It was the smell toddlers have—warm skin, the stuffy scent from the folds of blankets, dampness. Sweet breath. When Mary felt off-kilter, as she often did these days, she’d sit in the guest room-turned-nursery with the lights off, letting the scent envelop her. Things had settled as her family descended the gentle hill toward summer. They’d established a routine in their home, although it no longer felt like home exactly, but a different version of it. It was a new home, a new life. Her friends had asked her if it felt like going back in time, all the diapers and toys in the living room. No, she told them, and it wasn’t like moving forward, either. They’d been riding along, and a swift current had pulled them off into territory that was hazy and varied in shades of gray. In relation to time, they were headed diagonally, she thought.

Back and forth Mary rocked. For a thirty-year-old chair, it hardly made a sound. A stirring came from the crib, a forceful grunt. The thing was, when Mary had reached this place in her life where she was supposed to feel established, the career and the empty nest, she felt as though she’d never actually landed. Her friends had sat down heavily into the retirement phase comfortable and secure. Mary was still standing, looking around, feeling that surely this would not be the last place she ever went. She and Hal had not left the state in thirty-five years. They’d talked about going to France, but that had never materialized. In that way, she supposed, she was like her daughter, after all. Always alert, waiting for the next thing to come along. Never able to fully touch down. So what Mary’s friends saw as an interruption of peace, a most audacious setback, she saw only as what was in front of her: a twenty-three-month-old who was becoming very interested in trains.

Mary smoothed her hands along the chair’s arms, brushing overs scratches and worn spots. She had always imagined she’d be a young grandmother. She’d pictured their son, Thomas, the younger of their two children, to find his place and build his life quickly. And he had, he was married and settled in a townhome thirty minutes from them. Thomas always did what was expected of him, for better or worse, perhaps, but he was reliable. He got good grades in school, and he even earned a small scholarship playing baseball in college. He always worked hard, and Mary believed that everything he did was in some small way a deliberate step, a preparation for his future. But it was their daughter, Abigail, who mailed them a photo of a twelve-week sonogram. Mary’s initial shock (Abigail was unmarried and, as far as she knew, not even in a committed relationship) fizzled away in moments. She should have expected this. Abigail had always been the untethered one.

The yawns coming from the crib had turned to whimpers, and Mary rose, hands pushing off of her knees, draped a blanket over her shoulder, and heaved him against her chest.

Hal was in the kitchen washing dishes with his back to them. When chubby arms gripped his leg, he placed his large hand on the boy’s blond fuzz without turning. Even during those first few months as Abigail slowly tore his heart in two, Hal had been fiercely protective of the tiny, fair thing. He would never blame the baby; he became like a wall around him, made of the same sturdy stuff that had protected his own children. Although now, if Hal told Mary that the baby was the only child he’d ever loved, she might almost believe him.

The last time they saw Abigail, their grandson was eighteen months old. Only when she was three hours late to pick him up from their house that afternoon did they find the letter she’d tucked in his car seat. As far as she was concerned, she’d done her time: a year and a half of single motherhood. She was tired of feeling like she was “in prison,” and could they just please allow her some room, some freedom? Then, she’d slipped somewhere into the fog of Washington state and never resurfaced. Her cord had been snipped. She belonged only to herself.

The indignation their church friends and coworkers had felt on their behalf unnerved Mary. Of course, she’d been furious with Abigail, they both had. One morning, when it was Hal’s turn to get up with the baby, Mary had rolled over to find a rather large tuft of hair on Hal’s pillow. Her own hairbrush had also been collecting knots of blonde-ish-gray. Post-partum hair loss, in more ways than one. Their weight fluctuated more than it had in forty years. But as Mary’s fiftieth birthday came and went in the midst of it all, she became more aware of the time she hadn’t noticed passing her by. They carried on. She was floating down a sort of river, and an extra twenty-two pounds of squirming toddler wasn’t going to sink her.

After dinner, Mary and Hal leaned against each other on the sofa. The baby pushed plastic trucks back and forth, tracing the lines on the living room rug.

“It’s his birthday next month,” said Mary softly, “and I think we should have a party.”

Hal cleared his throat, exhaling deeply. “He’ll be two, Honey. I don’t know.” He ran a hand over his stubble. He was right, of course. The baby wouldn’t know any different. All he knew was that his mother was not there, only they were. Mary could tell Hal felt the weight of something heavy hinging on his answer. “Okay. All right.”

And so Mary set to work. She began, unsure at first, with a pad of legal paper and a pencil. Plates, cups, balloons. Cake. Vanilla, she thought. She eased along, navigating through dollar sections, filling carts, emptying them in a mound on the kitchen table. It had been eleven years since Mary had hung paper and foil and cardboard all over the walls in the name of ceremony. And so, uncertainly, she felt her way forward. There were still three weeks until his birthday, but she started arranging signs, then steamers, and then place settings. Soon, she even began blowing up balloons.

One afternoon, Mary watched Hal doze on the couch, the baby on his chest, his body rising and falling with Hal’s breath. Mary was reminded, not of her children’s toddlerhood, but her own. Her father, an air force man, tall in frame, resembled Hal the way a spruce tree resembles a Douglas fir. An image of an early summer day, much like this one, stood up suddenly in front of her. It was the most vivid memory she had, although she had never been sure if it was really a memory or a dream her mind conjured based on a photograph. Nevertheless, she’d always held on to it firmly.

