Summary

The night after Claude is conceived, Penn is getting the boys ready for bed. The chaotic routine includes getting them changed into pajamas and herding them into one room for a story. It is the story of Grumwald, and Penn picks up where he left off when he first told it to Rosie, with Grumwald opening the visor of a suit of armor outside his bedroom. He finds “a story waiting to get out” (29). The story has no end and defies narrative theory: “every time it seemed like it was going to come to some kind of conclusion or moral or denouement, it went in a different direction and began again” (29).

In the next chapter, “Things They Told Doctors,” Claude says his first word, bologna, at nine months old, although the pediatricians say this is impossible. At three, he tells...