What happened was my friend got divorced, and then, for a while, she went to live with my parents. She said, my friend, that she wanted to spend some time with people who liked her. I lived in California too, though up north. With my husband, though my friend did not ask if she could stay with us. I guess I was a little offended. Told myself she wanted to be tended to, knew I would not tend to her and knew my mother would. Though also I was relieved. Just then we were trying to have a baby. Baby books everywhere and me lying on my back, in bed, a thermometer in my vagina, trying to take my basal body temperature so I’d know when to fuck my husband, this, we’d been told, was the most natural way. My mind so filled with this one desire—baby, baby, baby—it might as well have been blank. Dutiful copulation. Tension and resentment packed into each of our small rooms like pudding into pudding cups. “Do you think,” my friend asked me, “that it’s ethical, right now, to have a baby. Considering where we are. In late capitalism, the life cycle of the planet.” I hung up. My husband and I did not end up having a baby, though not for ethical reasons. Later we also got a divorce. Having a baby, in any case, is never ethical. I don’t mean it’s not, just that’s the wrong scale.