the blizzard morning: the ball he stopped squeezing
The Penn 4 that was my hand-strengthening ball for November was on the sill against the window. I’d neither carried nor squeezed my ball for several days. No one seemed to have noticed.
Context
The most quietly devastating index of the collapse. The hand-strengthening ball — an object Hal is always squeezing elsewhere in the book, the reflex of a body forever conditioning itself — sits abandoned on the sill: "I'd neither carried nor squeezed my ball for several days." The withdrawal shows up as a lapsed micro-ritual, the constant background maintenance of the athletic body simply stopping. "No one seemed to have noticed," which is the point — the body's withdrawal from its own upkeep is invisible until it isn't.