To become a family, their hands filled blanks. There were the numbers that identified them and the numbers in their accounts, names and dates and copies of documents, the requirements for which were meant to weed out unfit people. As she leaned over the counter, her pen rapid, Jeremy poured a sleeve of chocolate biscuits onto a plate and something fizzy in a glass. That they were applying for a child imbued actions with the future; one day, he would prepare a snack for his daughter like this, he believed, the motion in his mind now straddling time.
Alexandra was a natural at applying. Lists came from her hands. She gave recitations of rules, organizations. And because their credentials for the future were the most presentable parts of their lives, she reminisced pragmatically. She made calls. You knew us when.
Scant was the need, he was sure, to worry about his past. There was a network of references pointing to a life in the open. Stamps, passports, degrees. The institutions believed in language. There was a good deal of faith in testimonial. Words would be delivered on behalf of them by Genevieve and Alexandra’s coworkers and Robert. And to Jeremy, their home clarified with every stratum of narration, time reorganized to reveal imminent roles, as though they were inevitable. He could believe that the lousy luck of Ireland could be held off, that some skin had grown over the liquid spread of history, containing it in the past.
He returned to the living room and touched Alexandra’s hair. He watched her mouth, soft on a cookie, and her hand, small and tense with precision. There were freckles only on one cheek, inexplicable as love.