ZERO

DURING THE NINE WEEKS that I knew Z, we sent each other one hundred texts a day. 

Once, she sent a text that said You are sooooooo amazing, and once she sent a text that said I can’t believe how lucky I am to have met you, and once she sent a text that said I am nowhere near your neighborhood . . ., and once she sent a text asking if I’d walk the Camino de Santiago with her one day, and I said yes, then looked up the Camino de Santiago. I cannot wait to walk the Camino de Santiago with you, I wrote, and she gave that message a heart. 

Excitement = fun + fear, I remind my children, but sometimes the portions get wonky. 

Once, Z and I laughed so hard I stopped the car in the middle of the street to keep from crashing. Once in bed we laughed so hard that I smeared snot all over her beautiful belly. Once she said she loved how I cry when I laugh, and it was the first time in my life I didn’t wipe away those laughing tears in mild embarrassment. Once, we lay naked together and I told her things about myself I didn’t like, things I’d done that I wasn’t proud of. There was something between us that was safe and thrilling and very precious, a mixture that was as unfamiliar to me as was the speed of it all. I’d fallen before, but never like this: hard and fast and feet-first, unafraid.

To end it, she sent a late-night text: I’ve been thinking a lot and I’ve decided you’re not right for me. I asked to speak by phone or in person, assuming that we could come to some sad but humane parting of ways. She didn’t respond. My best friend Amanda tells me that, technically speaking, this isn’t ghosting. Whatever it is, it makes me feel inhuman. An inconvenience, a nuisance. Left alone on a scorched island, haunted by memories of all that lush splendor. 

In middle age, it’s sacrilege to wish for a failing memory. I will not do it.  

ONE

I’M FORTY-SEVEN YEARS OLD, swimming naked in a cold lake in my midsize Midwestern city, when I get my first-ever black eye. When the woman’s elbow meets my ocular bone, I feel the blow in my sinuses and the sky darkens woozily. I swallow a mouthful of lake water flavored by blood and sneeze painfully several times. Nova Weston, a stranger whose name I will not know for a year, treads water with me as dozens of women swim past us, round a buoy, and splash back toward shore. “Oh my word, oh my word,” she says. “I’m so sorry!” “I’m OK!” I say through my watery shock.

It’s October, sunny and windy, and the rough water shoves us around. Her lips are lavender and her eyes are green. There’s a dark mole in a crease of her neck and plenty of silver in her wet hair. She’s my age, maybe a little older. Over her freckled shoulders, the modest skyline glints in the morning sunlight.

“Let’s go,” I say, coughing into a wave.

The stranger puts her face in the water. My nose stings and I have trouble syncing my limbs. I slap the base of the buoy, start back the way we came, and catch sight of Amanda in the distance. She’s waiting on the boat ramp, holding my backpack, her light blond hair blowing. The organizers of the annual Goddess Plunge—my participation fee will go to a local food bank—unfurled a red carpet down the ramp, and now the swiftest goddesses lurch shakily toward their people. After I crawl onto land and find it in myself to stand, Amanda appears at my side with a towel and a paper cup of apple cider. “Holy moly,” she says about the blood, which trickles between my breasts.

“But no sharks!” I say. I down the cider, which is tepid.

Amanda pulls me out of the fray, sits me down, trades my towel for a sweatshirt, and presses the towel to my nose. 

“Ouch.” I swallow a mouthful of warm blood, then vomit bloody bits of granola onto the grass.

“It’s not broken,” says Amanda, rubbing my back.

The possibility had not occurred to me. I inhale and air flows wetly. “I need my underwear.”

Amanda fishes through my backpack and hands them to me, and I put them on and lie back in the grass. My teeth knock against each other and my head aches. Then the sunlight dims and there stands Nova Weston, wearing overalls and eyeglasses.

During the minute we spent treading water together, I glimpsed her nipples: small, dark coins. 

“I did this,” she says to Amanda.  

“It was an accident,” I say. “I’m fine.”

“She’s fine!” says Amanda cheerfully. When I asked her months ago to join me at this event, I’d hoped we’d swim together. She’d laughed a long time before offering to be my ride. 

Nova’s lips have regained some of their color. “There’s a medic around here somewhere,” she says.

“Was someone hurt?” I say, and both women look at me. “Oh. Anyone else?”

“Someone’s wearing a warming blanket, but I don’t know. What size t-shirt are you?”  

This stranger is very cute in a bookwormy way—I like her eyes and the squarish shape of her chin—so I feel shy about answering, but then again I’m lying half-naked beside my own bloody vomit. “Large,” I say, and she springs up, saying she’ll be right back.

Amanda examines my face. “The bleeding stopped,” she says. 

“Pants?”  

She hands them over and I wriggle them on. I hobble to stand. “How do I look?”

“That eye will be swollen shut in half an hour. Otherwise, so cute.”

My stranger returns with an ice pack and a black t-shirt, across the bosom of which is a drawing of three women lounging against our city’s skyline in togas and tiaras. This image does not feel true to my experience. “I’m really, really sorry,” she says, backing away. “I shouldn’t be allowed to swim in crowds.”

“Please don’t worry,” I say. It hurts to smile.

Amanda gives me her arm and I hold the ice pack to my face as we weave through the crowd. We step into her car and the world goes quiet. She hands me her phone. On the screen is a photo of me on the red carpet, waving at the camera, my breasts bouncing blurrily. It is not a flattering picture—I’m wearing many chins and there’s something lopsided about my eyes—but I look unapologetically gleeful. I still feel gleeful, though my skull hurts.

No phones allowed at the event, for obvious reasons. “I sneaked it,” says Amanda. She pulls away from the beach and the lake slides by my window. Shadows of elm trees reach toward the lake’s dark, choppy center. Life is passing, and fast.

A DAY LATER, still emboldened by the swim, I’m sitting in my car outside the diner where I’m meeting Amanda and our friend Gwen for breakfast when I absentmindedly open social media on my phone. I don’t have a conscious desire to seek out or avoid posts from Z, but when her face appears on my screen, my heart clenches and my breath holds itself. Three selfies, dinner out with friends. She looks so happy. I want to say her face is beautiful, and this is true, but it’s not the right word. What is the word for something you want to hold in your palms and admire? What’s the word for something you want to study in every light, at every angle?

A minute ago I was calm, and now I am sweating from my hairline, so I make a move I’ve been deliberating for weeks: I force my fingers to my little keyboard and remove Z from my followers and myself from hers, check that I’ve done it correctly, then take deep breaths. There’s a shaft of strong morning sunlight coming in through the windshield, and I close my eyes and show it my face. 

Inside, Amanda is unstrapping her bike helmet and unwinding her scarf, and Gwen is sitting with a cup of tea and her needlepoint. Each of them welcomes me with a side hug and I slide into the booth. “I just disconnected from Z online,” I say. “What have I done?”

Gwen puts down her needlepoint and covers my hand with her own. “Good,” she says. “That one has worn a groove in your brain.”

“Did she get an alert?” says Amanda, who is not on social media.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. She won’t know unless she checks.”

