"Maybe you should do it," said Maura.

"Are you serious?"

"Well, this Purdy thing can't take up all of your time. Seems like you're just waiting around for the next meeting."

"He's been out of town."

"Okay, so, maybe you can try doing the deck. You might enjoy the exercise."

"If I can handle it. Could kill me."

"If Nick can do it, you can do it. That guy's not exactly fit."

"Maybe I will," I said, and maybe meant it. A day in the sun, some hard-earned under-the-table cash, it sounded promising. I'd once been a painter, after all, a fellow who worked with his hands. Now I could be a carpenter, like Jesus. I felt flushed with the idea of Jesus, the Jewish craftsman Jesus, and also the shit wine.

"To decks," I said, raised my glass. "Decks are America. The hidden platform where the patriarchy is reasserted."

"What are you talking about?" said Maura, who knew what I was talking about, had dabbled with perhaps a bit more coherence in the same college theory I had, but probably wanted me to focus on how I salted the salad.

"I'm talking about our homeland, honey," I said, poured more wine, gulped it, flusher now, warm with that feeling of wanting a feeling that maybe had already fled. Where had the feeling gone? It wasn't in the wine. It wasn't in the pork chops Maura tonged from the broiler.

"America," I said, "that run-down demented old pimp. Can't keep his bitches in line. No juice. He's lost his diamond fangs, drinks Tango from a paper bag. A gummy coot in the pool hall. The wolves, those juveniles, they taunt him."

"Gummy coot?"

"Whatever," I said. "You get the point."

"Not really," says Maura. "It's retarded."

"Retarded ha-ha or retarded peculiar?"

"Wait. Be quiet."

We froze, listened for sounds from Bernie's room.

"I thought I heard him," said Maura. "Sometimes I'll be at work, in a meeting or something, and I'll think I hear him crying. It's weird. He's been sleeping through the night for a year but I still… Anyway, what were you saying? America is an alcoholic pimp?"

"You used to love my raps. My riffs. I thought that's why you married me."

Had she caught the edge of true panic beneath the joke panic? Did she know it was Horace's riff? You really had to hustle to recruit the right people to prop up your delusions, but the moment somebody broke ranks, or just broke for a protein shake, the whole deal teetered.

"I know it wasn't my soap opera looks," I said. "I thought you loved the way my mind worked. Its strange loops. My sense of humor."

"Shhh," said Maura. "Shut the fuck up."

We froze again, listened for moans, the beginnings of wails. It wasn't so onerous these days, but some moments still brought us back to Bernie's infant months, both of us on tiptoes, petrified we'd wake the baby, lose those seventeen minutes of email catch-up we believed our sacrifice had earned us. We were like the Frank family in their Dutch attic, but with email.

"Okay," said Maura, signaled the all clear. "So, what were we saying? Soap operas?"

"Yeah," I sulked. "Soap operas."

"Don't be such a queen," said Maura.

"Save that terminology for your gay lovers," I said.

"Excuse me?"

"I mean your lovers that are also gay."

"What?"

"You heard me."

"What's your problem?"

"I don't have a problem."

"Is there something you want to say to me?"

Why was I such a diseased fuck? It had to be society's fault. I loved people, all people, except for the ones with money and free time.

"No," I said.

"Are you sure?"

"I know you think I'm homophobic, but I'm not. You're the one who betrayed all your gay friends by having a baby."

"Most of my gay friends have babies now."

"You call them your gay friends. That's homophobic right there."

"You've really lost me," said Maura.

"I don't like animation. I like live action."

"Let me have a little time with that one."

"I don't care what people do behind closed doors, or open doors, or out in the street or in a coffee shop. I don't care what you do. Suck cock in Starbucks all day. Just don't be happy. And don't call me a depressive pansy behind my back."

Maura stared.

"I'm just kidding," I said.

Maura did not move.

"Really," I said. "Please, I don't know what I'm talking about."

"No, you don't," she said.

She looked beautiful there near the window in moonlight. I moved to her, tried to kiss her, let my hand fall to the strap of her dress, but she shoved me, gently, away.

"I'm sorry, Milo. I'm just… I'm just all touched out."

"Touched out?"

"I know you understand."

"Do I? Does Paul know that?"

"What?"

"You heard me."

"Don't be paranoid, Milo."

"Don't make me paranoid. Especially to avoid guilt."

"I don't know what you're talking about. Paul's really kind of an idiot actually."

"I'm an idiot, too!" I shouted. "Don't you fucking see it, Maura! I'm an idiot, too!"

Maura's eyes got beady. Bernie's wail, low at first, gathered up for the sonic cascade.

"Yes, Milo," whispered Maura. "I do see that now."

Bernie soon returned to sleep, but in that moment we probably both recalled the all-nighters of those first few years, Maura always the one to rise and slip into Bernie's room. Once in a while I'd pretend to be about to get up, even pull the sheets off my legs, but Maura would push me back down in disgust. She'd lost years of slumber. A point came where Bernie had suckled for too long to start a bottle, but I could have intervened, insisted I live my share of nightly hell. But I didn't. I liked the sleep. I still felt guilty about it, but I was not about to let the feeling devour me. I had learned long ago how to refine the raw guilt into a sweet, granulated resentment.

There was, for instance, the lullaby question. Maura sang the boy "Silent Night" almost every night. Operation Foreskin Rescue was one thing, but did she have to fill Bernie's brain with Christian death chants? Someday I thought I might go in there with an X-Acto blade, Jew-cut the little crumb right back into my tribe, my half-tribe.

T.C.B., Abraham-style.

Wonder if it's legal. Be good to do a little time.

It wasn't society's fault, really.

I dozed off worried I had truly unhooked myself from the apparatus of okay. Or maybe it was the Malbec.

I woke in silence. Light from the hallway fell on Maura and I watched her sleep, a lattice of saliva fluttering on her lips. I rose to fetch a glass of water, peeked into Bernie's room.

They were all lovely in sleep, but none so lovely as Bernie. Here in my humble outer-borough home a godlet took his rest, a miniature deity in need of protection until he was strong enough to fend for himself and, eventually, deliver humankind from fatal folly.

This not really working thing wasn't really working.