It’s the third time your son’s called you that evening. You’re at a bar two towns over, a dive bar, the sort of place you swear you hate. The bartender is attractive, though, and your husband moved out three months ago. He left a wilted plant and a hissing cat.

Family? the bartender says, looking at your buzzing phone.

Jordan, you say, and you flip the screen over. Grown son, you add. 

You order another drink. As the bartender turns away, you catch sight of yourself in the mirror above the rum. When you think of Jordan, you think of how spectacularly he grew into the nose you gave him, how many times his voice cracked before it settled into the rich baritone of his father’s. All your life, you’ve wanted to be a house with enough rooms to protect every soul you love from the damages of the world.

There’s a quiet alley out back, the bartender tells you. If you need to answer.

You would love to run your hands through this bartender’s hair. You would love to drive to your ex-husband’s apartment just to see a light in his window. You would love to pull a handsome stranger into the back seat of your car and press skin to skin until you feel yourself leave your body behind.

The therapist suggested not leaving Jordan alone for too long. Your company, she said, is the best thing for him now. 

Something happened. This you know. Jordan slid through depressions in high school but he was fine when you went to visit him at college a month ago, vibrant and surrounded by friends and textbooks and cups he stole from campus dining. You left relieved, a son safely deposited away from the carnage of your shattered heart. But then something happened to him, something that you don’t know yet but you can feel, like that first crack of lightning when the rain hasn’t yet started to pour. That event moved into him on a long-term lease. He’s home now and you can see it in how he holds his shoulders, how he watches you from under his brows. He sits in the kitchen, the dining room, the den, the entire house. He’s waiting for you to ask, waiting for you to make an opening for him.

The therapist said he needs time.

You see yourself in the mirror again, your bagged eyes and dull lips, and suddenly you cannot stand yourself a second longer. The bartender points you towards the alley. You prop open the door with a brick. The air is humid and misty, a drizzle running off the fire escape. You don’t look at your phone. You stare up at the clouds, thinking about infinities, about a math video on YouTube that Jordan showed you a few years ago that explained how some infinities are larger than others. You are thinking about how the same must apply to pain.

Really it’s you, you who needs time.

I don’t think death will be painful, Jordan said to you once in early high school, a cool November evening while you were washing dishes. You, fresh off an argument with your husband, shocked to your core, told him simply never to speak that way again. 

Your phone lights up again, a photo of Jordan, many years younger, two teeth gone from his smile. You mute the call and catch the drizzle in your palm. You want to ask the bartender what time his shift ends. You want to stand here until your hair is matted and your skin is slick. You want your son to fit in your arms again. You want to drop your phone in the lamplit puddle until it short-circuits out, keeps you just out of reach. 

Surely he will be okay if you do not answer his calls. Surely you will make room, that whatever his pain may be, you will hold it within you. Surely, surely this infinity, just like all the others, will not be so big as to swallow you whole. ■

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