“I approve, but why?”  

“I want to stop thinking she’s someone I know. She’s not.

She doesn’t want to be.”  

“You were pushed out of a plane,” says Gwen, speaking metaphorically. “You’re going to need some help getting back up. How do you feel about psychics?”

Last month, Gwen gave me a tarot reading. My card was the Knight of Swords, which means I have something urgent to say and it’s important I get it out. The people I’m drawn to—lesbians, witches, social workers—tend toward astrology and mediums. What a thing, to believe the universe owns stock in your personal life. 

“Skeptical,” I say to Gwen. “But I’ll try anything.”

Did Z push me out of a plane? It’s as apt an analogy as any, except the plane was safe and warm and wonderful. The hard ground was the hard ground.

Gwen and Amanda use Z’s real name, which I can say only with effort. She is Z because my ex-husband of three years is X, and my first-ever girlfriend, who left me for a semi-pro mountain bicyclist, is Y. And after Z? 

I can’t take another ending.

Amanda and Gwen both vacillate between unhappyish and miserable in their long marriages. Amanda’s husband talks to her like she’s an alien who landed in his home, as if her essential needs—connection, equality, passion, shared goals, mutual respect—are strange, inconvenient chores. The bottom line is that he’s not very nice to her and they don’t love each other in an active way, yet he believes everything is fine and wants nothing to change. 

Gwen’s husband spends all their money on vintage records and marijuana and has never once loaded the dishwasher.

X and I have two kids who just started middle and high school. We keep things on pretty good terms, all told. A little friction, a lot of warmth. We pledged from the start of our separation to make it through with love and kindness. One reason we’ve succeeded is that, despite three years separated, we’ve been too lazy to make it legal. It’s only one piece of the whole shebang—we worked out the custody and financial stuff right away—but I can’t pretend it’s not essential. In this, we’re the opposite of the couples I’ve known, most of whom lead with the legal part and let the really important stuff follow. What results is bruising and disillusioning and chaotic, a private emotional mess sorted by spectators and handed back in a scorching, steely bundle. What if we all just cooled our jets for a while, then came up with an agreement based on what we’ve learned instead of what we’ve predicted? Because anger is cleaner, and cleaner is easier. 

Gwen completes a stitch, then tell us that she’s consulted a psychic named Mila a few times. She says, “If you’re open to it, there’s a chance she could help.” “Send me the link?” I say.

It’s true that I’ll try anything, but at the same time I have no desire to consult a psychic or an astrologer or anyone else, including the therapist who saw me through the end of my marriage. My brother is an internet-famous relationship guru, and he’s told me half a dozen times that what’s happening with me—the sadness, the anger, the confusion, the perseverating, the inability to conceive of my own future happiness—is grief. Grief disorders the brain, he tells me. Grief takes time. 

We order, and then Amanda folds her hands on the table like she’s in a meeting and says to me, “You need a plan.”

It’s not the first time she’s said it, but this time I’m listening. “What kind of plan?”

Gwen, who is a nurse with the school district—years ago, she pulled a nail out of my younger son’s foot and we’ve been friends ever since—is nodding in agreement. “Steps. Milestones. Rewards,” she says. “Like AA.”

“Dates,” says Amanda. “You need to go on dates. Lots of them.”

I haven’t so much as glanced at the apps in weeks. What’s the point?

“How many, do you think?” says Gwen to Amanda.

“A thousand,” says Amanda, nodding sympathetically at me. “Or ten?”

I allow myself to imagine this. Ten dates, ten women, ten potential goodnight kisses. My heart might be broken, but the rest of me works. Why not?

“You’ve given Z enough of your power,” Amanda says.

Amanda always had a sixth sense about my attraction to women. More than once, before I was out to myself, she’d mention an acquaintance and say something like, “I can see you with her.” If she’d expressed even the faintest surprise when I finally did come out, would I have hesitated or stumbled? Instead, I’ve aimed toward women with an exuberance and surety typically associated with youth. But really, it’s the exuberance and surety of a woman who has spent most of her life worrying too much about other people’s opinions, wondering too often if all she knew was all there was.

On one level, I know I’ve given Z enough, truly I do. Not because she’s unworthy, but because I deserve to move on. And I would like to record Amanda’s words and lie down in a dark room and let them play in my ears on repeat for hours, until I’m healed, then get up and walk into the sunlight and never think of Z again. I’d like to reclaim the helm of my heart and brain.

Gwen says, “Let’s define your goals.” “To go on ten first dates?” I say.

“Yes, but with the purpose of accomplishing what?” says Gwen.

I thought about this a lot in the weeks after Z, when I was floundering to define the potential I felt I’d lost. “Eventually, I want a lasting relationship that builds steadily over time,” I say. “So I guess I want to meet someone who can make that happen with me.”

“OK. What else?”

I want to forget Z. I want more experience in bed with women. I want to have some fun. I want to forget Z.

“I want to move slow,” I say.  

“Emotionally, you mean?” says Amanda. “Not physically.”

“Right.” Physically, I’m good to go.  

“Dating ten women to get over Z is like eating celery to fix a full stomach,” Gwen says. “But I’ve done that, so I can’t judge.”

“Did it work?” I say.  

“Yes, but I can’t tell you why.”  

The food arrives, and I shimmy out of my coat and dig in. 

“Two things happened in my house this week,” Amanda announces around a mouthful of omelet. “One is that I learned that Lionel has been cheating on his science quizzes. He told me himself.”

Lionel is Amanda’s gifted, autistic son. He’s twelve years old and in eighth grade, having skipped kindergarten and fifth. He owns two snakes, two turtles, and one bearded dragon, and though his bedroom smells like dank, salty earth, I visit often to get the latest news. He doesn’t name his animals, but he keeps careful records of their eating and waste, and once he told me that the python tied itself into a knot for three days. “What evolutionary purpose does that serve?” I asked him, and he said, “I’ll find out,” and made a note in his journal.

“And two,” Amanda says, “Marcus told me he no longer wants a sexual relationship. With me, I mean.” I pull in my coffee and sit up straight. 

Since X and I split, women tell me things they didn’t before. I see now that part of my loneliness in my marriage came from living inside a bubble populated mostly by other people who chose the same bubble. When you’re in the bubble, it’s difficult to admit that there might be happiness outside of it. My friendships back then were happy-marriagebased friendships. We complained about our partners only on the he-forgot-our-anniversary level. Every so often a morsel might slip: He cheated last year but it’s over now, we’re back on track. I almost left because of his drinking, but he stopped and we’re back on track. Being on track is the golden rule inside the bubble. When I deliberately went off track, several of my thenfriends asked me if I was having a nervous breakdown.

We never talk about Amanda’s marriage on the he-forgotour-anniversary level. Her husband, Marcus, is a VP at the healthcare software company that put our town on the biotech map, and she’s parlayed her midwife practice into the only birthing center in a hundred miles. From the outside, they are a power couple. It’s not possible to know the guts of a marriage, but I do know he expects food on the table every night, and that he regularly guilts Amanda into returning even moderately priced items while he recently spent thousands on a bike that he rarely rides. Amanda makes good money running the center, but she’ll never make what he makes, and this leads to the problematic math that results in her working full-time while also managing their home and child and sorting their unwieldy calendar and making their meals and packing his clothes for trips and everything else. There’s no priority that ranks above Marcus’s work. Their home, like most, is a capitalistic biome.

