Chapter One (1.2)
Endings
I’m rinsing the remains of Derek’s guacamole down the disposal when I realize I feel sick. Not nauseated, just… off. Cleaning always helps when I’m jittery, and even though this isn’t that, I clean anyway. It’s my only way.
Well, the only one that doesn’t involve killing or sex, neither of which are currently available.
The bowl in my hands is still in one piece. Bless the Persians and their weaving. Translucent red, it’s oval in shape and chintzy in appearance. Smooth inside, with a flat bottom; the lip is trimmed with small, round nubs. The sides are lined with long, uniform ridges that run horizontally around the bowl. They break off and pick up again at random spots, and generally look like the most unimaginative design conceived by a bowl designer in the history of bowl design. It’s only because I’ve seen the brooding-hen-shaped lid that I can recognize the piece I’m now drying is a nest.
There’s almost certainly nothing special about this bowl. It isn’t the one that sat on the marble-topped accent table in my aunt’s home when I was a girl. Only… maybe it is. Maybe this particular Indiana Glass Company, Hen-on-Nest in Ruby Red, purchased from eBay, is the very one that held those magical M&Ms. The ones I used to slide my tiny hand into. Hearing the scrape and click of the candies as they rolled over my skin and tapped musically on the glass. How I would wait. Forcing myself to hold out. Touching them and imagining the taste. Then, finally, taking just two. One for each cheek, or a symmetrical pair for the tip of my tongue. Slowly absorbing the candy shell as it dissolved. That transcendent moment when I reached the chocolate, soft by then from so long in my mouth.
I realize I’m crying around the same time I realize I’m crazy.
I unite the nest to its hen and set it back on the window sill, where the morning light filters through it each day. Fucking Derek. What kind of pig uses a knick knack for eating? I guess the kind I should expect when I’m slumming. When I was slumming. No more of that.
In the bathroom, I glare at the positive pregnancy test like it knocked me up. Aunt Cordelia would be so ashamed. Not only for the whole out-of-wedlock baby thing either. I’m almost sure I conceived in that public restroom, which is just inexcusable--even a really clean one’s got to be crawling with nasty shit. And if that doesn’t get my baby, what kind of fucked up karma follows someone created in a bathroom stall at Chili’s?
I estimate I’m about six weeks pregnant, and already I’m a terrible mother.
With a little growl, I snatch up the accusatory stick and--grasping it at either end--snap it in half. Only the piece of shit won’t snap. It just bends in a decidedly unsatisfying manner. I notice the little cap is resting in the sink drain and realize I left it off. Which means my right hand is holding the piss-soaker end, piss and all. I toss it into the trash and wash my hands. I need a drink.
Well, fuck.
Back in the living room, I flounce--alcohol-free--down onto the now clean chaise, and pull out my personal iPhone. The “Favorites” list has one name: Lynne. We met on the job eight years back and it was love at first sight. If we weren’t so stubbornly hetero, I wouldn’t be in this fix. She’s my soulmate. My sister from another mister. My kindred spirit. It’s hard to find friends in our line of work. Harder still to find people into the gay shit we love like Anne of Green Gables. But there you go. There’s somebody for everybody.
I text just three words: I need you.
Twenty minutes later, when she bustles through the door--to which she, of course, has keys--she’s toting a canvas shopping bag. From the sound of the contents, she’s brought me either liquor or one of those huge glass wind chimes. On second thought, a couple extra words would have helped. I need you. No booze.
“Wine or margarita?” Sneakers kicked off by the door, she’s padding to the kitchen in her socks. One is yellow, the other orange. I tell her I want neither. Her socks tell me I was more important than finding a matching pair. I want to cry again.
“Neither?” She’s frozen at the entry to the kitchen. She knew it was urgent when she got the text. Now she knows it’s dire.
“Get whatever you want for yourself. I’ve got some water here. I’m good.”
Lynne sets the bag down right where she is and joins me on the sofa. She doesn’t touch me; we aren’t touchy people. We’re “respecting each other’s boundaries” people, and there’s plenty of breathing room between us.
“What the hell’s going on? Is it Derek?”
“No, yeah, kind of.” Luckily, we’re also “letting you get there at your own pace” people--at least with each other. I put my face in my hands and scrub it, hard. I rub until it feels like the Indian burn the boy next door gave me when I was seven. He thought I’d be impressed, assumed I was unacquainted with pain. Wrong on both counts.
When I finally look up, I see abject terror in Lynne’s eyes and regret dragging it out. I’ve seen this woman holding in her own intestine with greater poise.
“Lynne, babe, it’s not that bad. The booze--I’m sorry--"
“You’re sick.”
“No-"
“Cancer. Is it cancer?”
“No, I’m-"
“You’re dying.”
“I’m not dying.”
“Well spit it out, you’re killing me, here!”
“I’m pregnant.”
“By Derek?” Her hands fly to her mouth as if she can recapture the words and thereby undo the truth of them. When it sinks in that she hasn’t the power either to unimpregnate me or swap sperm donors, her hands flop back down to her lap in surrender. “Jesus Christ, I thought cancer was the worst it could be! I was all prepared for cancer!”
“Don’t worry, he’s gone for good and he doesn’t even know. God, Lynne, it’s a baby, how is a baby worse than cancer, whoever’s it is? That’s just fucked up.”
“I’m sorry, but you are not thinking clearly at all. You tell Iggy you got cancer, what’s he gonna do? Kill you quicker? You tell him you got a baby on the way, and what, you think he’s gonna give you maternity leave?”
The fear in her eyes hasn’t dissipated, and I know she’s right. Cancer would be better. Ignatius LoDuca doesn’t like unpaid debts, and I owe him big. His employ isn’t the sort you move on from because you want to take your life in a different direction. Besides, where would I be without him?
Leaning back, I close my eyes and take a deep, calming breath. I can see my mother’s still-warm corpse. Blood blooms around her, swallowing inch after inch of the tile floor, tendrils racing ahead in the grout lines. She is on her side, gently curled, and I take her right hand--the one that’s up off the floor--and slip beneath it. I wriggle in before her just like when I’ve had a nightmare and I climb into her bed. I’m the little spoon, mommy. The blood--cold on the tile--chills me as it soaks through my Toy Story footie pajamas. Gripping her hand tighter, I pull it close and my mother holds me for the last time.
I don’t know how long it was until Mr. LoDuca found us there. But my mother's blood had melded me to her in a corrupted facsimile of the womb. I remember Mr. LoDuca and the sound of my pajamas peeling from the dried blood as I was literally torn away from my mother.
And I remember it was my father who killed her.
Without opening my eyes, I reach out. A rare plea for physical contact, but I immediately feel the warmth of her hands surrounding mine.
“What can I do, Amelia? Anything. You name it.”
I think of the only truly innocent place I’ve ever known; lost to me when Mr. LoDuca made me his own, and I know exactly what I need.
“Can you get me some M&Ms?”
Inspired by the fabulous @geke and @ThinknZombie
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Previously posted fiction:
Bound
First Night
Restoration
Peace
Let us Gather by the River
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