2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas

11:00 P.M

Mark Altimari stands in the doorway of Madeleine’s bedroom, watching her sleep. Her fists are clenched beneath her chin as if even in dreams she must protect herself against foes.

Corrine, Madeleine’s mother, is in the kitchen, making one of their simple dinners. Mark can hear her distracted singing. Madeleine is three.

Mark wants to drink wine and dance to his new record. He wants to palm his wife’s full rump. He wants to order pizza. But Corrine believes in saving money, in slow meals and something to eat while you’re cooking them. She cuts slices out of a peach while the sauce simmers. Billie Holiday plays. Mark flips through his record collection to select the next album.

They are good at being together. Leaving space. Leaving notes. Bringing home slabs of Locatelli, her favorite cheese. His tangy smell.

They were in the first wave of young couples to settle near Ninth Street, bringing new energy to the Old World market. Mark would have preferred a house in the country but Corrine said the city would be their daughter’s best teacher. They bought a shop and Mark sold handmade cheeses. Corrine manned the cash register and worked at The Courtland Avenue Club at night. They were respectful of the other shop owners, who in some cases had been there for fifty years. Their business grew so Mark bought another shop, across town. Then another. Walking home every night, a wedge of Locatelli or a fistful of lavender tucked into his apron pocket, he tried to shake the dread fortune produced.

Corrine’s knife stills, as if she has detected a kink in the air. “What’s that sound?” she says.

Mark places his nose in the space where her shoulder meets her neck. Steals a slice from the cutting board. “No sound, dear.”

“Listen,” she insists.

Billie Holiday’s voice has been twinned. He looks to the record player for explanation.

“You don’t think,” she says, but interrupts herself to place her finger over her lips. He lowers the volume. Billie’s voice recedes. The other gets louder. It is coming from Madeleine’s bedroom, but it couldn’t be their daughter, who has yet to say her first word. She doesn’t seem interested in talking and trails kids her age in verbal skills.

I hear music, mighty fine music …

A gust of air, a sudden shove. As if all of the house’s atoms had been paused on the brink of propulsion and this is their cue. The silverware drawer bursts out of its track. The forks and spoons rise into the air. The plate lifts, each peach slice orbiting it like a private solar system.

Corrine releases her grip on the knife. It stays in the air. She turns her shocked eyes to Mark.

The singing is unworried and clear. The saucepan lurches, in fits and starts leaving its heated place, skirts the stovetop, and falls to the ground. Corrine lunges to catch it but misses. The sauce ruins itself over her arms. She squeaks and plunges them under the faucet’s cold water.

The glasses in the cupboards, the cookbooks, the recipe box, hover a foot off their perches. The dish towels ascend above their wooden rods.

“What is this?” Corrine says.

The voice is oblivious to the mayhem it’s causing.

Mark stumbles into the back bedroom to find their baby clutching the bars of her crib. She is singing. He halts, scared to approach this unfamiliar creature. Madeleine holds the last, joyful note. Mark lifts her out of her crib and returns to the family room, where everything is collapsing. Corrine dodges the kitchen items that have been abandoned by their arrangements with gravity. Mark silences the music.

Finally, everything is still. They gape at Madeleine, who bounces and claps in Mark’s arms. “Order a pizza?” Mark says finally.

Corrine laughs. “What I wanted to begin with.”

When Madeleine sings, everyone gets what they want.

Almost everyone.

Every morning Mark wakes up thinking Corrine is still alive. Every morning he finds her side of the bed empty and suffers the loss again.

Madeleine has her mother’s formidable nose, the brown eyes that always seem on the verge of tears. Mark wants to love his daughter, but being around her makes him miss his wife more. Madeleine is only what is left. Mark glides a book underneath his sleeping daughter’s hand. History of Jazz, Volume Two. When she wakes, at least there will be something good waiting.