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people give you lots of money for it.”
    I stare at the top of William's head. He has Carolyn's pale brown hair, but while hers hangs in a preternaturally shiny sheath to her shoulders, swinging smoothly, with never a split end or ragged edge, his is full of cowlicks, standing up on one part of his head, flattened on the other. The hair is fine, and you can see the yellow crust of his scalp through the greasy strands. William has something called cradle cap, Jack says, or rather Carolyn says, and we must rub baby oil into his head every night and brush it with a soft-bristled brush before using a fine-toothed comb to gently lift off the flakes. When Jack refers to this condition, I must clamp my lips together to keep from pointing out that the child is far too old for a cradle, and that as far as I can tell he has nothing more nor less than a bad case of dandruff.
    I say, “We could not get ten thousand dollars for the crib on eBay.”
    â€œWe can sell the stroller, too. I bet we would get five thousand dollars for the stroller.”
    â€œWilliam, that's not the way eBay works. It's not magic. People have to want something in order to bid on it. Nobody is going to bid thousands of dollars for . . . for a stroller they can buy brand new for eight hundred and seventy-five.” My jaw is clenched so tight the pain is traveling up behind my ears, along my temples and tying itself into a knot at the top of my head.
    â€œBailey's dad says . . .”
    â€œYou're just misunderstanding Bailey's dad. Or Bailey's misunderstanding him.”
    William scowls. “You don't even know Bailey. Or his dad.”
    â€œI don't want to talk about selling the baby's things, William.”
    â€œBut that's what eBay's
for
. You're supposed to sell stuff you don't need. You don't need the stuffies or the baby clothes or the diapers. That dumb American Girl doll you bought is still in the box. You should sell that stupid Samantha on eBay.”
    And now it is too much for me. “Shut up, William. Just shut up.” I get up from the table. My chair clatters to the floor. I stare at it, already feeling guilty, already resentful of the guilt. It sometimes seems like William is Carolyn's little mouthpiece, her surrogate goad. He prods and pokes until I satisfy their low expectations, until I prove once again that I am a terrible person. I tell myself that he is not trying to trap me, not trying to force me to reveal my failings and my flaws. He is only a little boy. And yet Carolyn and I have both vested in him so much more power than any small boy should have.
    I leave the chair lying on the floor and William sitting at the table and walk out of the room. I stop in the doorway of the little bedroom down the hall, the one intended, when the building was built, as a maid's room. It is moss green with a border of pale pink roses. I painted it myself, so the edges are ragged, almost frayed. If you look very closely you can see that the row of roses is crooked, that it staggers down across the wall and around the room so that when the roses reach the left of the double window they are a full inch-and-a-half lower than when they began on the right. This bothers me very much and I wish I could redo it, or that I had paid someone to do it correctly.
    I lean against the doorjamb, and press my fingers into the soft flesh of my belly. I feel for my uterus, wondering if it is still swollen and engorged. I palpate the loose jelly roll that was once my waist and dig my index and middle finger into the place right below my belly button. It hurts, and for that I am grateful. I would hate to think that everything had gone back to normal, that it had all been erased or blotted out, that the only evidence of what had happened was a crooked stencil on a poorly painted wall.
    I keep my eyes on the stenciled border, and I do not look at the rest of the room. I do not look at the ridiculously overpriced crib, with the pink bedding—fat,