“She’s good to me.”

“I think so, too.”

“She loves me.”

“That’s important. Do you love her?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so we know love’s not the issue. Tell me what else.” There was a long silence. David could see his mother standing in her living room, looking at the boulevard that led into town.

“God,” Connie eventually said, “this is only funny because I’m your mother—but sometimes I forget you’re so young.” Then she hastened to add, “I’m not trying to sound snotty. But you don’t have commitments, you know? You don’t have kids, you’re not married, you don’t live together. You don’t own anything together. Like a house.”

“You’ve seen the news, Mom. Who’s going to own a house anymore?”

“Don’t remind me. Anyway, you get what I mean.” It wasn’t even a joke that made sense. She’d refinanced the house, bought out the architect.

“So all that matters is my feelings?” David said.

Connie breathed, her resignation clear through the phone’s speaker. Connie really did like Iris. Everyone who loved David liked Iris. “I’m saying,” she continued, “if there are no practical matters? That makes it easier whatever you do, love bug.”

“What about her feelings?”

“Can’t control those, can you?”

“I guess not,” David said slowly. “Guess not. Hey! Here’s something,” he added suddenly. “I don’t feel like myself around her. Like when she and I are together, it’s like I’m performing her boyfriend. Or something.”

The truth of this surprised David.

“Well, you can’t ignore that,” Connie said glumly. David opened the fridge. Iris had left a half bottle of pinot gris. He poured some into the stemware Iris had bought him months back. (“We are not drinking wine out of pint glasses. We are not eighteen anymore.”)

“Know what makes me feel rotten about this?” he said. “Tell me I’m overthinking, but it’s the only advice you ever gave me about dating. In middle school, I told you I had a crush on a girl. You said, ‘Don’t ever get involved with a woman who only likes the start.’”

“Ha! No kidding.” Connie chuckled, like David had pulled out a dress she used to wear, a fragment that had belonged to one of Connie’s older selves. “Did I say that?”

A rolling blankness of despair lived in David most days. A long wave of clouds and water that blocked out colour, shadow, life, vitality. He was familiar with anxiety and dread, but the gradientless grade of this emptiness. It was different. And it came around more and more often. He spent more time in bed, more time detached from his own movement, his own feet on the floor.

In his adolescence, David was no dummy. He was sad, but he’d understood: hormones! Teenage things all teenagers experience. Teenagers with all the love and security in the world felt sad. But this demon-tinged blankness was not sadness, and increasingly, it came when he thought about his future. David wasn’t feeling suicidal, but the idea of living past, say, his twenties? Out of the question. Couldn’t grok it.