Her eyes well up. “It’s nice to hear you acknowledge her.” Dani starts to break down a little, but I can tell she’s fighting it viciously. We didn’t name the babies we lost. Our girls. For some reason, it never felt right. I don’t know what to do with myself. For a moment, I take stock of my own feelings. I imagine having a daughter. Dani is so close to our boys, sometimes I find myself envious of her connection to them. I wonder if having a daughter would feel like having someone in my corner. A strange, empty feeling comes over me. My heart races, the blood drains from my face. I feel tears start to come, but I shake them away.
Is this grief?
She sees me swallow in a slightly exaggerated way, which is something I do when I’m nervous or emotional. She cocks her head to the side. I think she’s surprised. Finally, she sniffles and breaks the silence. “I brought you another set of sheets. In case the others were ruined.”
“They’re not ruined. Maybe stained.”
“Well, it might be easier to have two sets. We can just replace them every time we trade places.”
“Why would we need to do that? Seems like a lot of sheet-washing.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter. Just throw them in the cabinet at the apartment. They were on sale and I was right down the street. The boys are at practice. I have to get back. Have a good weekend.” She sets the bag down and heads for the door. “Bye, Alex,” she says without turning around.
My stomach tightens. The pain of our history is too much for either of us to tolerate.
Later, I find myself dozing off in my clothes again, in the lonely, quiet apartment, my phone in hand, waiting for something…or someone…to break this deafening silence. If anyone ever asks me when it was that I realized I was truly alone in the world, I will tell them it was this moment right now.
—
Getting to the eighteenth hole of the golf course was a complete blur. I barely remember waking up this morning, but here I am, on a Saturday, finishing up a round of golf with Brian. I do know he’s been talking incessantly about inflation trends in the twenty-first century. It’s easily the most somniferous topic I can think of, so maybe that’s why I don’t feel awake.
“You should record yourself talking about this and then sell it as a cure for insomnia,” I say.
We get into the golf cart and head down the fairway looking for our drives. Mine is somewhere out of bounds. At this point, I’m over golfing. Brian’s perfect two-hundred-yard drive is right in the middle of the beautifully manicured fairway.
“You don’t think it’s interesting how wildly unstable inflation is?” he asks.
“No, but that’s okay. Are you going to write about that in something?” We’re at Brian’s ball. I drop a ball next to it. He gives me a look. I roll my eyes and say, “I’m not going looking for my ball. Just add one million to my score, I’ve already broken a hundred.”
“That’s no fun, man.” He swings the club, laying his ball up about two feet from the hole. I shake my head. Brian is one of those people who is good at everything but too scatterbrained to care. “No, I’m not going to write about it. It would be pretty boring, wouldn’t it?” he says.
I swing. The ball floats into a small pond to the left of the green. It’s far enough away from the hole to be odd. “What the—” I say.
“It’s amazing. You will find water no matter where it is,” Brian says.
I let Brian finish the round. I don’t think I’ve ever given up like this before, but I’ve lost two sleeves of balls and I’m calling it a day. We head back to the clubhouse in the golf cart.
“You want to get dinner here?” I say.
“No way. Let’s go home and change and go somewhere good. This place is stuffy.”
He’s right, it is. “Where do you want to go?” I ask.
“You have a bunch of cool restaurants right by the apartment, right?”
There is a bit of a bar scene a couple blocks away, but I don’t really want to mention that. I’m afraid Brian’s “being single” rhetoric will make its way back into our conversation.
“Commerce and G? Is that place cool?”
He’s referring to a trendy American foodie haven by the apartment, where the bartenders are those extremely hip know-it-alls with mustaches and suspenders, who describe in great detail the molecular weight and peaty undertones of some cheap Tennessee whiskey they charge thirty-five dollars a shot for. That’s how cool it is.
“A little too cool,” I say.
“Let’s try it. Who cares if we’re the oldest guys there?” he says.
We won’t be if we go early enough. It does turn into quite a scene after ten, but I plan on being in bed by then, so I agree to meet him there.
Back at the apartment, I shower and get dressed, but don’t bother shaving. I throw on a gray sweater, pants, and some light blue Vans slip-ons. I look in the mirror at my two days of growth and intentionally casual attire and realize that I’m just the older version of those tool bags with mustaches. I’m the Silicon Valley hipster circa 2010, trying way too hard to look like I’m not trying.
