They were driving into the setting sun, so when Sarah tapped the window and said, “Oh my God,” Leif saw only glare.  

“What?” he asked, his voice low because Lily was asleep in the back of the minivan. Normally they didn’t let her nap this late, but Leif had decided to gamble on a wakeless transfer from car seat to crib once they got home. Long odds, but they desperately needed an easy evening. Maybe Lily would even sleep through to morning, though this seemed too much to hope. A night could hold only so many miracles. 

“That kid,” Sarah said. They were passing the football stadium so Leif knew “kid” meant a college student. All the students were kids to them, though they were barely ten years older than the upperclassmen. Being new parents only intensified the gulf.  

Leif followed his wife’s white-tipped fingernails–he had just picked her up from lunch and manicures with friends, one of her first baby-free outings since having Lily–and landed on a solitary figure clumping toward them down the long, wide sidewalk. The figure was locked in battle with an unseen enemy, jabbing at the air and shouting words they couldn’t hear, face scrunched into a combative rictus. 

“God that’s sad,” Sarah said. Leif agreed: pitiful. Barely six o’clock and drunk as hell.  

At a red light they got a longer look. It was a girl, tall, substantial, wearing only an oversized black t-shirt, jeans, and red, highly structured sneakers that emphasized her heavy, astronaut-like steps. She was close enough now that they could hear her, even through the rolled-up windows: “Azz’ole! Azz’ole! You’re jus’, jus’n … azz’ole!” Each punch sent her limp hair dancing around her head. Behind her, the stadium loomed like an alien mothership in the advancing dusk. 

“She cannot be warm enough,” Sarah said, turning her head to follow the girl as she passed their car. A year ago they would have made some crack about wasted undergraduates, if they had commented at all. 

Around them, everything was colorless except the red stoplight and the red taillights of the winter-dirty cars. The sun was nearly gone. It was the hour of going home. Leif, wiped out from his solo afternoon with Lily, wanted to go home too. They were ten minutes away. He wanted to go home, execute his car-seat-to-crib plan, eat dinner in front of the TV and, if he had any energy left, maybe have some time with Sarah. That part of their life had been slow to restart since Lily. Which Leif understood, all the changes Sarah had gone through. He never pressed her. Usually he was too tired himself. They’d get there. But it had been nearly five months. More, if you counted the last, bulkiest months of pregnancy. And Leif did count them. The light turned green. They moved forward. Leif felt something building in his wife, some conclusion being arrived at in the seat beside him. 

“We should go help her,” Sarah said. 

This struck Leif as exactly what they should not do. Their sleep-phobic baby was, right now, sleeping, so what they really should do was get home, unsnap the car seat, bear it into the house like a holy fragile relic and slide Lily, none the wiser, into her crib. Also, drunk people unnerved Leif. They morphed into demented clones of normal human beings, grown-up changelings prone to unpredictable outbursts. No thanks. 

“Campus security can handle it,” he said.  

“I don’t see any security.” 

“I’m sure they’ll be by,” he said. “They make regular rounds.” 

“Leif,” Sarah said softly. “She’s someone’s daughter.”  

And, like that, pathetic public drunkenness joined the can’t-evens of disease, death, dismemberment, and abduction that since Lily’s birth they’d curated like disaster connoisseurs. In a similar predicament, wouldn’t they want someone to help Lily? As usual, Sarah had cut to the heart of the matter.  

Leif abruptly pulled over. The driver behind them honked in irritation.  

“We can’t stay here,” he said. Their minivan–a premature purchase in Leif’s opinion, but Sarah had insisted–barely fit on the shoulder. Cars zoomed by just inches to his left. 

“Up around the corner?” 

In the rear-view mirror, he judged the girl’s surprisingly rapid progress away from them. “She might be gone by then.” 

Sarah absently touched her breasts with her white-tipped fingers. “I’m going to have to feed Lily soon.”  

“No, no, don’t wake her up.” 

“But she–” 

“You can pump, right?” No drunk student was going to derail his plan.  

“Sure, I guess.” She disliked pumping and avoided it unless absolutely necessary. 

