The Seventh Inning Stretch

The baseball stadium lights hummed overhead, that familiar electric buzz that had been the soundtrack of my marriage. Sarah sat three seats away, though we were technically still together. She'd been chopping her hair into shorter, sharper angles since the miscarriage—each snip another month of silence between us.

I watched the pitcher wipe sweat from his brow. He was young, probably twenty-five, with that terrifying belief that his body would never betray him. My own hair had started thinning at the temples last month. I'd found the clumps in the drain, morning after morning, like small dead animals announcing the slow decay of everything I'd taken for granted.

"You're not eating," Sarah said. It was the most words she'd spoken to me since Tuesday.

I looked down at my lap. The stadium spinach and artichoke dip had congealed into a sad, cold sludge. I'd bought it because it was what she used to order on our first dates, back when we were hungry for everything—each other, life, the future. Now I just felt like a zombie going through the motions of a relationship that had died months ago, too cowardly to bury it.

"Not hungry," I said.

The crowd roared. Someone hit a home run. People stood up, high-fived strangers, felt something. I wanted that—any feeling at all, even if it wasn't mine.

Sarah's hand brushed mine as she sat back down. Neither of us pulled away. For three seconds, there was warmth. Then she adjusted her coat and the moment passed, like all the others we'd been missing.

"I saw a gray hair," she said suddenly, still looking at the field. "This morning. In the mirror."

"I know," I said. "I see them too."

She turned then, really looked at me for the first time in what felt like years. Behind us, the vendor shouted "Popcorn! Get your fresh popcorn!" and somewhere a child laughed, bright and painfully alive.

"Do you still want this?" she asked. Not the marriage. This. Us. The slow march toward nothing.

The baseball game continued around us, oblivious and ongoing. I thought about spinach, how it withered so quickly once it was picked. How we were both already gone, just hadn't admitted it yet.

"No," I said. "But I don't know how to stop."

She nodded once, sharp as her new haircut, and we sat there together as the innings ran out, neither of us moving, both of us staying exactly where we no longer belonged.