Amanda’s chin is trembling. I could shuffle to her side of the booth, but something tells me she doesn’t need soothing. She needs strategy. How do we survive our own lives? Like literally how, using which tips and tricks and weapons and armor? Meditation or journaling or gratitude practice? Affairs or drinking or shoplifting?

“What does he mean, exactly?” I say.

Amanda does this wonderful thing with her hands when she’s telling a story, a series of karate chops, like her hands have a stutter. “I asked—again—if we should talk about the fact that we haven’t had sex in months, and this time instead of saying he’s tired or whatever, he said, ‘I’m sorry, but I think that part of my life is behind me.’ Then he shrugged.” “Wow,” I say.  

“Is it weird to say I’m relieved?” says Amanda. “And even hornier than usual? I slept in the guest room.”

“You slept in the guest room?” Gwen and I both say. Of course she did. Marcus probably slept like a baby in their king. 

Here’s something else I know about Amanda’s marriage: She and Marcus talk to each other all the time, and when she processes out loud about work or their kiddo or her fears, he asks questions and she opens up to him like she does to me. He and I share the same precious key to her. He gives too much advice and doesn’t follow up, but there’s no question that in a certain light, they have the stuff of a successful couple, the trust that invites shared vulnerability. But I’ve never had that, so maybe I’m wrong to think it means something.

I happen to know that they’ve had sex once this year, a fifty percent decrease from last year. She doesn’t love him anymore, and she doesn’t think about whether he still loves her. She’s over marriage, she says. It’s snake oil and the gig is up. Still, twice a week they sit together on their back deck, chatting about the day and making weekend plans.

Gwen says, “If he doesn’t want sex and you do, why is his stance more legitimate than yours?” “Right,” I say.

“I don’t know,” says Amanda. She stares into her water. She looks tired. Her fingernails are bare and short and her hands are visibly dry. I want to take them in mine and warm them up. It’s not strictly true that I’m a little in love with her, but would I marry her if she asked, or could we spend our last acts in adjoining condos? Happily.

“Is this something you’re willing to live with?” says Gwen. “For the rest of your one wild and precious et cetera?” I say.

Amanda’s hands go to her lap and she gives the barest shrug. “We’ll see,” she says.

AFTER BRUNCH, Amanda and I say goodbye to Gwen and drive in separate cars to get our dogs for a lap around the dog park. It’s my off week, kid-wise—they return to me tomorrow—so my time is my own. The park is ninety fenced acres of restored prairie, two hills to get the blood pumping, many wooded trails. My dog checks to make sure Amanda’s dog is following, then sets out at full speed, then stops abruptly to sniff a smattering of rotting crabapples, then takes off again. 

Several acres of this prairie burned last summer, and hundreds of bright green seedlings rise from the charred expanse. This is one of my favorite places.

Which is one reason I wasn’t expecting it when, a year ago, my first-ever girlfriend Y brought me here to tell me she was going away for the weekend with a woman named Layla, who’d told Y she hadn’t lived until she’d ridden a gravel bike. Y and I had been dating exclusively for nine months. In the next breath, Y said we needed to reify our heretofore monogamous relationship, stat. Clarity was not Y’s strong suit. I said, “Are you saying you want to be poly?” X had been ardently polyamorous since our split, a choice that I interpret as the natural result of his hardwired self-sufficiency. I didn’t want to be poly with Y or anyone else, but I also didn’t want to lose Y, almost entirely because I didn’t want to lose my nascent lesbianism. Y looked at me pityingly and said, “The thing is, Layla isn’t sure she wants to be poly.”

Dating women has felt so right in every way, except for a few instances of blithe, unacknowledged cruelty, which have surprised me. 

Amanda bellowed me back to life after Y. “Y sucks. Take what she gave you and leave the rest,” she said. It was a month before I could return to this park that I love, and another before I acknowledged Y and I were a terrible pairing, that I lived in constant fear of disappointing her by being myself, and I was relieved to be free of her.

I breathe heavily while we trudge up the hill. It’s sunny, pleasant, and crisp, and the maple leaves plastered against the path look like craft-store versions of themselves. I ask Amanda if she’ll continue sleeping in the basement or return to their dormant marital bed. “I like the basement,” she says. “I can fart whenever I want.”

“Bloom where you plant your farts,” I say, and she laughs. She’s an easy laugh, one of the many things I love about her.

She and Marcus tried for a second child, but it didn’t happen. From what I’ve observed, having one child comes with more pressure but heightened closeness. I’m grateful I had a second, not only because my younger kiddo is a delight, but because I don’t know if I could handle the intimacy and diligence of that three-pronged family structure. Especially when it becomes two-pronged. 

“We’re still sure he’s not sleeping with someone else?” I say to Amanda. It’s not the first time I’ve said it, and it won’t be the last. But it’s not sex and love he wants out of life, which is the problem in a nutshell. 

“There’s a coworker he’s mentioned a few times.” She shrugs. “It doesn’t feel like this is about someone else.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“He’s just not into me anymore.”

“I resist that explanation.”

“I’m not aging well,” she says. “It’s the light hair.”

“You’re aging beautifully. And anyway, it’s not you.” This is one of the hardest things to believe, I know.

She bites her lip and leans into the hill. Then she says, “He thinks I’m not pretty enough to be his wife.”

Back when I was still dating men after my marriage ended, which I did briefly in an obliging way before realizing— hallelujah!—I was not obliged at all, I met an online date on a street corner, and he looked me up and down and said, “I’m tired of women lying about their weight on their profiles.” My photos were recent, a mix of face pics and body pics—had I misrepresented myself? 

I’ve never had a conversation with a woman where suddenly I didn’t know my own body and mind. If this isn’t reason enough to stop dating men, I’m not sure what is. Also, the curve of a breast makes my mouth water, and three times after having sex with a woman for the first time, I’ve dozed against her without thinking twice about whether her arm might fall asleep.

Later on that same Last Man date (can you believe it went on from there?) the guy—whose name I honestly don’t recall; ditto his unexceptional face—told me he’d been 1L at Harvard when Barack Obama was 3L, and then he said, “One el means—” and I held up my hand and told him I lived on planet Earth, and anyhow there’s adequate context.  

How will you know if someone went to Harvard Law? The same way you’ll know that he thinks you’re a fat liar!

There’s some evidence that Marcus is a textbook narcissist, but there’s also evidence that he’s not. When Lionel was diagnosed, he didn’t beat his chest or demand a second opinion. He told Amanda to make Lionel’s favorite meal, and he came home from work with balloons and pints of ice cream and they sat down as a family and had a celebration—this was Marcus’s word—of their son.

