Page 32 of The Difference Between

He responds with Nothing that can’t wait until you get back. Hope you’re having a great vacation!!!

The three exclamation points nearly break my will to live, and I slam my laptop closed and scream.

With nothing else to do, I research the process of getting pregnant via sperm donor—that, unfortunately, only takes thirty minutes to understand the ins and outs of. I’ll go in for my appointment in two weeks, fill out paperwork, schedule a few exams, pick a perfect donor—I made a list of questions to ask him when we meet—and have a quick procedure known as intrauterine insemination—IUI—to get pregnant. The Fontain Fertility Clinic has an open-identification sperm bank. That wonderful news means I can thoroughly vet my sperm.

I call Rue and ask her to come over; she’s at work then tied up with family things.

I call Remy and ask her to come over; she’s at work then shuttling the kids around.

I consider waking Mom up but remember that’s the opposite of why I’m here.

I start a baby registry—which I buy everything from for myself—then set up a 529 account for my child’s college fund and apply to the three best preschools in Chicago.

I take Mom to get her staples out and to therapy appointments.

I read the entire internet’s worth of information on best practices for getting pregnant and overhaul the kitchen. I need to eat a clean diet and relax; I master the diet.

I watch four hours of videos on people baking sourdough goods and for some reason mix flour and water in a jar then decide it’s a good idea to watch this concoction rot on the counter so I can bake with it.

Every single night I tell Joshua Jackson’s face on my ceiling that sabbaticals are the worst.

Ten

The front yard is one good rain away from a jungle, and the seed-spitting neighbor seems to enjoy it.

Despite his long days—he gets home just before dark every night with a little girl in tow—I’ve seen him every day for the last two weeks.

Two. Weeks.

Getting his mail, going to and from his rusted old truck with bags of groceries, or simply watching me bumble through my boredom. With a smile on his face.

If he sees me with Mom, he rushes over to talk to her, his bright dancing eyes taunting me as he does.

And no matter what either of us are doing or how busy he is, he always stops to look at the yard and loudly whistle a note that translates to getting long, then smiles a shape that translates to bet you wish you would have let me fix that.

After a week, he ramped up his whistle to bring his bad jokes into the mix.

“Did you see the lawn sign at the rehab center?” he shouted from his driveway.

I was dragging a hose around to water Mom’s roses, pretending the grass wasn’t so tall it was making my legs itch.

“Can’t say that I did,” I hollered without looking at him.

“It said stay off the grass.”

I rolled my eyes, praying he’d take a hint.

“Get it?” he shouted, not taking a hint. “Grass?”

I gave him a long look as he held an imaginary joint at his mouth. Then I shut the hose off and went inside.

But this morning as I drank coffee and looked out the kitchen window, I knew there was no more ignoring the situation. It’s the first of September, but it still feels like summer. If I don’t take care of the grass, it’ll overtake the house and trap me in here forever like a doomed game of Jumanji.

After making Mom breakfast but before letting her rest on the couch, I force her through a simple sudoku puzzle for brain function optimization—she bitches the whole time—then make her walk to the end of the driveway and back.

The manual mower that haunted my youth is still in the shed. It’s rusted, it’s heavy, and from hours of using this thing when I was a kid, it doesn’t have a prayer of doing what I need it to. I push it a few feet and the grass simply flattens.

“Damn,” I mutter.