It’s not the same thing, but Ed remembers that smile the day that he offhandedly suggested that they stop birth control. It wasn’t like she’d been pestering, or hinting, or sighing at the sight of babies, but somehow he knew that her thoughts, after a couple of years of marriage, were turning broody. “Let’s let nature take its course.” That was how he had inelegantly phrased it. But you would have thought that he’d given her diamonds, not so much that he had made the suggestion, but that he, Edward the oblivious, had recognized a need in his wife without having to be told outright. It was a big moment in their marriage. Of course, they had never expected that it would take so long to accomplish, that nature certainly took her course, but that pleased smile still lingers in his memory and whenever he thinks of the early days, the years before life got hard, he pictures Alice smiling like that.

Life is divided into uneven thirds: Before Stacy, Being Parents, and After It Happened. They are halfway to having lost her longer than having had her. And, after it happened, Ed stopped being able to read Alice. The clues and nuances became too hard to interpret, or maybe he just lost the knack for it. Maybe it just got too hard, or the telepathy they once had between them was like wires in an old electrical cord, frayed and dangerous. The connection cut in one disastrous moment.

Ed bends over his mower, a self-drive, electric start, mega sixteen-inch blade Toro. There’s always a little regret in putting the Toro to bed in the fall. End to another summer. Not that anything particularly special happens in the summer. Now that he’s enjoyed his first full unemployed summer, with no vacation to look forward to because, as his pals at Lil’s say, every day’s a vacation, Ed has had a hard time recognizing the season except for the sweltering heat of the dog days of August, when the heat lay thick in the air. That, and the endless tasks of watering and mowing. Mowing and watering, growing the grass to cut the grass. Ed wraps the tarp over the Toro, binds it with a length of clothesline, and tucks it into its corner of the garage. He’ll have to get the snow blower serviced pretty soon. Don’t want to wait until everyone else thinks of it and there’s a rush at Stan’s Tractor and Mower Repair.

A rush of despair rocks Ed with its suddenness. His whole life is calibrated by seasonal machinery. He thinks of that song: Is that all there is? Some singer with a sexy, husky voice. He can only recall that single line in the chorus, and it orbits through his mind: Is that all there is? Is that all there is?

Ed pulls himself upright. It’s only from bending over that he’s gotten these weird feelings. There’s nothing wrong. It’s fine. Mostly, day-to-day life is fine.