Of the many things I believe about men, I don’t believe they’re fundamentally shallow or cold or fickle. But it’s been a long time since Marcus seemed excited by life or by Amanda. It would be a lie to pretend he isn’t a beautiful man, getting more beautiful with every crow’s foot and silver hair. And charming, when he’s in the right mood. He preens; I’ve seen it. Before they go out, he claps a hand to the back of his neck and checks out both sides of his jaw in the mirror. Once in a blue moon, Amanda wears lipstick and puts on low heels. Otherwise, she wears the same pair of sneakers every day and buys a new pair every six months. Her look consists of lowslung black pants or dark jeans, subdued dark blouses, the occasional funky barrette.

Like Marcus, I don’t remind Amanda she’s beautiful often enough. She has freckles everywhere, even on the backs of her pale hands, and fine, naturally strawberry-blond hair that curls at the ends, and years ago she started wearing her bangs in that very short way that looks hip, though she complains that they don’t lay right if she doesn’t use a straight iron. She has keen green eyes and a heart-shaped face and ten different laughs, including a snorty giggle that is all her own. She’s a little androgynous in a badass way. If I saw her on the street, I would be into not just her looks but also her swagger, which verges on imperiousness. 

We take a break from analyzing her husband so Amanda can tell me about Lionel’s new occupational therapist, a trans man who’s teaching Lionel to ride a skateboard to work on balance. I mostly listen while doing some math in my head to figure out how much I can put toward my IRA this month. In a pause, she says, “My knees have started popping when I go up the stairs.”

“But not when you go down?” I say.

“They ache when I go down.”

We keep a running list of activities that make us feel old. Lifting weights, stadium concerts, early flights, loud restaurants, weddings. Going to the dentist is a big one for me. Teeth are all about irreversible decay. My father’s teeth are worn yellow nubs, more round than rectangular, and every time I catch sight of them, I think about him dying. He turned eighty last month.

Tomorrow, Amanda will leave town with Marcus—he’s presenting at a conference a thousand miles south, and Lionel is staying with a neighbor. She doesn’t travel much with Marcus these days and the timing is bad, but it’s too late now.

We part at the park gate, and I think only fleetingly of being dumped here. The pain of Y has long since been eclipsed by the much greater pain of Z. Amanda says that breakups are like sprained ankles—you don’t know how bad it’s going to be until a little time passes, and either it can bear some weight or it hurts so badly that you head straight into an opioid addiction. 

Amanda says, “I love you!” and I say, “I love you!” But we don’t hug because the dogs at the ends of our leashes are pulling us in different directions.

THREE DAYS BEFORE SHE DUMPED ME, I picked Z up from work at lunchtime and drove to a swimming pond outside the city. It was June and the sky was clear, but we were the only ones there. We swam to a floating dock and hauled ourselves up the ladder and lay on the sun-warm wood. She propped herself up to look me in the eye.

“I have a few questions,” she said, touching the neckline of my swimsuit with a fingertip.

“Go for it,” I said.  

“I’m afraid I won’t always be able to be myself with you,” she said.

“Are you yourself now?”

“Yes, more or less. More and more.”

I shielded her face from the sun with my palm and her blue eyes relaxed. How I adored even the slightest of her smiles. Her lips. The smudge of pink on her cheeks. Her front teeth and her back ones. “I’m not interested in whoever you think you need to be. Leave her home.”

“That works for me.”

“What else?”

“What happens after the blush is off the rose?”

“If I liked you for the blush not the rose, that’d be pretty naive. I know blushes fade. Mine will fade, too.”

But I had the curious feeling that it already had. Did she think I was prone to speculating about the distant future? (I was not.) Maybe she was beset at all times by women offering her the moon, and I was just one more smitten suitress.

“Will you always bake me cookies when I’m sad, or was that just an early-days thing?”

“I’ll bake you cookies for the rest of your life.”

“Good answer,” she said slowly, like each word was its own sentence.

She ran a finger over my lips and I parted them to let her in. This went on for a while.

She said, “Will we rely on each other without suffocating each other? Will we get busy in our lives and neglect each other? That’s two questions, sorry.”

“Being together will make our lives calmer, more joyful, more meaningful, sunnier and snowier, even tastier.”

“How?”

“A hundred ways. I’ll pick up paper towels when you’re out and bring you coffee when you’re having trouble waking up, and listen to you recount your dreams, because I know you need to get them out.”

“I’ll only recount the juicy ones. What else?”

“I’ll drive when you’re tired and turn down the volume when you have a headache and give you advice when you want it and keep my mouth shut when you don’t. I’ll listen to songs you love and love them too, and when you snap at me, I’ll make funny faces at you until you laugh.”

“What will I do for you?”

I thought, but it didn’t take long. “Ask me about my day, please. Like regularly, even daily if it’s not asking too much.”

“It’s not. That’s too easy.”

“Really? No one else has ever seemed to think so!”

This made her laugh a little. Directly into my ear, she whispered, “I’m in.”

We were starting to sweat in the sun. I cupped her thigh and she held me at the base of my spine. We kissed and then dozed, facing each other. After we woke, we raced back to shore. She won. That night on video chat, we showed each other our weird sunburns: her left side and my right side, two halves of two wholes.

LAST YEAR, alarmed by reports of rapidly rising housing costs, I scraped together enough to buy a renovated ranch in a modest, nondescript neighborhood, and most mornings, if work isn’t too heavy, I walk the dog with my headphones in my ears, exploring its uninspiring crannies. There’s a weedy basketball court in one direction, a bowl-shaped park in another, and within walking distance are a gas station, a pretty good Mexican place, a library, and a Korean tailor. Half the homes on my block fly American flags, and one has a sign on the door that says GONE TO HOME DEPOT. My neighbors on one side are a gay Black couple who occasionally text me late at night to tell me my garage door is open. On the other side is an older hetero white couple who take long walks every day. They start out together, but by the time they return, she is half a block behind him, holding one hip.

With these walks, I’m learning my neighborhood at the level of the cracks in the sidewalks, the interesting bulbs on the tree trunks, the tidy front porches. Today, above the manycolored treeline, there is a full morning moon.

Can you see the moon? I text Amanda.

Wait.  

I wait.

Yes, it’s there. Oh my!

I know!

I send a group text to my brother and his husband in California and my father in Miami, time zones be damned: Check out the moon this morning? To my dead mother, I think, Look at the moon!

I am not alone.

For a few months now, food has tasted better, richer, more interesting. I gain pounds, I lose pounds. I do a lot of sweaty hot yoga and use deodorant regularly for the first time in my life. Only in the past couple of years have I released the tight mental chokehold I’d always kept on the size of my body. Feast, famine, punishment, reward, pleasure, pain. Part of this sea change is because I date women now, and through this new lens I’ve come to love the fleshiness of bodies, the contours and curves, the humid pockets and idiosyncratic turn-ons. My own included.

In the 1980s, before I started puberty, my glamorous babysitter explained to me that if a girl stands with her feet together, there should be a diamond-shaped space between the tops of her thighs. In silhouette, light would penetrate here, like starshine from her pubis. I’m pretty enough in a conventional way—I’m complimented most often on my eyes and my smile, second-most on my hourglass shape, and somewhat often on my ankles, though I’ve sprained them so often they’re no longer slender—but it’s safe to say light has never once shone between my upper thighs.

