The baby would fix everything. Their marriage wouldn’t fail with a baby in the house. They would have more than a marriage, with a baby. They would have a family. Their family would not fail. They hated failure more than they hated each other, so they would do anything to keep their marriage from failing. They would have a baby.

Their gripes were valid. Their gripes were identical. They always agreed on this, their gripes. And everybody wanted them to fail, to stop succeeding. They were certain.

So they had a baby boy and they named him Beef and they dressed him like a clown until he was three and was able to take off his clown clothes and tell them that he wanted to be dressed like a farmer.

“One night,” they tell him, sounding—they knew—too rehearsed. “One special night. We’ll never forget. One night when there was so much love in the room.”