The Art of Missing

The night Carlos died, you were watching baseball alone in your apartment—cable flickering every time the wind picked up, the announcer's voice cutting out just as someone swung at something they couldn't quite connect with. That's how you remember it anyway. Memory's unreliable like that, editing itself for narrative convenience, choosing which frames to sharpen and which to let blur into the background.

Now it's three years later and you're sitting on the balcony of a hotel room in Miami, palm fronds scraping against the railing in the wind, and you're supposed to be at dinner with your wife except you're not sure she's still your wife, or maybe you're not sure you want to be, and isn't that the same thing really? The cable guy came this morning while you were out and disconnected the wrong line, so there's no TV to distract you from the silence of the room, the way your side of the bed looks like someone's still sleeping in it, the way her side looks like no one ever has.

You think about Carlos, who coached your Little League team when you were twelve, who taught you that missing the ball wasn't failure if you swung at the right ones. You think about the way he held your shoulder after you struck out in the championship game, his palm rough against your skin, the smell of tobacco and cotton, the way he said "there's always next season" like it was a promise and not just something people say to children they're trying not to break.

There is no next season. That's what no one tells you when you're growing up. Sometimes you miss, and sometimes you miss, and then you die having missed more than you connected with, and that's just how it—

The door opens behind you. She steps out onto the balcony, two drinks in her hands, the ice clinking like something settling. "I thought you'd be down there," she says. "The game starts in ten minutes."

You look at her, really look at her, and realize you've been swinging at the wrong thing for years. "I'm not going to the game," you say, and it's terrifying how calm you feel. "I think I'd rather sit here with you. If that's still something you want."

She sets the drinks down on the small table between the chairs. The wind picks up, palm fronds rustling like something alive in the darkness. She sits, and for the first time in a long time, neither of you says anything at all, and it's not the kind of silence that needs filling.

Somewhere below, the cable snaps in the wind, and you both pretend not to hear it.