My lawn grew ragged and weeds took hold. Was the last thing I said to my wife truly an admonition concerning the grass? I could no longer remember what I’d muttered and yelled to her in the car as I brought her, running stop signs and red lights and yet still too slowly, to the hospital. Whatever I might have said, whatever she might have still been able to hear, in my memory all of it became don’t hurt the grass, don’t hurt the grass, don’t hurt the grass. So I let her have the lawn, whatever of her remained soaked into the soil, I let her nurture what she chose while I struggled to understand how I should care for this child we had wrought. 

I walked Felix through our neighborhood, among the clean houses with their leaf-blower clean driveways, the first paper skeletons beginning to appear in windows, plastic tombstones in the hedges, and I said to Felix, We are not always so nonchalant about death, so willing to welcome it to our doors. I said, I miss her too. I said, I have to figure out the funeral.

I said, But you don’t have to worry about that, leave it to me.

I miss her too.

A boy from the neighborhood asked what I was doing, and I said that was talking to my son, Felix. He asked if I was teasing him, and I said no. He asked how my son could hear me, being a pumpkin, without ears, and I said I did not know, but I was sure he did. The boy asked how I could be sure, and he asked where my wife was, and he asked and asked and I looked him over, his skinny legs and tangled hair and dirty fingers, and I interrupted his inquiry. Felix is younger than you, I said, but perhaps you could still be his friend. A boy needs friends, and my son more than most, his mother being gone.

The boy asked if I was crazy, and ran off.

I said to my son, He had so many questions. Have you no questions, Felix? Isn’t there anything you want to know?