There was a priest at the door. He was young and jubi­lant. His hair was close-cut to his head, which struck Roman as odd because most of the priests he’d seen in his life had no hair at all. He hadn’t real­ized young guys still did this. It seemed old-fash­ioned, a dying breed. 

Roman blinked in the light around the priest’s sil­hou­ette. Another sunny day in June. His kid would want to be outside all day. Maybe he’d walk him down to the park, though there was always the risk he’d run off, if Roman wasn’t paying atten­tion. But usually he was paying attention. 

It dawned on him that a priest at the door was an omen, maybe. He pic­tured his grand­moth­er in church, her clear glass rosary beads casting light onto the wooden pews, a dozen minia­ture rain­bows. He’d gone to church as a kid. He was pretty sure he’d been bap­tized and con­firmed. So what was this priest doing here now? Had he come to collect him? To condemn him? You’ve been bad, he imag­ined the priest saying, and when his mouth opened there was a cavern of dark­ness, and little bats flew out so that Roman had to duck away. That’s why your little boy—that’s why he is the way he is. 

“Hi,” the priest said. There was no dark­ness, no bats. “I’m here with com­mu­nion for Edith?” The priest squint­ed, then chuck­led, his ears a coral color. “This isn’t her house, is it?” 

“No,” Roman said. He wanted to smile, wanted to offer some­thing helpful. But he had no idea who Edith was or where she might live.

“Okay. Sorry to disturb you, then.” The priest smiled, and Roman found this reas­sur­ing, though he was not sure why.

The priest jogged down the steps, which again struck Roman as odd because he’d never seen a priest jog before. The priest saluted Roman before climb­ing into the driver’s side. “Have a blessed day,” he said, over the car’s roof. 

Roman hung in the doorway. His gaze lin­gered on the priest’s car as it drove up the street. The shades inside the apart­ment were drawn to keep out the heat, and when he stepped back inside, his eyes stut­tered in adjust­ment to the dark. Some­thing heavy weighed on his shoul­ders, a deflat­ed feeling. He checked the time on his phone; someone else was coming in an hour. And this time they’d be here for him. 

Roman nudged the toys against the molding below the bay window. He swept coffee grounds on the linoleum under the fridge with his foot. He dumped out Karissa’s week-old takeout from the fridge. He took out the trash, Xavier fol­low­ing at his heels. Outside he knelt down, showed Xavier an ant on the ground, trav­el­ing the length of liquid trick­ling from the trash pile. Xavier laughed. He knelt into Roman and pulled at his right ear—what he did when he was happy. But Roman had to bring him back inside. Their visitor would be there soon. He set Xavier into his high­chair and offered both Chee­rios and waffles. Xavier didn’t like being strapped in, so he was scream­ing, and this was how he pre­sent­ed when the case worker came to the door. 

Roman blinked, wiped the sweat off his brow. Eleven in the morning and already so hot outside. He thought of the priest on that same step, only an hour before. He won­dered if that woman got her com­mu­nion. The case worker raised her brow past Roman’s shoulder. 

“That’s him?” she asked. 

“Yeah,” Roman said. He chuck­led. “That’s my boy.” 

The case worker settled beside Xavier, her big binder of papers cov­er­ing some Chee­rios on the table. She asked about the preg­nan­cy, about the deliv­ery. Any com­pli­ca­tions? Any drug use? Roman answered with his face blank, with his mind flick­er­ing back­ward to when he’d first met Karissa, behind the bar counter at the restau­rant. The air smelled like bleach, and as the day dark­ened into night outside, their cock­tail shakers echoed each other, some­thing that, in the foolish rush of love, he’d inter­pret­ed as a mating call. 

She’s trouble, said Johannes, the curly-headed bar runner. 

She’ll fuck you over, echoed Olivia, the server with the neon orange bob. 

But his tongue was in her mouth, his hands were on her waist. He watched her profile their whole shift, his stomach in lovesick tangles, won­der­ing if he’d ever seen someone so beau­ti­ful. Through the nights they spent togeth­er in his bed, their bodies faced away, then towards, then away, like the mir­ror­ing of jewels inside a twist­ing kalei­do­scope. He couldn’t tell if it was good or bad. His vision was crusted in gems. Then she was gone. 

“Is mom in the picture?” the case worker asked. She had reading glasses on. She wrote in cursive. This was at once con­demn­ing and com­fort­ing to him, sum­mon­ing his grand­moth­er, the woman who raised him, and her judge­ment too. 

“She’s in and out.” 

There was that time in the hallway of the build­ing, when Karissa had shown up with her belly swollen like a bas­ket­ball, her eyes wild, her mouth irate. 

“Just because you’re keeping him”—a gesture to her stomach—“Doesn’t mean you’re keeping me.” 