Their family moved nine times before she graduated high school, and this particular memory was of the first move she could remember. The house was new, one of the first in its neighborhood development. The base they had been relocated to was just outside of Tucson. The backyard was mostly gravel, and even now Mary could see plain as day the view that spread behind it. There were mountains, veined with red and purple. It was a rare day in which the haze above the hills had cleared. The points of rock pressed into the blue expanse of sky as though at any moment it might burst. Without warning, little Mary was in the air and, after a moment, came to rest on her father’s shoulders. In that brief, gut-plunging flight, up and down swapped, and it she’d wondered how it could be that she was falling. Firmly on his shoulders, Mary had pointed out toward the mountains. They felt close. Could they go climb on top of that hill just there? Her father told her it was a lot farther off than it looked. They would have to walk for days before they reached that hill.

Mary remembered being floored by this revelation. She could practically feel the looming sandstone, could tell exactly where the rock would feel cold to her hand and where she would feel the warmth of the sun. Mary’s father had always worked hard to help her and her siblings to be independent people. He’d always told them, “Paddle your own canoe. You don’t have to do it alone, but make sure you’re always paddlin’ yourself.” Hal had fit nicely in her metaphorical canoe—her father always liked him.

Hal watched Mary as the days before the party passed by, the baby under one arm. She noticed him there at first, but soon he faded into the haze behind her. Mary had left her administrative job at the elementary school shortly after the baby came to them. Hal still had contracted a fair number of projects for the summer, and while he was at job sites the baby followed her from room to room, sometimes tugging at the pretty things on the walls but never hard enough to release the tape that held them. He would babble, something he was doing a lot more in recent weeks. He had relaxed into them; their home was filled with quiet, determined love. When he had first started talking around them, his voice had been soft, and his incoherent sentences always lilted upward at the ends, as though he was only thinking and speaking in questions. Now, his inflection had leveled, and he told her things. Things about trucks, trains, how Papa was at work, but he’d be home soon. Mary always responded. There was nothing he said that went unanswered. Their little conversations looped in wide, slow circles around them all day long. 

Mary hadn’t been to Tuesday-morning Bible study in weeks—it had been months, now, she realized. There was no childcare for Tuesday morning groups, as most of them were made up of women whose children were grown, though some had high schoolers. Mary went back to her legal pad, listing her closest Bible study friends, then their friends with whom they only spoke at church, then Lisa, her work friend. Bill, Hal’s boss, and his wife Linda. After a moment of hesitation, she added Thomas and his wife.

When she started making calls, many of those who answered were surprised to hear from her. Some seemed wary, as though she had wronged them in some way and was acting as though she hadn’t. A few were incredulous. Who throws a party for a baby that’s been dumped on their doorstep? Isn’t that the same as giving in?

The party would be the next morning, Saturday, and Mary expected their guests would be gone by one o’clock, just about naptime. Some of the balloons had begun to sag, and after putting the baby to bed, Hal sat at the table, blowing up more. Mary mixed cake batter, folding it, working out the lumps. She poured it into two separate cake pans, watching it settle until its surface was completely smooth.

“He’s going to be bewildered,” said Hal. He hadn’t said so much as a word about the elaborate decorations, the layer cake, the extravagant train set sitting in the garage. “I don’t think he’s ever seen so many people in one place at one time.”

“I’m not sure we have, either.” Mary slid the cakes into the oven. “Don’t worry. I’m sure less than half of the people I talked to will make it.” She was wrong.

At five to ten, cars began to appear in the driveway. The day was warm and breezy, so Mary propped open the front door. The baby watched from his place on her hip, wide-eyed. Their living room filled quickly, and soon awkward chit-chat warmed into laughter and pleasantly-surprised greetings. Bill and Linda, in an odd but kind show of solidarity, brought their little grandson. The stack of wrapped boxes and gift bags grew at an almost alarming rate. By ten-thirty, all but two of the people Mary had called filled the living room, the kitchen, even the back porch.

By one o’clock, the baby was slumped, out cold, across Hal’s legs. Frosting had crusted on his cheeks and in his hair. Some guests had left already, stroking the baby’s cheeks or poking his belly in goodbye. The rest sat in the backyard in a circle of lawn chairs Hal had carried from the garage, each holding paper coffee cups and chatting. Shadows of the leaves rippled across the grass. Paper plates and napkins that had been carefully pinned down by rocks flapped liked newly emerged butterflies.

Mary watched the baby sleep in Hal’s arms. His rosy lips puffed out as he breathed. She wasn’t sure why, but she thought of France. She and Hal had been talking about taking a trip for a few years now. The only real vacations they’d taken since the children moved out were small, yearly vacations to a lake house they liked to rent. They’d visited so often, in fact, that the owners had offered to sell it to them more than once, but Mary could never bring herself to say yes. She didn’t want to be tied down, she told Hal. If they owned two homes in the same state, it would be much harder to up and leave, though she didn’t exactly know where else they might go. Hal had been the one to suggest the trip to France, something she’d mentioned in passing a few times before. Now, he’d said, let’s really do it. For the past couple of years, France hung high above her head like a tiny window that let in soft light but out of which she couldn’t reach up to see. There were always projects and meetings and church potlucks. And now they had a two-year-old.

In her mind, France had always been the first thing to rise up when she considered what her dreams might be. She’d seen every corner of the States. In her mind, lush gardens and winding museums felt solid, but very far away. Firm, but in practicality, unreachable.

Mary gazed around at the group of people surrounding them, dressed in light layers and pale colors. Thomas and his wife sat cross-legged on the grass, assembling the train set. When she turned her eyes back to the baby’s face, to the dime-sized dark spot of drool on Hal’s pant leg, she was stilled suddenly by the reality of him. He was hers now, or rather, she was his. She’d seen decades’ worth of June days like this, and together they’d see decades more.

Mary closed her eyes. Maybe, she thought, they were floating down a sort of river, but maybe they could find permanence, the three of them, in this strange little canoe that carried them onward. Maybe it would take them all the way to France.