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I had never planned to make this job my career, but here I was. And I have to admit, there was a small but certain satisfaction when the numbers balanced out at the end of the day, the week, the month. At least there was order here. Predictability. While I waited for the night shift to end, I sat at the grimy table in the break room thumbing through the previous Sunday’s Free Press and grabbed a doughnut from a box that somebody’s wife must have dropped off. It’s just another day , I thought. But just as I was about to take a bite of the doughnut and look in the sports section to see whether or not Boston had won Saturday’s game, Rene LaFevre, one of the French Canadian car knockers, came rushing through the door.

I didn’t want to let her down again. I’d have to stop at Kinsey’s after work. Maybe a charm bracelet would be better. A pair of earrings. A watch. I was grateful for the morning’s rituals (making coffee, getting myself dressed and Shelly fed, packing our lunches) as well as for the morning’s unexpected events (a lack of hot water, milk gone sour in the fridge and a missing sock). Sometimes I felt like the mundane details of our lives were the only things tethering me to the world. I could hold onto them—distractions necessitating action.

Shelly insisted that I not use the word “sitter,” and especially not “ baby sitter” when referring to Mrs. Marigold. But, whatever her job title, she made sure Shelly got to the bus stop. That she had a place to go after school. In exchange, I ran errands for her: buying groceries, depositing her husband’s pension checks at the bank, that kind of thing. She used to be a nurse, probably a hundred years ago, but this made me feel somehow safe. ” I called after her. “Thanks, Daddy,” she said over her shoulder, and skipped down the hall.