Roman had laid in bed, the kalei­do­scope shat­tered. His chest was hollow, and his wrists were wet. He’d been so struck by her beauty, and now there was this streak of ugli­ness, of pain, with him at the root: the inverse of a Midas touch. He sobbed quietly so as not to disturb the upstairs neighbors. 

“He doesn’t talk?” the case worker asked. Roman had taken Xavier out of the high­chair, was trying to bounce him on his hip the way he’d seen Karissa do one time. But it wasn’t working. Xavier kicked and flailed. 

“No,” Roman said. Prior to a few weeks ago, he hadn’t real­ized that it was odd, having an almost three-year-old with no words. He gave up and set Xavier down on the floor. The boy sprint­ed off into the living room. 

The case worker smiled. Her lip­stick was a shim­mery maroon, the kind his grand­moth­er used to wear. “No motor con­cerns, I take it.” 

“No,” Roman said again. His heart was eating at his chest, a Pac-Man with its mouth wide open, winding through an endless maze. He saw a mis­placed Cheerio peeking out from beneath the woman’s binder. “Though he doesn’t eat a whole lot. He likes fruit. Won’t try a lot of things though. Throws it on the floor.” Was this normal? He’d always assumed it was. This was just life for him.

He thought of the Spanish lady upstairs. She’d been the first sign that Xavier wasn’t a normal kid. She’d done three shifts babysit­ting him—she had forty years of babysit­ting expe­ri­ence, she’d told Roman—and after the third time, she answered the door fraz­zled and out of breath. 

“Your boy,” she said. “He tried to climb the book­shelf. He tried to climb out the window.” She passed Xavier to him in the dimly lit hall. Roman fumbled to try and hold his son in his arms. Xavier didn’t like being held. “In all my decades, I’ve never seen any­thing like it.” Her mouth twitched into a smile, con­flict­ed. Then she patted Xavier’s head. “A sweet one, though. I don’t think he means any­thing by it.” She looked at Roman, solemn. She shook her head. “He’s just…on another planet.”

“Who watches him while you’re at work?” the case worker asked. 

“His grandma,” he answered. Then, to clarify, “On his mom’s side.” 

Karissa’s mom cut hair out of her house on 3rd and Turner. Three weeks he’d gone to pick him up, and Xavier had a huge gash across his head. 

“Couldn’t tell you how that hap­pened,” Karissa’s mom had said with a shrug. 

The cut wouldn’t stop bleed­ing. Roman’s pulse threat­ened to burst in the veins at his wrists. His vision blurred with tears as he carried Xavier out of the house and onto the bus. How could he leave his kid here every workday, knowing he was not being watched? He skipped their stop for home and went straight to the ER. They gave Xavier stitch­es. He screamed for hours. The nurse’s assis­tant saw Roman’s strug­gle to keep Xavier on the hos­pi­tal stretch­er. She took him aside, passed him a paper with parent resources.

“The county gives free ser­vices to kids who need help,” she said, her eyes kind. “My son—he didn’t talk at first. But after two years of therapy, he did.”

Roman had called the county number as soon as they got home. But this didn’t seem like enough for the case worker in front of him. 

“Have you thought of taking him to a devel­op­men­tal pedi­a­tri­cian?” she wanted to know. 

Roman’s throat was dry. He tried to swallow. “I’m not…sure what that is,” he admit­ted. “Just got some papers from a nurse. She said maybe you could help him talk.”

The case worker stared at him, her face blank. Frantic, he tried to make sense of her gaze. Did she think he was an idiot? Would she report him to Chil­dren and Youth for his son turning out this way? This was it, now—the part where he was con­demned. Not by the priest, who had gladly moved on from his doorstep to someone more deserv­ing of his time. But by someone whose job it was to examine if chil­dren were being raised right. Someone who could tell that he had no idea what the hell he was doing. 

Finally the case worker sighed and released her gaze. She slid some papers into her binder. “He might need more than speech therapy,” she said, her tone a warning. She passed him a pam­phlet with more lists of tele­phone numbers. “Devel­op­men­tal pedi­a­tri­cians can give diag­noses that might get Xavier more help,” she went on. “The wait­lists are long. Some­times a year.” She eyed him over her reading glasses. “I’d get on it now, make some calls.”

Roman nodded, traced his mouth with his fingers while his insides fought the urge to cry. 

His gaze wan­dered to the living room, where Xavier was hopping like a frog across the hard­wood floor. He let out this high-pitched noise, like the elon­gat­ed coo of a bird. 

“That’s how he talks,” Roman said. 

The woman gave a flat smile. She’d seen this scene play out before, he realized—she knew the ending. Roman drummed his hand on the back of the kitchen chair. He’d been stand­ing the whole time, on edge. Some­thing in him lurched forward—if she knew how it ended, could she tell him? 

“He’s a sweet boy,” she said. “Lots of energy.”

“But there is…there’s some­thing wrong with him?”

The case worker stood. She closed her binder. “That’s for the doctor to decide,” she said. She sounded tired. “But he does have delays across mul­ti­ple areas of development.” 