“Try to get her into her crib without waking her up,” Leif said in a rush. “Then you can pu–”  

From the depths of the minivan Lily unleashed a howl. Sarah shot him a What did you expect? glance and reached to soothe Lily, but in the capacious back seat mostly patted air.  

Leif undid his seatbelt, trying not to feel too defeated. “You go. I’ll walk home.” Sarah nodded and clambered into the driver’s seat. 

Only as she pulled away did Leif realize that, since he hadn’t expected to get out of the minivan for the pickup, he wasn’t wearing a coat. His flannel shirt was all the protection he had against the late February chill. He fastened the top button and trotted off after the drunk girl. 

When he reached her, she was sitting on the ground, legs extended in front of her like an enormous toddler. Her one-sided battle had quieted. She glared into the middle distance with a confused, halted expression.  

“Hey.” Leif crouched down uncertainly beside her. Now that he had caught up with her, he had no idea what to do with this large, unresponsive young woman. “Hey. Let’s get you home.” 

A low moan rose from deep in her chest. Leif braced himself. The last five months may have inured him to every bodily substance that could erupt from an infant, but the spewing of an intoxicated adult was something else entirely. The moment passed, though; the dam held. Had she already puked? He saw nor smelled any sign of it.  

“Let’s get you home,” Leif repeated, hearing how useless his words were. It wasn’t like she could give him her address. Even if she could, he had no car, and she was too big for him to wrangle into an Uber, for which, again, no address. In their zeal to bank some good karma for Lily, he and Sarah had failed to think through basic practicalities.  

Then the drunk girl’s head dropped forward onto her chest, and it hit Leif that this could be a true medical emergency. Who knew how much alcohol was streaming through her body, and without vomiting where could it go except deeper into her blood, her vital organs? Should he stick his finger down her throat? Force it all up? No, God, he could never do that. What he could do was call an ambulance. Summon the professionals. That was the only course here. Any more would be unwise. Sarah, he was sure, would agree. Resolute, Leif stood. Just as he reached into his back pocket for his phone, two girls came tearing around the corner and raced up to them.  

“Allison! Oh my God, there you are!” They blew past Leif, fell to their knees, and frantically patted the drunk girl all over, as if looking for cracks to plug. 

“I’m getting an ambulance now,” Leif called out over their ministrations. 

They looked up, startled to see him there. 

“And you are?” asked one of the girls, eyeing him from under a purple beanie that barely contained an explosion of black ringlets.  

“I was driving by and saw that your friend needed help.” He started tapping his phone.  

“Wait, wait.” Purple beanie girl jumped up. “She doesn’t need an ambulance. She just overdid it and wandered off. A little too much Sunday fun day.” Her breezy certainty and evident status as a knowledgeable friend somehow commanded authority. Leif was inclined to hand matters over to her and take his leave, but the drunk girl was still on the ground, slouched against the other girl, who was gently stroking her forehead.  

“I don’t know,” Leif said. “She doesn’t look good.” 

“She’ll be fine,” purple hat asserted. “She’s done this before. We just need to get her home.” 

Leif looked up and down the long dark block, edged by the tall fence that marked off the stadium. On football Saturdays this sidewalk, this entire part of town, was choked with people. Townies knew to avoid it completely. Now, except for them, it was deserted. 

“I don’t have a car,” he said. “With me, I mean. I was driving by with my wife, but she had to get our daughter home so just I got out.” He could see the girls conduct a silent debate with their eyes on what to do with him, how much to trust him. Leif approved of their skepticism. He would want Lily to be equally wary of strange men proffering help. Then the girls shrugged and nodded. 

“Guess we’re walking then,” said purple beanie. “I think we can make it, with three of us. We don’t live far. I’m her roommate, by the way. Maeve.” She pointed to the girl on the sidewalk, cradling the drunk girl’s head. “This is her girlfriend visiting from home.”  

“Leif.” He never did get the girlfriend’s name. “But she can’t walk. I’ll call an Uber. Just give me the address. I’ll pay.” 

Maeve shook her head with the impatience of someone who, once she has a plan, does not like to veer from it. “It’s just a few blocks. By the time the Uber gets here we’d be home. The walk will do her good.”  

“And you’re sure she doesn’t need an ambulance?” Later, it was always important to Leif to remind himself that he had tried, several times, to seek medical help.  

