These Dreams of You

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Parker says, “Do you want to answer?”

“What?” says Zan.

“Comment? On Viv’s photo? Post a reply?”

“You can do that?” and his son sighs deeply. The photo feels to Zan like a bulletin, a flare shot into cyberspace—“like,” Zan says not really to Parker but out loud, “I’m supposed to go get her.”

“How far is Germany?”

“I’ll take the train,” Zan is thinking out loud, “I don’t have the money for a plane ticket. . ”

“I, I, I,” says Parker, “what, you think you’re leaving me here?” because momentarily Zan has forgotten he doesn’t have a nanny: and then he realizes, But what about Sheba? This cannot be, he silently prays to the choice before him. He can’t leave his daughter who already has been passed off three times in her short life and feels herself stranded whenever anyone exits whatever room she’s in. You left me in London, he already hears someday’s cry of betrayal.

Viv never would want him to leave their daughter here. If I go find her, Zan thinks, she’ll hate me for leaving the girl; he remembers a talk they once had shortly before Sheba came — wasn’t it before? — when a fire threatened the canyon: If ever there was a decision to be made for either mother or father to save each other or their son, they would save their son. It was the easiest thing they ever agreed on.