I get a call on my work phone from a girl named Lyra who claims she’s my goddaughter. She might be, it’s not impossible. I have a couple of godchildren to whom I pay no attention: I’ve forgotten their names and I am long out of touch with their parents, and I don’t know how …
When Penelope’s fertility doctor mentioned her age twice in the same sentence—“Certainly it’s not impossible for a thirty-seven-year-old woman to conceive for the first time, though thirty-seven is on the downslope of female fertility”—she shook her head and gave him the same pitying look she gave her students when they were being stupid. “I’m thirty-two,” …