The backyard of the ice-cream shop wasn’t much to look at, but Webster and Sheila had spent an hour hanging balloons from trees, decorating a picnic table with red cups and birthday hats and plates, and setting up games that two-year-olds could play. Overly excited, Rowan crisscrossed the yard. She already had grass stains on the yellow and white dress her mother had bought for the occasion. Sheila and Webster stood and surveyed the lawn.

“It looks like a birthday party,” she said.

“Thank God it hasn’t rained like they said it would.”

“They always get it wrong.”

“Rowan’s fit to bust,” Webster said, smiling at his little girl.

They’d had a long run of calm. Webster hadn’t dared to hope that he and Sheila were on solid ground, but enough time had passed that he felt like celebrating their long good spell as much as his daughter’s birthday. Sheila had made the birthday cake, a slightly listing chocolate cake with yellow frosting. Three candles, one of them for good luck.

They’d celebrated Rowan’s first birthday party with family. This time Sheila wanted to invite four children Rowan knew from day care as well as their parents. Webster didn’t know the parents; he’d seen them mostly in passing. Rowan’s grandmother and grandfather would come to the party, too.

Sheila seemed happy. She poured Coke into one of the taller red cups meant for adults and asked Webster if he wanted some. He was about to say yes when the first of the parents arrived with their child, a boy named Jason. Rowan dragged Jason off to see the games her dad had set up. Sheila offered the parents a beverage and pointed out the chips and dips. Conversation was awkward, and there were a lot of jokes about living over an ice-cream shop. Webster had heard every one before, but he chuckled nevertheless.

Sheila laughed loud and long with the mothers. She knew them better than Webster did.

Webster lost himself in his job as master of ceremonies.

It wasn’t until an hour had passed that he noticed that Sheila was never without her red cup. A ping of alarm went through him. She was nervous, he told himself, she needed a prop. When it was time for the cake, Rowan made a wish and puffed herself up. To Webster’s astonishment, Sheila bent in and blew out all the candles herself. He was certain Rowan would cry, but instead she whapped her palm flat on the top of the cake, disturbing the icing that said “Happy Birthday Rowan.” Only Webster saw the gesture as angry. Sheila chose to think it adorable and laughed. Webster glanced at the parents and noted their wary eyes.

While Webster oversaw the remaining games, Sheila leaned against the cement wall of the ice-cream shop, red cup in hand. By one thirty, she was slurring her words when she said good-bye to the parents. Webster noted how they drew their children close to them when Sheila approached. Webster was furious, embarrassed for himself and for Rowan. When the last of the guests had left, he told Sheila to go upstairs, that he would clean up and watch Rowan, too.

Sheila pulled herself up the stairs. Webster’s mother took over the cleanup, while Webster stood next to his father under a red maple, both watching Rowan.

“Sheila’s in a bad way,” his father said, getting right to the point. “Something has to be done.”

“I’ve tried everything I can think of,” Webster said, “short of actually leaving her.”

“You’re going to have to do more. Maybe look into some of those programs.”

“You mean a rehab program?”

“That’s it.”

“They’re expensive, Dad.”

Webster winced. His father would think that he was asking for money.

“We could help…,” his father began.

Webster put his palms up. “I’m sorry I mentioned the cost. That’s the last thing I want. Whatever we do, we do on our own.”

His father put his hands in his pockets. Neither Webster nor his father had taken their eyes off Rowan, who seemed to have forgotten the incident with the cake. “I’ll tell you this, son,” his father said. “There’s no better place your mother and I could ever put our money than to see you and your family have an easier time of it.”

“Thanks for offering, but it’s something I have to think about.”

“You’re a fucking lush,” Webster said to Sheila in the bedroom while Rowan was watching television in the living room. He tried to keep his voice down, but there was too much anger behind it. “At your daughter’s birthday? Are you shitting me? Did you see the way the children clung to their parents when you got close to them? My God, Sheila, can you imagine what they think?”

“I knew it,” she said, looking smug. She took a pack of cigarettes from the bedside drawer and lit one. “You care more about what the neighbors think than about what’s happening to me.”

“I know what’s happening to you. All I have to do is look at you.”

She tucked her hair behind her ears and tipped her chin up, as if she didn’t care. “What are you going to punish me with?” she asked. “No more birthdays? That’s super. Then Rowan gets punished, too.”

“She’s already being punished,” Webster argued.

“Was she embarrassed by her mommy today?”

