Everybody Has Everything

“If I don’t play, the numbers aren’t even.” His bag began to pull uncomfortably on his shoulder. James opened the door. A gust of cool air came upon them, but Ana was still hot with anger.

“I hate it when you tell me I’m crazy,” she said, and James recognized his mistake.

“I didn’t say you were crazy. I said you were being crazy.” He leaned in and kissed the top of her head. “You’ll be fine. He never wakes up. And he likes you, Ana.”

“That’s not what I mean,” she said, pulling away. But even as she watched James walk down the street toward the rink, his stick bobbing above his shoulder, she could not exactly figure out what she meant. She was trying to get him to recognize some new kind of failure that was waiting for them. She closed the door.

She wanted him to feel it the way she did, the certainty that every interaction with Fi

She felt that James was leaving her there as a test, that she was forever under scrutiny now, since Fi

But up rose the black and wild doubt: What if I can’t do it? She had felt uneven since Fi

How is motherhood supposed to feel? Because she wasn’t sure that it should feel like this, so much like terror. And her husband was leaving her alone with that feeling, while he went to play hockey.

That was what she had meant to say.

The game was particularly cruel, and James wasn’t up for it. Doug, especially, had his elbows out and some kind of rabies bubbling up in him. James couldn’t get the puck, and after one ferocious futile burst down the ice, he lost his breath and had to stop, leaning over with his hands on his knees.

There were two women playing: Alice Mitchell, who ran a small catering company, and a tall woman James hadn’t seen before. Her blond hair sprayed like a skirt from the bottom of her helmet.

Alice skated up to him and gave him a gentle whap on the butt with her stick.

“Doug’s an asshole tonight,” she shouted.

James nodded, touched and embarrassed by the sympathy. He skated away fast but only got to the puck a few times, once on a generous pass from Alice. Doug plucked it from him within moments.

After, they went for beer. James checked his cell phone for messages from Ana, but there were none. Six of them sat in the small bar, a converted diner with Dixie music on Sunday mornings. James had been going there for years, but this time he was acutely aware that Ana could not be with him. Someone had to be at home. He felt her out there, tethered to their house, to Fi

Doug leaned in, separating him and James from the rest of the group.

“Where the hell have you been? Lee’s all: ‘Where’s Ana? We never see you guys,’ ” he said. Doug was an old friend, but possibly not a good one. They had worked together years ago. When Doug left for a cable station, that might have been it. But somehow Doug had kept up the momentum, phone calls and birthdays and hockey. In the moments when Doug was at his crassest, James suspected he kept in touch only on the off chance that James would prove useful to him at some point. For all his hard drinking and cultivated blue-collar vulgarity, he was a ruthless independent producer with a constantly rotating staff, usually quitting because of his tantrums. In the burning desert in Jordan, working on a documentary, Doug had stayed in a broken, overheated truck while an unpaid assistant pushed it. This incident had made him famous in TV circles. His name caused fear in the twentysomethings who did his grunt work. He won an International Emmy for the Jordan documentary, which was about relics.

“I’ve been busy. The book’s coming along,” said James, quickly burying his face in the pint of beer.

“Who’s your publisher?” asked Doug.

“It’s early stages. Not sure yet.” James raised the glass again.

Doug recognized that pause and changed direction.

“We’re having a small di

He couldn’t bear what he knew was coming: a litany of other people’s successes. Doug did this under the guise of catching up.

Off Doug went. Rachel was ru

Did any of them have children? He looked around the table, which had filled up with empty beer bottles. Alice had kids, from a first marriage. There was a period when all the women they knew were pregnant, and then, at parties, babies appeared early and disappeared later. But these babies lacked specificity; James hadn’t co

“We’d have to get a sitter,” he said.

“What? Are you joking? Did you guys adopt or something?” Doug laughed then, as if such a thing were entirely improbable. “Did you get a dog?”

“We’re looking after a little boy. His parents died,” said James. “Well, his father died. We don’t know if the mother’s going to be okay or not.” (James didn’t mention that the daily call to the hospital was always the same: “Stable.” Ana had visited twice, while James looked after Fi

“What the fuck? Who? Are you serious?” said Doug.

“You don’t know them.”

“Maybe I do.”

“Marcus Lamb and Sarah Weiss.”

“Don’t know them.” Doug’s voice contained a hint of disappointment, as if he’d been unfairly excluded from a party.