Roman nodded. His whole body felt prickly. 

“We’ll be able to get him some help,” she went on. “The speech therapy, like you said, and maybe occu­pa­tion­al therapy, for the eating.” 

Roman kept nodding. He wanted to look eager. He wanted to look like he was pro­cess­ing what she was saying. But really, he had no idea what words were coming out of her mouth. He’d heard nothing after the word “delay”.  

Three hours later, on his break outside the back door of the restau­rant, Roman tried to make some calls to doctors. Olivia joined him, and he stopped, sliding his phone into his back pocket. She was vaping and made his stomach ache for cig­a­rettes, the threat of an old habit tight between his teeth. He even­tu­al­ly ducked back inside, a return to his cool and shad­owed soli­tary station behind the bar. They’d been short-staffed for a while. Some­times he was the only one running the shift. Him and his reflec­tion in the mir­rored wall of alcohol: slant of his nose behind sleek green Tan­quer­ay, crease of his elbow warped in Bacardi Gold Rum. Karissa had quit, before she’d even found out she was pregnant.

When Roman’s shift ended, he walked to the bus stop. It would be about a twenty-minute ride to Karissa’s mom’s place. The bus was due in three minutes. Six minutes passed, but it did not come. Roman, with a ball rising in his throat, walked on. 

That dis­ori­ent­ing haze from the case worker’s visit returned. It clouded his vision, his sense of time. Around here—somewhere, he knew—was the church his grand­moth­er had taken him to as a kid. He searched for the steeple jutting into the sky above the rowhomes, above the big, gnarled sycamores. He found it then, simple and stone from the outside. He let child­hood instincts guide him to the side of the build­ing where the tiny chapel was. He went inside and slid into one of the wooden pews before the altar. The ceiling was painted like he remem­bered: a royal blue with winding flowers. The kids from the parish school had done it. A golden recep­ta­cle shaped like a star­burst sat on the altar, and inside was a piece of com­mu­nion. This was the ado­ra­tion chapel. 

There was one other person, quiet with her rosary beads pressed to her mouth. Roman recalled his grand­moth­er, and he prayed that she would with­hold any judge­ment of him and help—help both him and Xavier—from wher­ev­er high and mighty place she was now. 

He crouched over, his elbows on his knees and then, even­tu­al­ly, his hands to his eyes. His shoul­ders rocked a little from his muffled crying. Delays across mul­ti­ple areas. His back shud­dered. On another planet. His boy grin­ning above him as he tossed him into the air at the play­ground. He’s sweet, lots of energy. His boy flip­ping over his dinner plate, not what he wanted to eat. His boy scream­ing in terror at the ER, white-gloved hands holding him down for his stitches. 

The woman a few pews over stood up. Her rosary cast a hundred minia­ture rain­bows on the dark wood pews, just like his grandmother’s always had. Roman’s shoul­ders sank in relief: he was meant to have come here. That priest at the door—he had not been an omen, not a con­dem­na­tion, but instead an arrow­head toward greatly needed respite. Roman inhaled and bowed his head, astounded. 

An hour later, his breath was still quaking, uneven. The insides of his palms were damp. Upon exiting the chapel, he remem­bered that the last time he’d left Xavier at Karissa’s mom’s place too long, it had result­ed in the ER visit. He couldn’t be sitting around in church pews—he had to get to his son. His heart throbbed with worry on the bus, pulsing hard even in the soles of his feet as he sat, kicking himself for being so foolish. 

Karissa’s mother ignored his fraz­zled entrance to the house. She tucked scis­sors into the short dark apron around her waist, con­tin­ued sweep­ing up little piles of clipped hair on the floor. “You hear from her lately?” she asked. 

Roman glanced around for Xavier but didn’t see him. His pulse shot up in worry. “Last message I sent her went unde­liv­ered.” She’d been at his place just last weekend, totally fine. But then just like that she was unreach­able. Gone. A dis­ori­ent­ing pattern every time. 

Her mother shook her head. “She must not have paid her bill this month.”

Roman paused, and for an instant, felt a kinship with her: both parents of a trouble child. 

Then he heard the rustle of the curtain divid­ing the hair salon from the rest of the house. There Xavier was, two smushed fruit snacks in his right palm. Roman’s mouth dropped open, and the relief from the chapel flooded through him. He knelt down, his arms open. 

“There’s my boy.” 

Xavier laughed. He padded forward, then into Roman’s arms. He pulled at Roman’s right ear, then smiled. He let out his elon­gat­ed coo, and Roman made the sound back. If this was how his kid talked, then this is how he would talk too. 

He pressed his hands to his Xavier’s face, then took his head into his chest. 

“It’s just you and me, bud,” he whis­pered. A new con­fi­dence emerged in his chest, a sur­prise. He nudged his nose into his son’s hair. “We’re gonna be alright.”