My sister visits— her head ablaze with new drama. Her history is stunning. She has escaped the Moonies, a voodoo cult, survived a biker who chained her to the bed. And after each grand opera when, amazed, she finds the stage sets collapsed upon her, she visits.

Now, it’s a defrocked priest who’s left her. “I snipped the tips off all his condoms,” she says, as we’re walking through the park a few blocks from my house. “I figured, why be subtle, right? I’m not getting any younger. I want to experience motherhood at least once before I kick.”

I listen. I nod. It’s what I do. I could be a parking meter or a can of peaches, it wouldn’t matter. When we turn toward the baseball diamonds, I hear the beeping. See the blind players on the field, their heads tilted, listening for the beep…beep...beep…

I’ve seen this once before. A game of “beep-ball” played in the dark on a sunny day. And steer us toward it. We sit on a slope above the field and she doesn’t miss a beat.

“And the son of a bitch took Sparky. You remember Sparky? That stray we took in. I told you about him over the phone.”

“Sure,” I say, but my head is in the game. A sighted pitcher slow-tosses the beeping ball to a blind batter. The batter listens, poised for that perfect moment when the sound is loudest. He swings, connects; a miracle of timing—a ground ball off the tip of the bat. It slow-rolls on the grass. The blind fielders, gauging its coordinates, tap the ground closing in; pushing through an erased world tarred black. Occasionally, I nod, say: “Wow”, “Humm”, as my sister chatters on.

There are guide dogs on the sidelines, patient in their harnesses— friends and family cheering as the ball is located, held up to the light. The light. I pull my cap down, shut my eyes. Hear: “Shit head”…“Religious hang ups”…“Lousy lay”…

I imagine the sound of it, that beeping coming closer, in the dark; that black molasses to push through or drown in. Would I meet it, chest out, and connect as gloriously as they?

When I open my eyes again, everything is brighter, clearer. There’s a square of sunlight on my sister’s dress, highlighting a single rose.

“Look,” I say, pointing. “The way the light…”

“The light—what light? You’re not listening to a thing I’m saying,” she accuses, then glances around as though suddenly snapped out of a trance. “And what’s that God-awful beeping?” she says. “Huh? Can you answer me that?”

Robert Scotellaro is the author of three literary chapbooks, three books for children, and the winner of Zone 3’s Rainmaker Award. His work has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including The Laurel Review, Red Rock Review, Northeast Journal, The South Florida Poetry Review, The Vagabond Anthology, Rolling Stone, and others.