What are you talkin’ about? Gunner said. What about my foot?

Mom and Daddy are talking adult-talk. Sometimes adults have to talk adult-talk, Sharon said.

Then he began to pressure and pry and make us both deeply uncomfortable but also – it seems to me now, sitting here alone with my drink, watching the water – even more eager to find a language that might, without exposing our plight, also prove magically useful. We had to blur the details and speak in code and we ended up speaking in a kind of neo-biblical lingo.

I’m not sure we can make it up this hill.

The hill is made of your frickin’ ardor.

No, no, the hill is a big-shot banker in Manhattan. We both climbed hills. We’re both equally guilty.

What hill can’t be climbed? I want to climb the hill with you, Gunner said, and in-between our words there would appear a hint of solace, of the reconciliation that would arrive if we simply continued speaking in code for the rest of our lives with our son between us, asking suspicious questions, redirecting our pain into his pale blue eyes, his tiny ears.