My head is in “The Stone Angel” by Margaret Laurence, racing through pages between the moments when Marie-Hélène is awake. I sit on the couch in front of the tv – tuned to some musical channel – while Christian burrows through piles of elementary projects. Occasionally, I’ll read him a sentence or two. “The poplar bluffs had budded with sticky leaves, and the frogs had come back to the sloughs and sang like choruses of angels with sore throats, and the marsh marigolds were opening like shavings of sun on the brown river where the tadpoles danced and the bloodsuckers lay slimy and low, waiting for the boys’ feet.” It made me laugh – the angels with sore throats. Christian said he could hear them.