It’s been 42 days since my last period. The one before that was a week early, and the one before that was 24 days late. So far, perimenopause feels less like a fading than a last hurrah, less a whimper than a bang. Every period is emotionally and physically overpowering, heavier in blood and aches and the blues than ever. I buy a box of tampons thinking it will be my last, and then two months later I’m buying another.

After one of the two times we slept together, I caught Z glancing at my body and couldn’t read her expression. “Pink,” she said about my bra as I fastened it. Was this approval or disapproval or something else? For what it’s worth—zilch! bupkis!—I adored every inch of her, every mole and freckle and dimple and stretch mark, the curves of her ears, her sturdy ankles, her ladykiller grin. The pleasing topography of her breasts under her ironic t-shirts, her clean trim fingernails, the whites of her eyes when she rolled them at herself, the way her lids reddened when she started to cry, the aging skin at her neck. “You are so beautiful,” I told her more than once, when words failed me. 

Z resurrected my faith in Big Love.

Once, I asked Z about her hardest-ever breakup and she told me—Clara, who moved to take care of her aging parents—and I thought, petulantly and nonsensically, I want to be your hardest-ever breakup. But I didn’t. She had a teeming stable of exes and I did not care to join them. With Z, I could see the vanishing distance, not a plateau but a series of gentle hills, a canopy of bright sunlight interrupted by clouds. Shining starlight, intermittent fog, flashes of hard rain, every sunrise, a last sunset.

After she disappeared, I told Amanda that I’ll never again have with anyone the connection that came so naturally with Z. Amanda frowned and said, “You think?”  

“Maybe someday I’ll find ninety-three percent of it,” I said.

“The seven percent will be more than made up for by the fact that the new woman will acknowledge your existence,” said Amanda.

THE SMALL CITY WHERE I LIVE has a relatively big reputation, nationally speaking. People compare it to Austin and San Francisco, talk about the liberal politics and queer community and good food and healthcare. I think for a long time I stopped short of falling in love with the place because of this reputation, which does not totally bear out. For years there was only one restaurant that served truly spicy food, and there are a lot more regressives here than we like to admit, and just as many strip malls as in my Florida youth, as many chain and big box stores, as much blank charmlessness. But once I abandoned the idea of what the city was reputed to be, I found that I like what it actually is: a low-key, restful place, light on traffic and violence, and heavy on rivers and lakes and bike trails and woods. The limited options suit me nicely. 

When I came out, the real fun began.

A few things we’re long on here are craft fairs, live music, and quirky events for adults. People go on and on about raising kids here, the great schools, but I’m most delighted by how much there is to do for me, a single middle-aged woman. Which is to say that when it comes to making plans, the tail usually wags the dog for me. I know I want to go somewhere or do something, then I invite someone to go with me. 

Which is how, on a Saturday evening in early November, for the first of my ten dates, I end up driving myself and a woman named Nadine to the industrial-chic community center on the cool side of town for an event called ADULTING 101. For $10 a ticket, we’re promised the opportunity to learn: how to brew beer (eyeroll), change a tire (I haven’t done this in a decade), split wood (cool), parallel park (I already know how to parallel park), administer CPR (can’t hurt), tango (eyeroll), and properly dice vegetables (don’t get me started).

Nadine, whom I met on the apps, is short and blond and curvy, with a touch of punk—heavy black boots and slouchy jeans and a black hoodie—and she doesn’t meet my eyes as she settles into the passenger seat of my car. She opens and closes the makeup mirror and buckles herself in and says, “Don’t axe murder me.”  

I pull away from her condo, saying, “And they never saw her again . . .,” and she laughs.  

Nadine has two cats and is desperately in love with one of them; I know this from her social media. She has a beautiful rack but plays it down. She wears her hair in a low messy bun and heavily applied blue eyeshadow, which gives her a retro look. We’re the same age, but she has the aura of someone with a past life, and before we’re across town I’ve gotten the brass tacks of her story: She’s sober and works as a surgical tech after twenty-plus years of restaurant work. (I don’t drink, either. After I left X, I found myself checking the clock once too often, poured out my wine, and never looked back.) In addition to the cats, there was a dog she adored, who died last year. She loves horror movies and Lisa Marie Presley. She’s originally from Georgia but doesn’t speak to her family, which reads as a sore spot she has no intention of exploring with me.

I have a thing for self-made people, and there’s also the matter of her stellar bosom, but after we park and head inside, she says to me, “I don’t kiss on the first date,” and I say, “So just oral sex, then,” and she gives a stingy chuckle.  

Inside, we stand in line for a long time to buy cans of nonalcoholic beer. I ask Nadine questions and she shrugs a lot and speaks quietly. When she asks me a question, she uses a voice that’s meant to be intentionally self-conscious, like we’re in an interview: Where are you from? What do you do? 

In a pause, she says, “I don’t date. Not that I can’t date, I just don’t.”

“Why?”

“I’ve been preoccupied with other things.”

“So is this your debut? I’m flattered!”

I mean this to be jokey, and she takes it that way. She has a shy smile and a fidgety manner that I find charming. I’m not nervous, but only because I’ve slipped into my brave first-date suit and nothing can touch me in it. Which works both ways, of course. I have no idea how I come off besides confident, mildly funny, and very attentive. These are the traits my alter ego brings to the table; they are of me but not me. The last time I ditched my alter ego was with Z, when we were alone and naked and ourselves together. 

Nadine is hard to read, but by the time we’re halfway through our drinks, she’s decided she wants to split wood, so we get in line behind a young couple wearing matching mustard-colored beanies. 

“So you have kids,” says Nadine.

“Two.”

“I like kids,” she says.

I smile.

“No, really. I do.”

“I believe you. I mostly like kids. I like mine a lot. And a few others.”

“When was your last relationship?”  

I tell her about Y and I don’t tell her about Z. When I get to the part where Y tells me her new lover isn’t sure she wants to be poly, Nadine smirks. “Classy,” she says.

At least she told me in person, I think. I’m not to the point where I’m thinking generously about Y, but I can feel that time coming, and I suppose I will welcome it. Y was not my person, but my experience with her taught me what I don’t want: serial monogamy. I like dating, I like sex, and when the situation calls for it, I like emotional intimacy. But I’m not looking to tumble from one girlfriend to the next. I want to build something that lasts a long, long time, or else keep it light. 

“And you?” I ask Nadine.

“No comment,” she says.

When it’s our turn, Nadine gestures for me to go first, so I hand her my beer and put on safety goggles and make a show of stretching. The axe is heavier than I think it will be. The dude in charge of the booth—the crowd here is mostly women, but the booths are mostly run by men—places a piece of wood on a stout stool, then has me practice swinging a few times. If the axe slides out of my hands while it’s over my head, it will hit a wall, not people, so I give it all I’ve got and the wood splits. I go again and miss the wood entirely. Again, and it splits again.

“Killer!” says the dude after I hand him my axe.  

