The Ninth Inning

The cable had been out for three hours when Mark finally looked up from his phone.

"You think they know?" I asked, gesturing toward the dark television screen. The Yankees were supposed to play the Red Sox tonight — our ritual, these past fifteen years. Baseball games on cable, cold beers, comfortable silence.

"Know what?" His eyes slid back to the glow in his palm.

"That we're dead."

Buster, our golden retriever, lifted his head from the carpet and let out a soft whine. Even the dog knew something was wrong. Mark had been moving through our marriage like a zombie for months now — hollow eyes, mechanical responses, the terrible shuffle of someone who'd already left but forgotten to tell his body.

"Don't start, Elena."

"I'm not starting anything. I'm just — the cable's out, Mark. And for the first time in a decade, I don't care if I miss the game."

He set down his phone. For a moment, the old Mark flickered behind his eyes. "That was my dad's team. The Yankees. Remember?"

"I remember."

"He taught me to keep score when I was seven. Sat me down with a dog-eared scorecard and said, 'This is how you pay attention to things that matter.'" His voice cracked. "He died two months ago, El."

Buster padded over and rested his chin on Mark's knee. My husband's hand moved to the dog's ears automatically, muscle memory overriding whatever numbness had claimed him.

"I know, baby. I was at the funeral. I held you. You shook so hard I thought you'd break apart."

"Then nothing." His voice dropped to a whisper. "Then I became this. This thing that can't feel anything. This zombie."

"You're grieving."

"No." He looked at me really looked at me. "I forgot how to be alive. The cable went out and I kept watching the black screen because it was easier than facing what's in front of me."

Buster licked his hand. My husband flinched, then slowly curled his fingers into the dog's fur.

"Baseball," I said softly. "Your dad. Us. It's all still here."

"The cable will come back on eventually."

"Maybe. Or maybe we learn to live without it."

Mark buried his face in Buster's neck. I watched the rise and fall of his shoulders, something genuine finally breaking through the numbness. The television remained dark. Outside, a neighbor's radio drifted through the window — the crack of a bat, the roar of a crowd.

"Turn it off," Mark mumbled.

"What?"

"The game. I don't want to listen. I want to sit here with my wife and our dog and I want to feel something real."

So we sat in the quiet of our living room, not saying anything at all, and for the first time in months, the silence between us wasn't empty. It was full of everything we'd been too dead to notice.