Bertaina writes about anxiety and guilt so well — I think about his piece On Shame all the time — and that comes through in a couple ways in this story. It’s about new parents trying to find buy a house, and the one that checks their boxes also has a black hole in a closet.

Long before he travels through the black hole, ripping the fabric of his life, they are looking for the perfect house, the sort of place you could raise a family on modest salaries. First, they have to say goodbye to their dream of a back yard large enough for a trampoline. Their daughters have been begging for it, wheedling and cajoling, teary-eyed. They both love their daughters in the oppressive way of modern parenting. But the taxes are too high on the houses with lush yards, large privacy fences, cone flower and tiger lilies ringing the bright green lawns. Barrel-chested robins hop about on the grass and light feathers the leaves of the oak. The idea of the trampoline now gone, the wife gazes at the oak. 

We could put a swing on it, she says.

Someone else will, he answers.