Things go downhill from there. At the tire-changing booth, Nadine stubs her toe and starts walking with a limp, and then at the knife skills station—I have basic cooking skills and no desire to improve them—I glance up from mincing a shallot to find the instructor frowning at my hands, then feel the knife slice through a thin layer of knuckle. He wraps it up and sends me off, and now I’m holding my hand above my heart and Nadine is still limping. We skip the tango.

I get us both another fake beer. Amanda told me that for each of my ten first dates, she’s going to give me a mantra to repeat when I’m feeling wobbly. Wobbly, for me, happens when I can’t think of anything to say. So now, as Nadine calmly looks everywhere but at me, I say my mantra to myself: This is my lesbian adolescence. It won’t kill me to feel uncomfortable.

Nadine says, “I need to know how you feel about horror films.”

I name some scary movies I’ve liked, and she says, “So you like scary if it’s also artsy.”

“I’d watch a non-artsy scary movie with you. But I tend to scream a lot. It annoys my children.”

“It won’t annoy me.”

“Will you hold me if it’s too much?”

“Maybe for a minute.” She shrugs. “I think you can handle it.”

“Every time I watch something scary, I regret it the whole time, but then afterward I feel great.”

“Endorphins,” says Nadine. “I don’t get them anymore. I hardly ever feel scared. Watching movies.”

“What about when you’re not watching movies?”

“All the damn time.”

We inch forward in the line for what is, gratefully, our final experience of the evening—the CPR booth—and Nadine tells me about work. This morning, a grouchy older patient told her he was tired of giving out his birth date every time he came to the doctor, and she said to him, “Sir, I can’t say I relate, because no one ever asks me about my birth date!” So he asked her and she told him, and he wasn’t grumpy after that.

“You love your work,” I say.

“I do.”

This is a huge turn-on for me. So many of us have ragdolled into our professional lives, which is completely understandable, but I’ve cobbled my income together from bits of skill and talent and love, and I get so much daily satisfaction from my work that it’s hard to imagine living otherwise. 

The event is starting to thin out, and by the time we’ve reached the front of the line, there are only two couples behind us, all younger women. Nadine goes first, practicing on a dummy, and then the instructor, a young Black guy with fingernails painted dark green, has me lie on a mat with my arms at my sides. Nadine kneels next to me and her hoodie gapes.

“I have a good view from here,” I tell her.

She doesn’t adjust. “Look all you want, but I might not revive you.”

She puts her hands between my breasts, and the instructor moves them lower and straightens her arms. He tells her to pretend to press twice per second.

“Open your eyes,” says the instructor.

I open them. “Open your mouth.”

I open it.

When Nadine first presses on my chest I hardly feel it, and the instructor says, “You can press a little harder.” I hold my breath for the next one, and she manages to push some air from me. 

“Are you holding your breath? Don’t do that,” says the instructor. 

She comes down again.

“Straighten your arms,” says the instructor.  

She does, then pretend-pumps several times. 

We switch places. I’m aware of how I look from below, all jowls and chins. The zipper to her hoodie is beneath my palm, and I can’t quite say how this happens, but when I straighten my arms and pretend to press down, my right knee torques to one side, and I end up falling over in an attempt to avoid crushing Nadine, who winces and curls into a fetal position. The instructor kneels over her, and after helping her sit up, announces that I bruised her rib. 

“I don’t think it’s broken, though,” he says.

“I broke her rib? I broke her rib?” I say.

The instructor helps her up and she leans on me for a short walk to a couple of empty chairs. When we sit, she hunches over herself for half a minute, shuddering, and I think she’s crying but really she’s laughing. “You bruised my rib!”

“I’m a klutz! I’m sorry!”

“You paid for the drinks. It’s only right.” “Your place or mine?” I say.

We hobble to the car and I help her into the passenger seat. She giggles most of the way back to her condo. When we get there, she says, “Let’s do it again!” I can’t tell if she’s jokingly serious or completely joking. Was this a good date or a terrible one? My sliced finger throbs.

I don’t get out of the car because I’ve pulled up right in front of her door. She’s holding herself with her right arm and puts up her left hand for a high five. 

“You have my number,” she says, and gets out of the car, waving over her shoulder.

I CALL AMANDA ON THE WAY HOME, and she answers groggily. 

“Go back to sleep,” I say.

“I will,” she whispers, “but tell me how it went.”

“I sliced a knuckle and bruised her rib.” The stubbed toe seems hardly worth a mention.

“So it was a success!”

“Yes! But—”

“Don’t say it.”

“—she’s not my wife.”

“What did I just say?”

“I know.”

“Did you smooch?”

“No.”

“Did you want to?”

“Yes. She’s surly but it kind of turned me on.”

“Surly?”

“Like she couldn’t be bothered to be on the date but was willing to put up with me. I can’t read her.”

“And that’s a turn-on?”

“Not typically.”

“Second date?”

“After we both heal.”

“Good enough.”

TWO

THE VIDEOS THAT HAVE MADE MY BROTHER GABE internet-famous feature him sitting on a stool in his sunny kitchen, wearing a concert t-shirt (he owns six Indigo Girls shirts, four Taylor Swift shirts, and three Jackson Browne shirts) and counting down a listicle while his words flash on the screen. Four Questions to Ask Before Sleeping Together. Nine Ways to Outlast the Honeymoon Stage. Twelve Green Flags That Look Like Red Flags. Last time I thumbed through his account, I noticed that Abby Wambach and Sandra Bullock recently started following him. I hope everything is OK in their relationships.

Gabe’s pit bull, Elton, appears at his side in most of his videos. The divot in Elton’s skull flexes while he gnaws a toy.

Sometimes Gabe makes compilation videos of himself with his clients—they’ve signed paperwork for this, I assume, since my brother’s husband is his legal counsel—where they’re smiling and thanking him. I told him this reads as cultish to me, but he said it’s more like the spot on my website where I list the authors I’ve helped get published, except instead of books it’s happy couples. I used to think he sat down every day to record the day’s content, but he told me that he does the whole week every Monday, and after that I could tell that he was changing his t-shirt but not his jeans. This left me a little disillusioned. 

Since Gabe started with the listicles, he’s doubled his hourly fee, he’s booked out for months, and he’s been interviewed twice for the Well section of the New York Times, which is the part our father is most proud of, since he’s not on social media but gets the Times delivered every morning. 

Once, I tried to explain to my father the significance of what Gabe has made for himself, but this was immediately after I tried to explain what an Airbnb was, and it was all too much. For my father, it’s enough to know we’re happy-ish. 

Which we are, generally. My brother’s marriage, which turned six years old this year, is a precious gem. The laughter, the patience, the teamwork. The last time we were all together, my brother, who appears to his followers like the most affable, easygoing person in the world, stalked to his room and slammed the door because we’d all greeted him too exuberantly when he wasn’t yet fully awake. “He needs protein,” his husband said, getting up to make him eggs. Later that same trip, my brother went on a rant about why, of all the symbols and colors, queers got stuck with rainbows. “Are we children?” he said, and his husband said, “I can see how that can be tiresome.” I texted Amanda: My brother is complaining about rainbows! And she wrote, Give him a kiss for me! Because another thing that makes my brother grumpy is kissing him when you’re not his husband.  