“Totally sure.” Maeve grunted lightly as they hoisted the drunk girl, Allison, to her feet. Leif propped up her left side, Maeve her right. The girlfriend stationed herself in front. Sizewise, Maeve and the girlfriend combined did not equal one drunk girl. No way could they have gotten her home without him, and Leif felt good to finally be useful. 

They set off on a swaying course toward a nearby side street of student rentals. The drunk girl listed and groaned and kept her eyes closed but, securely scaffolded, managed to stay on her feet. As promised, it was not far. Maeve soon halted them in front of a squat blue house with a papasan chair on the sagging front porch. “This is us,” she said. Leif gave quiet thanks; the drunk girl was heavy weight. Up the steps, across the porch, through the front door. Then Maeve and Leif peeled off, leaving the girlfriend to ferry Allison the final leg to the bathroom. Sounds of retching and splashing immediately filled the hallway. “It’s OK honey,” the girlfriend cooed. “You just let it all out.” Leif had to admire Allison’s masterful timing, holding it in until the proper moment. Maybe she had been more aware than she’d seemed and, as Maeve said, would be fine. He chalked his overreaction up to an excess of parental caution, and it pleased him to feel those instincts becoming more developed. 

Leif and Maeve stepped into the living room, as if to conclude business. The room held a beat-up plaid couch and a beat-up coffee table and a couple of lamps with beat-up shades or no shade at all. Every visible surface was strewn with laptops and coffee cups and books and dishes. Two bikes with mud-caked tires were propped against a wall covered with thumbtacked posters and tapestries. Above it all, fairy lights crisscrossed the ceiling like a trawler net that might drop down at any second and trap everyone below in a twinkling cage. 

Leif deeply approved of the room. He spent his work hours soliciting donations to the university these girls attended, coaxing enormous gifts from wealthy alumni who directed their money to recreation centers with saunas and Jacuzzis, or eponymous dorms with dishwashers and plasma TVs and meditation rooms, or dining hall sushi bars and chocolate fountains, as if young adult privation was a flaw to be engineered out of existence. A few years ago, Leif had landed a record-breaking contribution from a New York real estate tycoon who’d insisted on tearing down the gorgeous Art Deco building that housed the business school, replacing it with a faceless steel-and-glass tower, and naming the entire school after him and his wife. Leif had almost quit after that. Instead, he got promoted. This living room gave him hope that communal shabbiness wasn’t entirely gone, that it might survive long enough for Lily to experience.  

He jerked his head in the direction of the bathroom. “You sure she’ll be OK?” 

Maeve nodded. She’d taken off her hat, unleashing her abundant curls. “She does this a lot.” But an uncertain look crossed her face. “Never this bad, though. She’s got a paper due tomorrow.” 

Leif took out his phone. “Text me tomorrow?” Aware that he stood in a house of undergraduate women he had met not half an hour ago and was asking one for her number, he quickly added, “Just to let me know how she’s doing. Totally up to you.”  

“No, of course,” Maeve shrugged.  

From the bathroom, things had gone silent. It was getting late. Leif had a mile-plus walk ahead of him. He needed to get going. 

“Kurosawa, huh?” Leif pointed to a poster of “Ran”, its blood-red Japanese characters slashing the wall.  

Maeve glanced over. “Oh, yeah. That’s my roommate’s.” 

“Allison’s into Japanese cinema?” 

“Different roommate. Yeah, film studies major.”  

“What about you?” 

“Psychology. Which means nothing, but hey, only three more months to go.” Maeve crossed her arms and flashed a smile that could close a steel door. “I better go check on her. But, listen, it was really nice of you to help.” One of her curls brushed his arm as she slipped past him down the hallway. He let himself out. 

