That evening, H. is sick, as predicted. I go out for medicine, but things are picked over at Rite Aid. Everything left feels a bit off-brand: chewable grape-flavored ibuprofen, a raspberry-flavored vitamin-C mix. Moms with strollers crowd the aisles, all of us looking for things that aren’t there anymore.

Monday, March 2nd

H. running a fever. Hope it’s just a cold. I’d been planning to go to my office this week, to work on my unfinishable novel, but sick kid means I stay home. I reread a draft while H. plays FIFA 20 on the Switch and watches soccer videos. For lunch, I go to the corner deli and get him a bagel with cream cheese and a small Tropicana orange juice. Vitamin C doesn’t do anything against the coronavirus, but maybe it will help with his regular cold. We eat our lunch on the roof, and we talk in the sunshine. He’s happy and I’m happy.

Tuesday, March 3rd

I take Y., my older son, to hockey practice. One night in December, I’d parked the car and walked him to the rink, then went to a coffee shop to work on the unfinishable novel. Half an hour later, my phone rang. I couldn’t recognize the distraught voice on the other end as my son. The head of the program got on the line and told me to come to the rink at once. Turned out that another kid’s father (white) had berated Y. during warmups, claiming he’d slashed his son with his stick. He followed him off the ice, screamed and swore at him. The various accounts are confusing. At some point he said he would call the cops. The coaches stepped in; he was instructed to leave. The dad was banned from the rink until the end of January.

At the beginning of February, I overhear someone at the rink saying in chummy tones, “So you’re finally back.” It’s another dad (white) talking to the guy who must be the dad. I surreptitiously take a photo and send it to my wife, W. This is the guy who screamed at Y.

At the time, I kept thinking, Would he have treated a white kid that way?

Now I think, Does the coronavirus outbreak make it seem O.K. to shout at an Asian kid?

Tonight I see the dad again, from afar. In the past few months, I’ve played over scenarios in my head. I should shake his hand, say, “No hard feelings.” But no—let him make the first move. Watching him, I think, He doesn’t think he did anything wrong.

Wednesday, March 4th

H. is better and back to school. Spring break is coming up. The Delaware tournament looms large in his mind. He’ll be totally healthy by then. My wife will drive him there, while I take Y. to his tournament in Philadelphia. A divide-and-conquer sort of weekend.

Thursday, March 5th

W.’s birthday. I draw her a card, a New York skyline with arrows pointing to the various places we’ve lived over the years. The boys each write a little note, signing off, “your favorite son.”

There’s an article about a staffer at a Brooklyn assemblywoman’s office who shared a message on Facebook advising people not to frequent Chinese businesses in the city, claiming that the proprietors could be carrying the virus from having gone to China for the Lunar New Year. I can’t believe people sometimes.

I spend a few hours decluttering, in anticipation of finally moving to the new apartment. I post four times to Instagram, a series I call “Marie Kondo vs. _____.” Today’s possible victims: my Village Voice reporter’s notebooks, the sheet music to “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” and a copy of an unpublished book I wrote twenty-two years ago—a manuscript that only exists as a printout, not on e-mail, in the cloud, anything but paper. The posts get a hundred and twenty-four, forty-two, and a hundred and eighty-seven likes, respectively.

To judge from Netflix and best-seller lists, clearly a good number of Americans are positively inclined toward Marie Kondo’s “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.” In the American mind, then, Japanese are clean, and the Chinese, with their weird, disease-incubating wildlife markets, are dirty. I don’t know where Koreans stand. The sleek, androgynous K-pop groups like BTS scan as “clean.” Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” is a mix of the immaculate (the Parks in their sleek modern house) and grimy (the Kims in their fumigated hovel). When “Parasite” won the Best Picture Oscar, I screamed—never in my life would I have imagined a Korean filmmaker winning the prize, even someone as great as Bong Joon-ho. That was less than a month ago. Now South Korea was grappling with the largest coronavirus outbreak outside China, thanks in part to a secretive Christian cult, and it’s as if all that national pride has been replaced by panic and embarrassment. Somehow “parasite” and “virus” feel related.

My family—including my parents, sister, and her boyfriend—had planned on making a big pilgrimage to Korea at the end of June, when Y.’s school lets out. It would have been the first time there for my wife and kids, and the first time in nearly forty years for my sister. With my dad finally retiring, at eighty-four, the time seemed ripe. The trip is looking less likely by the day.

Friday, March 6th

My college alumni magazine arrives. The cover story is “Pizza! Our undercover experts rate New Haven’s pies.” On Instagram, I caption it “Slow news month.” It gets a hundred and two likes.

E-mail from the director of the day camp where H. will be for part of his spring break. She says that they are excited, but also aware of coronavirus concerns. There will be plenty of hand sanitizer. Anyone who feels sick should stay home.

Saturday, March 7th

Sunshine. Excited to meet some friends, L. and H., for dinner. L. suggested an Indian place in Harlem a few weeks back. At 12:30 P.M., L. touches base, saying she has a slight cough, possibly caught from a colleague who attended a conference out of the country. This is enough of an out for all of us. When to reschedule? We look at April. We look at May. Everything will be O.K. by then.

Sunday, March 8th

Y.’s last indoor soccer game at Chelsea Piers. I drop him off, then go park the car. When I enter the Field House, the guard at the turnstile tells me I have to register with the guy at the computer. I go to tell him my name and a (white) woman hisses, “I’m in line.”

Get an e-mail that H.’s upcoming day camp is cancelled due to “concerns over the COVID-19.”

Monday, March 9th

H.’s school is cancelled for two days. Moving to “virtual learning” on Wednesday. What does that even mean for fourth graders?

I’m anxious about the impending hockey tournaments in Pennsylvania and Delaware. I look up state-by-state statistics on the spread of the virus. Delaware has zero cases. But the teams will be coming in from all over. I wish the organizers would cancel.