“You bet she was. She knows when you’re drinking. She pulls away from you. I shudder to think what’s going on when I’m not here.”

“You ‘shudder to think.’ Jesus, Webster, when did you turn into such an asshole?”

“I think you should go into a rehab program.”

“Who made you king?” she asked, standing. “And not that AA shit again. The meetings make me sad. I have nothing in common with those people. Besides, you exaggerate my drinking, like you exaggerate everything. Does Rowan look hungry or unhappy or dirty to you? You think I don’t love her as much as you do?”

“I think you love Rowan as much as I do. You just love drinking more.”

“I don’t.”

“Sheila, stop. Just stop.”

The defeat in his voice made her bow her head.

“Can’t we just get through the night?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said. “ ‘One day at a time,’ right?”

They had one good month followed by a bad month. Then they had three good weeks followed by a horrific week. During the bad weeks, Webster began repeating a single phrase over and over, like a tune he couldn’t get out of his head: My family needs to be rescued. It galled him that he could prevent heart attacks, minimize injuries, and reverse overdoses when he couldn’t suture the simple lacerations in his home life.

Just opening the door after work made Webster anxious. He might find Rowan, tired and sullen, on the sofa watching TV, with Sheila asleep in the bedroom. Webster had to fix it. Once he found Sheila cooking with a half-empty bottle of wine beside the stove. “One for the pot, one for the cook,” she said, smiling, as if she’d forgotten all that had gone before.

“Where’s Rowan?” he asked in a panic.

“I sent her outside. She’s making a snowman.”

Webster ran down the stairs. He had to fix it.

Webster made Sheila promise she would never drink and drive. Twice she forgot to pick Rowan up, and the owner of the day-care center had to call Webster at work, the message put through to his radio. Go get your daughter.

Webster searched the house, inside and out, again and again. One morning, he found a white plastic bag in the ice-cream shop’s trash that contained several dozen airplane-sized bottles of vodka and whiskey. He closed his eyes. To have gotten all those bottles would have required Sheila to make any number of stops at different liquor stores so as not to draw attention to herself. He wondered if Rowan had been along on those trips.

Webster did everything he knew how to do, followed every procedure in the book, but still he was afraid that his patient—their marriage—would flatline.

One night in the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, Webster arrived home from work and saw that Rowan was asleep in the crib they’d tucked under an eave. A Christmas tree took up all the remaining space. They’d had a good Christmas together, Webster taking pleasure in watching his daughter’s face when she woke to the sight of presents. Webster’s only difficulty had been finding a present for Sheila. In the beginning, all he wanted to do was give her presents. Now he felt worn out, his imagination dulled. Anything romantic or pretty felt false. He settled on a Crock-Pot, which Sheila had asked for. The present depressed Webster.

They needed a bigger apartment, and they couldn’t wait much longer. At least he didn’t have to worry about waking his daughter when he came in at night. Rowan had turned out to be an excellent sleeper.

Sheila, from the bedroom, called his name.

“Be right in,” he said.

She came to the door of the bedroom. She had on a pair of black thigh-high stockings with a matching lacy bra and panties. Her stomach was perfectly flat. How had she done that?

“Wow,” he said. “To what do I owe this?”

“Come on in and see,” she said in a coquettish voice.

He took off his clothes in front of the washer and dryer and had one of the fastest showers of his life. He dove into bed with his wife. No smell of cigarettes. No whiff of alcohol. Webster began to relax.

Sheila lay on top of him and stretched his arms wide. “I love you, Mr. Webster,” she said, “and I want you to always remember that.” She bent down for a kiss.

She released his hands, and he ran them up and down the back of her body, a wonderful sensation. She kissed him again and rose up while he admired the lacy purchases. He grabbed her and twisted her so that she was lying in the crook of his arm, and he was able to examine her face. Their eyes met, and he felt that each was saying a hundred words to the other, all the sorrys and double sorrys, but in a language unknown to either of them. He told her he loved her, and she kissed him hard, igniting the kind of competitive lovemaking they’d had in the old days. Webster felt anguish and lust in equal measure. Anguish for all that had been lost and lust for Sheila’s body, which had never failed to excite him. He knew that each was trying to break the other, and that in this contest neither of them would win. He wanted Sheila. He wanted her forever. Most of all, he wanted everything to be different from how it was.

Sheila held herself back, though he could see that it was taking all of her will. When the moment came, they looked nowhere but at each other. When they fell back, they were laughing.

Webster, for a week and another week, lived his life.