But Andrew wanted to leave no trace of his impact on the world, no suggestion of his causing any trouble to anyone. When leaving a hotel room, he would make the bed and hang up the towels and feel bad about the trash in the wastebasket. But after a few more sweeps he gave up on the crumbs.

“Sorry,” he said.

“You want me to stick around?” Ingrid asked.

“I think we’re probably good from here.”

Andrew picked up the car seat with one hand, took Willa’s hand with the other.

“Well, then, O.K.,” Ingrid said.

Andrew smiled—posing, he thought, as he often did for women, starting with his mother. Looking for praise and approbation. But Ingrid was different. Ingrid obviously loved him without the implied indenture, as she loved all her friends, a blessed bunch who could do no wrong because she herself had deemed them just right. Andrew often wondered if some silence between them might lead to a revelation, a confirmation, an invitation, those forming nouns of action. He sometimes tried to catch her eye and keep the contact longer than was comfortable, communicate unspeakable possibilities. Like now. With his feel-sorry-for-me face. The sad sack’s seduction. And maybe she understood his less-than-innocent intent without ever thinking him bad, both humoring and forgiving him.

Andrew had to sign various receipts, Brian gently attempting to upsell him on a tire plan and extra roadside assistance, after which they went over the more subtle features of the Forester. The entire process took longer than expected, and by the end Brian seemed an actual friend, Andrew having shared his insecurities about Bluetooth setup and the sleek navigation and media systems, his desire for old-school knobs and buttons. Brian laughed easily, though his jovialness seemed laced with humiliation, as if he were still in doubt about his second career choice. But Andrew was thankful when he offered to install the car seat.

Willa climbed aboard.

Brian did the honors of strapping her in.

“So you happy with your new car?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“With the car, you happy?”

Willa made a barely interested show of looking around. “Sure,” she said.

Andrew could tell that Brian wanted more, wanted the same performance as last week, Willa spreading her arms and gracing this vehicle with her presence. But Willa had already forgotten. The car was simply a car, and Brian was simply the man who had sold them the car. Which Andrew regretted. The ease with which people receded from view. Like buying coffee and exchanging pleasantries with a person waiting in line and how this could make Andrew feel human for the rest of the day, the fact that people were nice and decent and maybe he was nice and decent and maybe there was a nice and decent future ahead—all these nothing moments growing in number, tenuous yet taking shape around the void, the impression of life gradually becoming life.

Brian asked for, and then received, a high five from Willa.

“Awesome,” he said.

He shook hands with Andrew.

“Enjoy the car, and call me if any questions come up.”

“Thanks, and will do.”

They drove toward home, though the day was still early and Andrew had nothing planned—no playdates, no sense of how the afternoon might shift into evening and then into bed. But he knew that he would pass on Ron and Ingrid’s dinner invitation. Too much sideways sympathy. Andrew and Willa like endangered creatures. Like polar bears and ice. And, even worse, the undeniable satisfaction of the attention, the weighted proximities, which pushed emotion into the realm of the representational: ladies and gentlemen, the widower and his surviving daughter. No, instead Andrew would make pasta with butter, and he would think, I need to do this better. Already he hoped he might sleep through the night rather than wake after three hours and lie there trying to convince himself that more sleep would come, stubborn until sunrise.

The Subaru seemed childish compared with the Scout, the engine going vroom vroom vroom. Everything about it suggested a mistake. The particular fit of the seat. The touch-screen control panel. The challenge of finding KOPB on the virtual FM dial. And since there was no moderating influence, no one to ease his mind and bask in the newfangled pleasures, his typical poor judgment held sway.

On the radio, “This American Life.” A woman was talking about finding an ancient roll of undeveloped film.

In the back seat, Willa was picking her nose.

As they drove along Burnside, skirting Washington Park, Andrew considered going to the zoo, or the children’s museum, places they had visited multiple times, but before he could settle on something—maybe the Japanese garden—they had passed the exit and the possibility seemed irretrievably lost. Plus the crowds. The parking. The tediousness of those excursions, the melodramatic subtexts. He imagined going home and watching the rest of “L’Avventura” with Willa, describing to her the oblique precision of the movie, the cinematic use of space, the poetry of elision. Laughable and perfectly Portland. Though sometimes he thought that he should do more of this, should curate a higher level of existence. Like those fathers who created perfect athletes. He could craft a child from bits of the Criterion Collection and Artforum and The New York Review of Books. Become one of those parents who stage-manage their children’s precociousness. R-rated movies. Indecent gallery shows. Inappropriate novels. Turn them into cultural contemporaries. But those parents often seemed screwed up in some way, even though their children were possibly more interesting. Or maybe just more screwed up themselves. Perhaps it was better to keep them innocent for as long as possible, if “innocent” was the right word. Untainted? Unadulterated? All this mental back and forth lasted only a few seconds. It was like being pushed into familiar water, Andrew instantly soaked. In the end, he decided “L’Avventura” could wait.

“How about we go for a hike or something?” Andrew suggested to the back seat.

They were just getting onto Skyline.

“Like, now?” Willa asked.

“Yeah, like something in Forest Park.”

“If you want.”

“It’s a nice day,” Andrew said.

Silence.

“Nothing long. Just for an hour.”

More silence.

“It’ll be fun,” Andrew promised, practically begging for her enthusiasm.

“O.K.,” she said.

He parked near the trailhead for the Wildwood-Newton loop, an easy mile-long hike they had done before. All four of them. About a year ago. In late June. A pleasant summer walk, and afterward they went to the Skyline Restaurant and had burgers and shakes. Andrew’s brilliant idea, as he had self-touted throughout the meal. Maybe he and Willa could do the same today. He wondered if she would remember, or if he was now responsible for her memories and should remind her. The banana slugs along the path. The banana splits for dessert in their honor. The discussion about detritivores, which process waste material into soil by way of their own humus-like waste material. The use of the term “coprophagy” and the joking about the cycle of poop. The proclamation about this being a perfect day for banana splits and banana slugs. The hugging of trees and the foraging for mushrooms. All these details, slowly shrinking down to the size of a jar.