Page 98 of Knocked Up

I sat down and ate my soup. It was wrong. There was too much celery in it and it was thin because she had run it hot. I ate two bowls of it at midnight on the night my season ended.

She brought Willa out at half twelve because she was up anyway and put her on my chest. Willa did four minutes of complaining about the arrangement. Then she went to sleep with one hand out flat on the side of my neck.

Tessa sat down across the table with her own bowl and her feet up on the chair beside me.

"Say the number," she said.

"Thirty-four shots, two goals."

"That's not the number I want."

"Then say which one you want, because there are about nine."

"How many did they have in the last four minutes?"

"Six."

"And how many went in?"

"None."

"Right," Tessa said, and ate her soup.

The monitor on the counter did its hiss. Bear came in off the hall floor and looked at the three of us. He lay back down across the doorway, which is where he sleeps now.

"I'm not sad," I said. "I'm not doing a thing where I say I'm not sad. I'm sad. I'm saying it isn't the other thing."

"What's the other thing?"

I had to sit with that a second, with my hand on my daughter's back.

"There's a way I've always done this," I said. "I lose. I put it on one side and I put what it costs me on the other side. It comes out to a number, and the number is what I am that week. I've done it since I was nine. He taught me the arithmetic at a kitchen table and he was good at it."

"And?"

"It won't add up. I've been trying since the horn. I lost the biggest game I've ever played about four hours ago. I can't get it to come out to anything. Every time I put it down on the one side I have to put this on the other side, and it isn't a close thing."

She did not say anything for a bit.

"Say what this is," she said.

"You know what it is."

"I want the words. You're the one who does capitals."

"You," I said. "Her. That dog. Your brother, who I would apparently now take a bat for. That soup, which is bad."

"It is not bad."

"It's got two handfuls of celery in it."

"Beckett."

"It's the best thing I've ever eaten," I said. She put her spoon down and put her face in her hands. I let her have it, the way she let me have it in a dark hospital room on the 29th of May.

Then she came round the table and put both arms round my shoulders from behind, over my daughter. Her chin was on the top of my head. Neither of us moved for a while.

"28th of June," she said, into my hair. "That's the worst day of your professional life."