The Visor

Elena stood at the padel court, the orange visor pulled low over her eyes. Another Thursday night match with Mark—her ex-husband's friend, his business partner, the man who'd introduced them at this same club five years ago. Now she was thirty-four, divorced, and moving through her days like a zombie, hollowed out by legal fees and the quiet erosion of shared history.

"Your serve," Mark called, bouncing the ball on the clay. He wore the same hat he'd worn at her wedding—a navy baseball cap with the company logo, now faded at the brim.

She adjusted her grip on the racket, thinking about how she'd ended up here. The divorce settlement had included their padel membership, a bizarre stipulation her lawyer had called "symbolic equity." She kept showing up, week after week, as if the motion could outrun the stillness waiting at her apartment.

"You haven't been sleeping," Mark said, not a question. They'd kept playing together after the funeral, after the hospital, after she'd stopped wearing her ring.

"You sound like my mother."

"Your mother called me. She's worried."

Elena missed her serve. The ball hit the net and dropped into the clay. She thought about the orange grove where they'd scattered her father's ashes, how the fruit had looked bruised against the gray sky, how she'd wanted to be buried too, just climb into the earth and let the winter bear finish what the cancer started.

"I'm fine," she said, though they both knew it was a lie. "Just tired."

"It's been two years, El."

"I know exactly how long it's been."

Mark walked to the net. "My cousin runs a grief group. Tuesday nights. No pressure, but... she says there's something about being in a room with people who get it. Who know what it's like to wake up and remember, then remember again, and keep getting up anyway."

Elena adjusted her visor. The orange felt too bright against the dusk. She thought about how her father had hated this hat, had said all those men in their baseball caps looked like they were trying to disappear into themselves.

"Maybe," she said. "What time?"

"Seven. You could come after your match with David."

Her ex-husband's name landed between them like a stone. She hadn't played with him since the papers were signed. hadn't wanted to see him across the net, all that distance stretched across a few feet of clay.

"I cancelled that weeks ago," she said. "I just... I kept the reservation."

"Why?"

"Because it was something normal. Because some days, normal is all I've got."

Mark nodded. He understood. He'd held her hair back when the pills made her sick, had sat with her in the hospital while machines did her father's breathing, had watched her become a stranger to herself and stayed anyway.

"Next Tuesday," he said. "I'll pick you up at six-thirty."

"Okay," she said, and meant it.

They finished their match in silence, the sound of the ball against the racket marking time like a heartbeat, like something that could still be counted on to return.