Washington Heights

Washington Heights is the domestic and neighborhood setting for important parts of Apollo and Emma’s family life. It anchors the practical choices surrounding their planned home birth, while Bennett Park and the Fort Washington branch of the New York Public Library place parenting and work within the rhythms of the surrounding community.

Neighborhood Setting

Apollo is in Washington Heights for an estate sale when he makes an unsuccessful search there and stops instead at the Fort Washington branch of the New York Public Library. The library’s basement sale offers the ordinary economics of his rare-book business rather than a spectacular discovery: Apollo expects modest margins from inexpensive donated or discarded books, including large-print crime novels he sells to retirees. The scene presents the neighborhood not as a place of extraordinary finds but as part of the everyday circuit through which he works.

The branch’s sale takes place in a basement nook beside the reading room. A librarian is trying to manage both the sale and her desk while a mother and two children browse the picture books; one child repeatedly pulls books onto the floor, adding cleanup to the librarian’s duties. The small, busy scene gives the library a communal character, grounded in local families and the labor of keeping a public institution running.

Family Life and Local Routines

Bennett Park is part of Apollo’s routine as a new father. At half past five in the morning, he joins four other fathers near the padded play squares, while mothers gather by the swings. The fathers do not remember one another’s names, but they know each other’s children. When Apollo unhooks Brian from the baby carrier, the men call out the child’s name in welcome. The park turns parenting into a neighborhood practice: recognition and companionship gather around the children even where adult familiarity remains slight.

The family’s home in Washington Heights also shapes the decisions made during Emma’s pregnancy. After Emma becomes exhausted at Bouley restaurant downtown, she insists that she and Apollo continue home for the birth rather than call an ambulance. Nichelle Murray offers a cab and then a car service, but Emma refuses those options too: she intends to give birth at home, and traffic across town could make the journey take an hour or longer. The Chambers Street station is only four blocks away, and the A train offers a much quicker route. Washington Heights is thus both their destination and the reason the choice of transport matters.

Work and Community

Emma’s return to work reveals another dimension of neighborhood life: the public library as a source of care. She loves being a librarian and hopes to offer children what Ms. Rook once offered her—a quiet form of protection and relief. On her first morning back, she arrives at 8:35 to find colleagues welcoming her with a gold-lettered sign, cake, and fresh coffee. The account describes her workplace as a three-story limestone library building erected in 1914 with funding from Andrew Carnegie, once serving well-known local readers as well as generations of anonymous children. Although the passage does not name the branch, its emphasis on the library’s long service to the community complements the neighborhood scenes elsewhere in Washington Heights.