All of the family stands silent around him. The mother and father have their hands up. The daughter, with her bare teenage belly and giant belt buckle, can’t believe this is what a human life can come to. The baby, in his giant diaper and coveralls, plays with three serving spoons on the floor, though he can only hold two at a time. He cries every time he tries and fails to hold the third. The toddler shakes the nine-inch kitchen knife at the baby like it’s an extension of himself. Like it is no more threatening than a giant foam hand with its finger sticking out, of which his father has several tacked to a wall above his diplomas. “Hey, buddy,” the father says. The toddler is smart, they have told their family physician, quite verbal and very empathetic. “All very good,” the physician assured them. Everyone knows there’s no malice in it. He has found the kitchen knife in the drying rack and taken it out to play, like any toddler will take anything out to play. “Can I go now?” the teenager asks. The toddler turns and shakes the knife at her and the mother is terrified because she can see in that wag of the wrist her own mannerisms, her own failures personified. “No you may not!” the toddler says. The father laughs, thinking to himself, May. “No, no, no!” the toddler says. If it had been her father or her mother who had said it, or said it in that manner, the daughter would have left already, but she does not. She stands there, too, because a human life, she is just now beginning to see, is nothing you can ever escape.

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