Jack sat in a chair in his kitchen and looked out at the patio where it was raining. He had Ella Fitzgerald singing in the background—live from… somewhere. He knew little about music, but there was something about Ella’s voice—the glide and ping of it—that allowed him to sink into himself where he sometimes found things worth feeling and often didn’t.  Today, he felt embarrassed to be in this house—too big for one person, too feminine with the flowery bedspreads and yellow wallpaper. When he got in a rut like this he remained in the chair until a sense of humiliation radiated up his spine and made him stand.

            Unless it was basketball season, as it was now, he often had no idea where he’d go when he stood, but he found that he could usually improvise: a trip to the bank where Lilian, the teller, always smiled and called him by his name, or a drive to the diner on 71 where he could be handed a cheery-colored breakfast of eggs and hash browns, no matter the time of day.

            He rarely ate meals at the school cafeteria any more. As a respected coach, he had once been the person everyone in Delaware had associated with Enfield Prep—a sort of gruff ambassador who spoke the language of the farmers and truck drivers and waitresses who lived in town. Jack had been essential, really, in making the Gothic architecture and aura of eliteness on Odessa Road seem less alien to the locals. But now the school, like many things in recent years, seemed alien to him.

            It was somehow a relief when it rained.  Rain gave him permission to sit, to look out a window and drift in thought. Out this window, right now, he saw a basketball hoop and a rusting backboard affixed to the top of a wooden pole. The hoop had risen on a grey fall day like this one when Maddie, his eight-year-old, couldn’t wait for fairer skies to start making her own rain in the bucket. He was given a lot of credit for her subsequent prowess, and he did teach her a great deal about basketball, but he’d always admitted to himself that her sweet shooting stroke was, like Ella’s voice, immaculately conceived. With her, he never went through the messy, invasive process of aligning feet and tucking elbows, or the dogged reminding about exactly where to affix the eyes. He knew in his irritable bowels that talent was overrated—skill meant almost nothing without coaching and practice—but, well, there was also deftness like this in the world that Jack simply had to shrug at and accept as a gift.

            Ella came to the place in the song where she forgets the words. Jesus. A live performance, and she forgets the words. And yet she glides on, making up lyrics as she goes, rhyming them, laughing at herself. It’s better than the song. It’s actual magic, instead of the illusion of it.

            Jack took another sip of coffee and turned to the photo on the wall near his shoulder. In the framed image, a young Jack in a dark suit stood on the court with a cockeyed smile. He held a trophy in one fist. In his other arm was a lovely brunette—the lover of yellow walls and flowery bedspreads.

            The rain came harder. Jack put the coffee cup down, folded his arms, and tried to remember what kind of man he had been.