The evening had rolled in cold, promising snow by morning. Leif dug his hands into the pockets of his jeans and pressed through the streets, coatless and exhilarated. When had he last been out walking at night? His giddiness made him a bit guilty. Right now, Sarah would be laboring alone up the dinner-bath-book-nursing-singing-book-nursing-singing-rocking-book-nursing-singing-rocking mountain they climbed every night. One of them often passed out on the mushroom rug in Lily’s room as they waited for sleep to claim her, unable to sneak away and risk a floorboard creak that would undo everything. If he entered the house in the next hour, he risked undoing everything. Ears like a hawk, that kid. So, on impulse, and also because he was really cold, he ducked into a bar to wait until it was safe to go home. It was a bar he’d passed dozens of times and never set foot in. He went to bars infrequently, and never by himself. A sense of novelty buoyed him as he opened the door and stepped inside, gasping when the warmth hit him.  

The bar was a low-slung, paneled rectangle that, situated outside the student blast zone, attracted a mostly townie crowd. Tonight it was Sunday-thin, a few quiet drinkers scattered around the tables. Leif sat at the bar and ordered a shot of Jameson’s and a beer chaser, a combo he thought befitted the establishment. The bartender, a guy about his dad’s age with hands like boxing gloves, silently delivered the glasses. Low music rumbled from hidden speakers, and holiday lights were strung around the mirror behind rows of glinting bottles. Leif had once been to a bar, in a small town up north, in which a fully decorated Christmas tree hung upside down from the ceiling. This had been a year or two after college, an interim stretch of waiting tables and freelance writing for online magazines no one read. He and a loose group of friends had driven two hours to spend a summer day at a lake and afterward pulled into the roadside bar. Sitting below the dangling Christmas tree in their damp clothes, covered in pinpricks of incipient sunburn, made them loopy. When someone called the tree oversized mistletoe, they all took it as permission to kiss each other. Leif smiled down into his beer. Random, glowing, low-consequence fun. The kind Maeve and her crew probably had all the time, assuming it would always be in abundance, along with a constantly replenishing supply of friends to hang out in their cluttered living room. He felt a bit sheepish about how he’d lingered in that living room with Maeve. Standing in a student rental so much like ones he’d once occupied, talking to a young woman–muscle memory had kicked in for a moment, that was all. 

Leif checked his phone. A single text from Sarah, more than an hour earlier: How goes? No follow-up; she knew he’d respond when there was news. That was Sarah. No muss, no fuss. Piloting the steady ship of their life. Qualities that would make her an excellent social worker, once she finished her program. And also, from day one, an excellent mother. Thinking of his auspicious domestic life, Leif felt something like amazed relief. What if he had stayed a waiter, pursuing a writing career that never materialized? Would he have ended up like this bartender here, clutching pints in a near-empty bar on a blowsy Sunday night? No Sarah, no Lily, no cozy house in this pleasant town. All good, he texted back to Sarah. Home soon.  

He took another sip, let his thoughts deepen. There had been something about the drunk girl, about the way she’d staggered down that sidewalk. In all the hubbub he’d barely registered it, but it nagged him now. He’d seen staggering like that before. Where? When? Slowly, hazily, a long-forgotten image broke to the surface: Timmy Britnau. That was it. Timmy Britnau had stomped just like that around the streets of their hometown. Stiff-limbed, barking like a seal, he’d lurched down the sidewalks and in the parks, desperate for the friendship of the neighborhood kids even though he was in his twenties, at least. They called him Frankenstein and ran away screaming or, if they were feeling especially horrible, acted friendly to him first and then sprinted away, his despairing bellows filling the street. They didn’t know then, no adult ever had explained, that Timmy had a closed-head injury from a car accident in high school, before which he had been a good student and promising athlete, a kid like any of them. To them he was just the local freak.  

“Timmy Britnau,” Leif muttered over his beer. “Timmy fucking Britnau.” What shits they’d been to Timmy Britnau, who never even remotely threatened them. And oh God, his poor parents. They couldn’t stop their grown, brain-damaged son from leaving the house and making his daily rounds. They could only hope, when he went out the door every morning, that he’d meet with some kindness. If he ever did, Leif hadn’t witnessed it. Such total shits. Leif sent a wobbly apology out across the years to Timmy and his parents for his part in their cruelty, and he offered up his aid to Allison tonight for what penance it might amount to. 

