Trompe l'Oeil by Nancy Reisman Page A

back.”
    The bicycling redhead? “Oh good,” James told her. “How was your ride? Tires okay?”
    â€œI won,” Katy said. “But it didn’t really count.”
    â€œYou were fast,” Theo said, apparently in a mood to like Katy.
    And then James was clearing the table, and washing dishes, and working on financials for the New York office while Katy read from a textbook covered in craft paper, her name repeated in wavy emerald letters on the front piece. Theo hid in a novel. Nora bathed Sara and settled her in her crib.
    Later, as James readied for bed, Nora smoothed cream on her hands, efficient and unself-conscious, and he could see then her deep fatigue, which of course had inflected her laugh. (Were there other inflections? He stopped at fatigue.) Recently, they’d begun to have sex again, gingerly, when not exhausted. He set out clothes for the morning: white shirt, gold tie, sepiashoes. She perched at the edge of the bed, watching him, her gaze shifting from the pressed suit to his face to the sepia shoes. Her thin blue robe adhered to the lines of her clavicle. “I’m pregnant,” she said. She addressed the pressed suit. “I need this to be okay.”
    How astonished they’d been when she became pregnant with Theo; happy with Katy. And Molly, yes, they’d planned for three. With Sara, anxious, but too the hope of—what?—a redemption? A turning away from death. Say you make that turn; say you see glimmers of redemption. Now another child? For the first time, the news less welcome; for the first time, a wish to stop. And yet that turning away; and yet those glimmers, the wish impossible.
    He and Nora were altered, this an altered life he could not steer. (Had he thought, for a moment, he could steer?) But okay. Nora was pregnant. Nora was waiting.
    He affected serenity. “How are you feeling?” he said.
    â€œTired.”
    He nodded and crossed the floor to the bed. Do this , he thought, and mussed her hair. Do this , he thought, and kissed her.

SMALL GIRLS AND KATY
    At first Katy would have to remind herself, almost daily: Delia Delia Delia . They’d grown accustomed to Sara, the baby who was not-Molly, although there had been moments when one or another of them would slip, using Molly’s name. It didn’t happen often. You’d hear the name aloud, then a flat confused silence before a change of subject. “You’re all Murphys,” Nora would say. “Sara with a touch of Connor.” No one argued. But the other baby photos revealed clear variations: Katy with the darkest hair, Theo fair, eyes deep-set, Sara’s baby face more oval. Molly and Delia round wide-eyed babies you could not tell apart.
    â€œTake a look at your Murphy cousins,” Nora said. “It’s all the same picture.”
    It was harder now to remember everything of Molly, even to say that laugh, that voice was Molly’s, this one Delia’s, because Delia too was a little wild, her happiness, her sobbing already dramatic, already washing across Molly’s first expressions.
    Molly as a four-year-old remained more distinct. Katy’s memory diverged from Theo’s, holding to different details and perhaps different Mollys. Italy blurred: a church, a heavy doorbeyond which a high ceiling appeared roped with gold, paintings of apostles and saints swooning. But there was more than one church, and another swooning on the street. Nora naked, washing. The back of Molly’s dress, her legs moving, almost in flight. And now Katy couldn’t say for sure where they were standing. Or sitting? She’s supposed to keep hold of Molly’s hand. Sometimes Molly shakes her hand away—so typical of Molly. Sometimes Molly lets go and holds out her palm, so that Katy can give her a coin. But are they in Rome? The flat palm, a copper round. In Newton, Katy gave Molly pennies.
    And for a moment, Molly might have sat outside the