The Seventh Inning Stretch

The bullpen phone had rung three times before Marcus answered it. His hair—still thick at thirty-four, though his father had gone bald by twenty-five—fell over his eyes as he bent to retrieve the receiver. Sarah was in the hospital room down the hall, sleeping off the sedatives they'd given her after the miscarriage. The doctor had said 'it happens,' but Marcus felt that statement like a punch to the gut.

'Your sister's on the line,' the nurse said, and Marcus thought about Sarah's sister, Elena, who'd come to stay with them 'to help' after the diagnosis. Elena, with her careful blonde ponytail and her talent for appearing in doorways just when Marcus felt most alone. Elena, who'd kissed him three nights ago in the kitchen while Sarah slept, and whose breath had smelled like baseball cards and betrayal.

Marcus thought about his father, a man who'd treated marriage like a bullfight—something to be survived if you were lucky, destroyed if you weren't. 'At least I'm not like him,' Marcus whispered to himself. But here he was, three days from the worst moment of his life, considering his sister-in-law's offer to meet him at a motel off Route 9.

He looked at his reflection in the darkened window. His hair, dark like Sarah's, like the hair of the child they'd never see grow. He thought about how Elena had run her fingers through it in the kitchen, her other hand pressing against the refrigerator door like she might fall.

Outside, summer had arrived early. The neighborhood kids were playing baseball in the street—tin cans for bases, a broom handle for a bat. Marcus watched them through the window, the way they moved with such certainty, such faith that the sun would always set in the west, that games would always have innings, that life would just keep going.

He hung up the phone without talking to Elena. Then he walked down the hall to Sarah's room, where she was already awake, her gray-streaked hair fanned across the pillow like something broken but beautiful, something that might still heal if you were careful enough, if you loved it enough, if you didn't let yourself believe the lie that you were too damaged to try.