Leif ordered another round. He wanted to come back to this bar with Sarah; they’d hardly gone out since having Lily. Leif resolved to line up a reliable stable of sitters. How hard could it be, in a town full of college students? Maybe Maeve would sit. She’d certainly proven herself responsible tonight. Though how to instruct an outsider on Lily’s byzantine bedtime ritual? They could barely articulate it to themselves. They just winged it until exhaustion felled them like a bullet. Well, they would have to try. They’d pay well, stock up on snacks, subscribe to all streaming channels. Then he and Sarah would come to this bar and sit on these stools and drink beers. He would tell her about Timmy Britnau and the upside-down Christmas tree and the kissing. She didn’t get jealous about things like that. It could even be a little playful. With her social work training, Sarah would surely have some insights about Timmy Britnau and changing perceptions of neurodiversity, and tell him to forgive himself. And he would tell her that by stopping to help Allison tonight, he’d learned something that Sarah had grasped instinctively: when you enter the community of parents, you’re handed the proxies of other parents–people you’ll never meet–to act on their behalf. Because one day it might be your kid staggering down a sidewalk, alone and tormented. Then they would get home after Lily was asleep but early enough that they still had some energy.  

She stopped breathing.  

The text sat innocuously above Sarah’s. Leif was pretty sure it had not been there a minute ago, and for an airless moment he thought it was another text from Sarah, and that it was Lily who had stopped breathing. But, no, Sarah’s name wasn’t on it. Just a phone number. It could only be from Maeve. It could only be Allison who had stopped breathing.  

Leif gently laid his phone on the bar, alongside the damp coaster under his pint. He reached for the Jameson’s without taking his eyes off the three animated dots that heralded the arrival of a follow-up text telling him precisely how bad it was.  

The ambulance just left. Kara went with her. I stayed back.  

Trying to reach her parents.  

You have to come. 

The bartender stood in a dim corner, head tipped back to read receipts through lowered glasses. Leif wanted to hold up his phone and ask him, Do I? Have to come? Is this still my problem? Godfuckingdammit, how many times had he asked about an ambulance–a medical emergency he’d sensed, no doubt, because of the unconscious association with Timmy Britnau? But Maeve had shot that all down. Sunday fun day–what did that even mean? Only booze? Something more? All he knew was that the girl had been breathing the whole time he’d been with her. Unless he’d missed some obvious sign. But how could he know what sign that might be? That’s why he’d wanted to call an ambulance! Oh but she’ll be fine, Maeve had chirped, like a mindless bird. Fine, fine, fine. And he’d gone along with it, caved to the overblown authority of an undergraduate. 

If Allison died, Sarah would not stand by him. It would not matter that it wasn’t his fault, that Maeve had thwarted his sane suggestions, that Sarah had involved them in this in the first place. He had been there and hadn’t prevented it. Period. Would she take Lily and leave? Would she no longer trust him with their daughter? Utterly unimaginable but suddenly another entry for the can’t-even list, and the closest to coming true. You have to come, Maeve texted again. The message sat atop its identical precursor, a tidy imperative stack that would only keep building.  

Leif turned his phone off. He stood and paid his bill. 

“You don’t happen to have a coat I could borrow, do you?” he asked the bartender as he lifted Leif’s empty glass in his fleshy hands and wiped under it. “I’ll bring it back it tomorrow, I promise. I left mine at home. And as circumstances have it, I’m walking tonight.”  

“Sorry son,” he said without raising his eyes from his work. “Can’t help you.”  

*

When Leif got home, Sarah wasn’t passed out on the mushroom rug. She was in bed, nestled so deep into the billowy comforter that Leif could hardly see her. As soon as he slipped in beside her, she flipped over and whispered with great excitement, “She fell right asleep! After just one book!” 

“Oh my God.” The night’s events momentarily tumbled away, so tremendous and unexpected was this news. “You’re kidding.” 

“I couldn’t believe it.” Sarah’s voice was hushed, reverent. “I just put her down and she rolled over. I didn’t trust it. I had to check if she was breathing.” 

Leif lay on his back, calculating possibilities. So many hours, each night, for months. So much time, restored to them.  

Sarah sniffed. “Am I smelling booze on you?” 

Leif confessed to his pit stop. “I didn’t want to come in right when you were putting her down. Little did I know a miracle was taking place!” He pressed himself against Sarah’s warmth, pulling the comforter up over his shoulders.  

