exception that proves the rule.”