His take on Z is that I’ve given more credence to her words than her actions. This is less the opinion of a big brother than of a guru who believes that healthy relationships require open and direct communication between parties who are fully whole and at all times emotionally regulated. “Not to mention timing,” he always adds.  

“So become a perfect person at the perfect time and then you’re worthy of love?” I say in response, and he says, “That’s not what I’m saying—” and then I redirect the conversation, because where’s the part where you take a deep breath and dive in? 

I thought we were going to be brave together, I wrote to Z after her last text. I’d thought we would hold hands at the lip of every sinkhole. I’d pull her over one and she’d pull me over the next. 

What I wouldn’t give for someone to be brave with me.

I KNOW MY BROTHER MINES LESSONS from life for his channel, but I’m still surprised when, while waiting for the school bus to drop my youngest, I open social media to find a new post from him—not a video, exactly, but a series of sentences that appear one after the other against a backdrop of a slow-rolling surf. 

The first sentence is:

I hate to break it to you . . .

I wait. The pace is a little slow, in my opinion.

The next sentence is:

. . . but how someone treats you is how they feel about you.

My gut shifts.

You don’t have to make excuses or try to interpret them.

Don’t I?  

If they ignore you, then you don’t exist for them.

Then the zinger:

If they treat you like shit, they believe you are shit.

He picks up on the third ring. He’s walking his dog and there’s a lot of wind on his end. “Hi!” he says. “Not today, man,” I say.

“What does that mean?”

“I just saw your new video.”

“I’ve told you, that’s not how it works. What’s new to you is not necessarily new.”

“The one with the beach. The one where you hate to break it to me.”

“Oh yeah, what did you think? Effective?”

“A little too,” I say. “Please don’t use my situation for your channel.”

“What situation? Oh, Z? I didn’t.”

I wait for a gust of wind to pass. “It feels like you did,” I say.

“You’re not the first person to be rejected romantically.”

“I realize that. And if I were merely rejected romantically, it wouldn’t be so hard. It’s the rest of it that feels like a personal indictment.”

“What’s the rest of it?”

“Are you being obtuse intentionally? Why am I having to explain myself here?”

“You’re mad because you have to explain yourself? Wait, Elton is pooing,” he says.  

This version of my brother—rational, lawyerly, professionally patient—is not my favorite. 

“No,” I say. “I’m frustrated because it feels like you’re using my pain to collect views.”

“Is that necessarily a bad thing, though?”

“So which is it, did you use my stuff or not?”

He sighs. “Not. And yes, maybe. I always have quite a few clients experiencing the magical thinking that comes with heartbreak.”

The term magical thinking makes me think of elves bustling through my brain. “Don’t therapy me.”

“Well, do you want my help or not?”

It’s my turn to sigh. “I want your help.”

There’s a loud whooshing noise and several sharp barks. Elton does not abide city buses. “So how’s that going for you?” he says. 

We’re done with my complaint. My brother is an internetfamous therapist, and everyone is his subject, even me. And where do I get off complaining, as a writer? He never promised to access a world other than his own for his work, and neither did I. What other world would that be, anyway? I don’t write fantasy. I don’t write legal thrillers. I work from life, and so does he.

“I’m OK when I’m not miserable,” I say.

“You’re living around it?”

“Most of the time.”

“That’s the waterline for now. Keep floating.”

“You and your metaphors,” I say. “I love you and goodbye.”

He calls back just as the school bus is squeaking to a halt. My youngest bounds off and returns my wave as I give my brother what he asks for: step-by-step instructions to make yogurt in an Instant Pot. “Got it,” he says when I’m done, and we hang up.

WHEN I LEFT X, the family’s outdoorsperson, I assumed I would never camp again. But after a year, in a fit of energy, I bought a tent and set out with my children. We camp at least twice a year, including at the tail end of the season, after the leaves change but before they fall.

Now, we’re headed to a state park on the nearest Great Lake. Everyone is quiet during the two-hour car ride, wiped out from a long week, but at some point my youngest says something about Texas being next to Florida—these are the two states where my family of origin lives, where the kids have been many times—and my oldest says, “Wrong! Texas is next to California, right Mama?” “No,” I say.

My oldest pitches the tent and my youngest places chairs around the fire pit and I haul our supplies and set out my yoga mat and do several sun salutations while they ask me questions about where things are located. Then we walk to the beach to let the dog run on the dunes. They say we’re landlocked here in the middle, but the beach is wide and the water pans to the horizon and the sunset is every bit as pretty as those of my Floridian youth. 

I throw a stick for the dog and head after her down the beach. The boys have a football and are using driftwood as a target. I leave them behind. A minute later, I step over the corpse of a large pewter fish with a bluish cast—a steelhead— and twenty yards down I spot another. A third is splayed out in the shadow of a felled tree trunk, and from its dorsal region spills a mound of fresh-looking orange roe. I gather the eggs in both hands and wade into the water to let them wash away. Then my phone rings.

It’s Amanda. She’s chewing something, probably fruit.

“Where are you?” she says.

I show the water to the camera. “Beach,” I say.  

“I’m coming to you. Can I fit in your tent?”

Amanda’s not a camper. The answer is yes, but barely.

“Send your location?”

I send it. “Site 114,” I say.

She arrives just before the burgers are ready. She’s brought her own beer and chair and sleeping bag. Something’s up, but I don’t ask. My youngest, who has great comic instincts and iffy self-esteem, a combination that worries me, does his Grumpy Old Man act using a tree branch as a cane. I ask my oldest three times to please stop texting his new girlfriend, then take away his phone. Amanda drinks two beers and tells a story about neighbors who were featured in a magazine article called “How to Create an Enticing Sex Room.” This takes some explaining for the kids, though I muddle it because what is a sex room? I set up the beds, then we move to the fire and wrap ourselves in blankets. The sky is very dark and the stars are out. You get out of town to dampen the hustle, but it’s never quite gone, and by the time we settle into our chairs, my youngest has dropped two marshmallows in the fire and is balling his fists, and I raise my voice at my oldest to stop badgering me about his damn phone.

In a pause, Amanda says, “Lionel got suspended from school.”

“For what?” say both of my children, who are protective of Lionel.

Amanda stares into the fire. “He offered to show his penis to another boy. A younger boy.” “Oh no,” I say.

She’s worried about this, or something like it, since Lionel started puberty. She knew he’d started because he kept telling her how big his penis had gotten and insisting on showing it to her. The last time I was over he offered to show it to me. I declined in a straightforward way. 

“I wish you’d called me,” I say now. It’s not the right thing to say.

“Can we not?” says Amanda.

This is a sore spot, her reliance on the women in her fancy neighborhood over me. She doesn’t want to bother me, she says, and she’s done them so many favors of the domestic, dogsitting, child-minding kind that they owe her. She needs me outside her bubble so she has a place to go. That’s all fine, but I want to be useful to her. She’s so very useful to me. Right now, I’m not thinking of Z because of the hours I’ve spent crying on Amanda’s shoulder. Or at least I’m not thinking of Z in a primary way. She’s always with me, a tireless suckerfish on my heart.