“So what happened with the girl?” Sarah asked. 

“We got her home. After a few rounds of puking, she seemed fine.” 

“We?” 

He told Sarah about the roommate and the girlfriend showing up, about guiding Allison to the sagging house. Then he told her some of what he’d thought about at the bar, the community of parents. He didn’t mention Maeve’s texts, likely piling up by the second on his phone, which he’d left out on the kitchen table. 

Sarah was thoughtful for a minute. “It is a community,” she said, “corny as that sounds. A coming together. Like tonight. None of you could’ve helped that girl by yourselves. Yet something drew you all to the same spot.”  

“Yes.” 

“I’m really glad we stopped,” Sarah said.

“Me too.” He was a little buzzed and not sleepy. Sarah wasn’t either. Leif brought his hand to her breast. “Brrrr,” she said, but she didn’t move it away. He whispered into her hair. Fine and straight and light, it had thinned after Lily’s birth and not returned to its prepartum lushness. She was sensitive about it, despite his reassurances. He kept his mouth against her hair the whole time. It was a new thing to do, and a new thing felt apt to mark the end of their long drought and usher in this new era, when they would now always do this as, always be, parents.  

Later, after Sarah fell asleep, Leif slipped into sweats and a T-shirt and stepped into Lily’s room. Normally he contortioned himself to avoid the squeakiest floorboards, but that routine, he knew, had ended too. He could tell just by looking at Lily. Even asleep in her crib, zipped into her green quilted sack to ward off sudden death, she was perceptibly different, matured by the conquest of sleep. 

“Who’s this new Nutnut?” he cooed to Lily. “Hm? What happened to our Nutnut who never slept?” He gently stroked her nearly nonexistent eyebrows. She sighed and shifted but didn’t wake up. Tonight, he knew, she’d sleep until morning. Before long, she’d hit another milestone, and another, and another. Each time they’d never see it coming. Then she’d be grown and gone. Even as she lay in her crib, still fully a baby, it was so easy to see the progression. 

Unless she suffered permanent brain damage from a car crash. Unless she drank herself to oblivion. Unless she got gunned down at school. Unless, unless. On the shelf above Lily’s crib they had a series of books by a famous child psychologist. Each book described a year of life: Your One-Year-Old, Your Two-Year-Old. Leif had no idea how far it went. Sarah had bought up to Your Eight-Year-Old and already torn through the first three, marking pages with Post-Its. She exhorted Leif to catch up–“I can’t be the only expert here”–and he meant to read them, but privately he doubted that parenthood was something you could ever really get ahead of.  

He walked out to the kitchen and powered up his phone. You have to come, three more times. Then, You’re not coming are you? Then variations of Thanks for nothing and You fucking useless prick and If she dies it’ll be your fault.  

The barrage kept up for days. Leif read every text carefully, wrapping himself in Maeve’s vitriol like a hairshirt. It was the only atonement he could think of for not going back, for washing his hands of this catastrophe. A week later, when a message went out to all university employees announcing the tragic death of senior Allison McClenahan, no cause mentioned, Maeve’s texts stopped. Whether because she was flattened by grief or had her point conclusively proven, Leif was not to know. She could also be biding her time and planning a takedown that would expose his neglect to Sarah. He had to acknowledge that this was possible, that it could happen any time. Any time at all.  

Silence from Maeve for days, then weeks. He heard of an investigation into the death and waited to be contacted, but he never was. Lily crawled, sprouted teeth, babbled. That spring, Sarah finished her degree and took on her first clients. Soon her therapy practice was thriving. Leif rose up the ranks, wooing only the most major donors. They had another daughter and bought a bigger house. Lily showed herself to be a bossy, devoted older sister. Maeve never resurfaced. The street she’d lived on, that whole part of town, was easy to avoid. She probably moved away after graduating and went on with her life, just as Leif did with his. Up went the story of Allison into a high, seldomly used cupboard. 

From time to time, though, Leif heard it banging around, as if roused from hibernation and enraged to find itself locked up. Leif would hold very still then, listening, but the drunk girl never had anything consequential to tell him. She just banged away for a while, in futile protest of what could befall a life, and then again went silent.