Page 18 of Knocked Up

"You're not going to pay for a fluid bag, Beckett, they cost $9. Get the mop. It's in the closet at the end of the…"

I turned toward the closet. Margaret came off the top of the supply cabinet and landed on my shoulder.

I'd now been hit by that cat four times, and this one was set up. She had waited until my hands were full. She came in from behind and above. She used my collarbone as a landing pad and my ear as a push-off. I went down on one knee in a lake of saline in front of a woman I used to be in love with.

Tessa could not help me. She had her forehead against the cabinet door.

"She's nineteen," she managed.

"She's a professional. She has a system," I said, from the floor, "and I want you to know that I respect it."

She laughed until she had to sit down on the step stool. She was still going when Marisol came in to see what had died. I stayed on one knee in a puddle longer than I strictly needed to.

My father called that night. He called after practice reports. Games he did on the air.

"Beck. Watched the clips from today. Your glove is at your hip."

"It's where it's always been."

"It was at your ribs in 2019. You dropped it two inches when you got heavy and you never picked it back up. Every shooter in this league has that on video. You're getting beat high on the glove side. You're closing the glove after the puck's already there, and that's because you're early on your push. Baranov will tell you about the push and he will not tell you about the hand."

"Okay."

"So fix the hand. I've got your Vegas game. National window. They're putting me at the desk for the whole broadcast. I'm going to say what I see."

"I know."

"Beck. I'm not doing this to be unkind. I'm the only person in your life who'll tell you the truth."

"I know."

"How's the house?"

"It's fine."

"You should sell it," he said. Then somebody said his name in the background. "I've got to go, I'm on in six," he said, and hung up.

Ninety-one seconds. I counted.

Then I opened the drawer by the sink.

The index cards were where I'd left them. There was a rubber band ball and a bottle opener. There were forty years of receipts, and a stack of cards in handwriting I would know from across a room.

The one I wanted was third from the top. It was the worst-looking one in the stack, because it was the one that got used. Grease had gone all the way through the paper.

Sunday. Chicken, whole, don't be cheap. Onion. 2 carrots. Celery if you got it, if not, don't cry. Bay. Handful of parsley stems, not the leaves. Salt at the end. Little vinegar at the very end, they'll never know why it's good. Noodles separate or they drink the pot.

And down at the bottom, in different ink, in a hand that had gotten shakier:

Beck: low and slow. If it's boiling you're mad about something.

I made it. That was what I did when my head got loud. It took about four hours, and I had nowhere on earth to be. By ten that night there was more soup than one man and one dog could get through in a week.

I put a container in the fridge. Then I stood there with the door open a while. Then I put it in a bag and got in the truck.

The clinic lights were on at 11:30, which they should not have been.

She opened the door with her hair coming out of everything and a stain down the front of her scrub top.