“Is Lionel OK?” I say.

“He’s ashamed,” she says, then starts to cry.  

My youngest goes to Amanda’s side and hugs her.  

“What are you going to do?” says my oldest.

“Maybe a new school,” says Amanda. This has been a potential outcome for a while now. Public school was always a placeholder for Lionel. My kids have done well in public school, though last year my youngest struggled in math, and three weeks before the end of the school year, his teacher said to me, “It’s too bad he was never moved into the right math class this year,” as if she were a neutral observer. Now, X and I spend hundreds every month on a private tutoring program with a pun for a name.

“It’s going to be OK,” I say to Amanda.  

I goad the boys into cleaning up and scoot my chair close to Amanda’s. The oldest starts lecturing the youngest about why Thor: Love and Thunder is a better film than Avengers:

Endgame, and I say, “In my opinion,” loudly.  

Amanda holds up a hand. “Listen,” she whispers.

We listen. Somewhere, a man is raging.

The sound is coming from the next campsite over, which we can’t see through the woods. A man’s voice says very clearly, “Why do we do this bullshit? You’re such a bitch,” and a child’s voice says, “I’m scared,” and a woman’s voice murmurs.

We sit still. The shouting rises and falls. 

“Stay here,” I say to the kids.  

Amanda and I put our dogs on their leashes and turn on our headlamps. 

My teenager moves to the chair beside his brother. “Don’t go,” says my youngest.  

“We won’t be long,” I tell them.  

“Can we go with you?” says the teenager.  

“No,” I say. “We’ll be right back.”

Amanda and I walk until the signpost for the neighbor’s campsite is in sight, then turn off our headlamps. The shouting is more distinct from here. Why hasn’t anyone else come away from their fires? Amanda calls the park ranger, who tells her to call the police, and after Amanda gives the info, we stand in the dark, looking up at the stars. Headlights appear over a crest. We shuffle onto the shoulder and two police cruisers pass us and pull into the angry man’s site. We walk back to the kids.

“What happened?” they say.

“The police came,” I say. “You’re safe.”  

I’d like to tell the guy to get in his car and drive away forever. Except for two things: alcohol and guns. 

“Bedtime,” I say.  

My teenager hugs me and heads to the car, where he’s made a nest in the trunk. My youngest stands by my chair. “I’ll be back,” I say to Amanda, who’s tapping at her phone in a way that means trouble.

It’s getting colder, and I bring the dog inside the tent. My youngest climbs into his sleeping bag and I zip it for him. I read a chapter of a book and kiss his hairline. “You smell like cold sweat,” I say. “My favorite.”

“You smell like mama,” he says.

He doesn’t want me to leave, but he doesn’t say it.  

“I won’t be long,” I say.

I pull my camp chair close to Amanda’s and lay my hand on her arm. She’s staring at the fire. “You’re lucky,” she says to me.

“I know,” I say. My neurotypical children, my freedom. I sink low in my chair and close my eyes. “I wish I could be unstrong for like one week. Don’t you wish that?”  

“Sure, but how?”

Good question. When Marcus told her he no longer wanted a sexual relationship with her, Amanda didn’t fall apart. She got her book and her readers and her favorite blanket, and she went down to the basement and took her eight hours from the world’s teeth, as one does.

“They offered him the job,” she says now.  

It takes a blink or two to sink in. You cannot move one thousand miles away, I want to say, but that’s not my place right now. I also can’t say, Let’s take a gander at that state’s divorce laws. 

She says something about the ways in which Marcus’s work will change—more regular hours, more time at home— and I hear his words behind hers. I could tell her Marcus will never work less, will never lift her load, will probably never pull her back to his bed, but she already knows this. 

“What are the odds on this?” I say.  

“Fifty-fifty,” she says. She opens a third beer. She hasn’t drunk a third anything for years.

The angry man’s truck glides past, followed by both cruisers.

“Good riddance,” says Amanda.

I HAVE A SECRET: Since leaving the bubble, I wake up vibrating with joy more often than not, even with the suckerfish on my heart. I’m grateful to wake up each day in this heartbreaking and beautiful world, lugging outsized grief and love in this brief vessel of a body. The sun is just rising and my youngest is snoring as I unzip myself and my dog into the frosty morning and walk to the beach. I take a photo of the golden sun opening over the black water like a beneficent eye.  

The suckerfish is resting. I fake out the pain, zig when it zags, by switching channels when Z’s face appears in my brain. My brain is a boxer in training, and on a morning like this, as my dog trots into the woods in pursuit of something, then trots out in pursuit of me, my brain is light on its feet, gloves up.

When I return to camp, Amanda hands me a mug of coffee. She’s wearing running clothes and her hair is pulled back, her eyes dark with worry. “Go,” I say, and she is off.

When I open the hatchback, my oldest’s face appears from behind a blanket of blond hair. I place his phone beside him. “Hi, Mama,” he says, and I grab the food crate and kiss his forehead.

“Sleep,” I say.

My youngest joins me in the chairs, hands stuffed into the pockets of his hoodie. “What time is it? Did I sleep in?”  

“You did,” I say, though my watch is dead and my phone is who knows where. I make him a mug of very milky and sugary coffee and he gets our books from the tent and we read for a while. Eventually my oldest joins us with his phone. “How’d you sleep?” I say.

He snaps a photo of his own face. “Good,” he says, sending the photo off.

Amanda comes back and I make eggs and bacon while the boys strike camp. Then we all go to the beach, and after hemming and hawing for a while, we wade into the cold water, holding hands. Amanda breaks off and dives in, and I follow her. I swim as far as I can without breathing, then rush back to the sand. There’s no one else on the beach, so Amanda and I change into dry clothes and point our faces to the new sun. The boys wander away to change in private. There’s sand in my underwear and my nipples are ice cold and so are my feet, but I feel fine. The world is splendid.

Except. “I think you’re going to go,” I say to her.

Amanda grunts.

“I don’t want to factor in,” I say.

“You factor in,” she says.  

“Book a consult with a lawyer there,” I say. “Get some facts.”

“I already did.” How long has she known? “The facts are not good.”

I squeeze her hand. The boys come back lugging driftwood and then work on building a raft. When they play together I look away, as if my gaze might turn them to bickering stones.

“Let’s not go home,” says Amanda, because it’s getting on time. 

“Good plan,” I say.

On the way out of the park, I go into the office, where the ranger sits with the local paper. I tell him I wanted to check on the family in site 116, and he says, “They’re leaving today. Evicted.”

“I thought the guy already left.”

“No, he’s sleeping it off.”

I tell him I saw the guy’s truck leaving last night.

“They told him to take a drive. He came back.”

They told him to take a drive? “I get why he has to leave, but why does she?”

He shrugs. “The cops said they’ve been married fifteen years. The kids are little.” I look at him.

“She made her bed,” he says.