When my train arrived from Toronto, Alicia was waiting in the parking lot of the train station on Walker Road, waving, cheerful as a mother welcoming her daughter back from summer camp. I was tired after the four-hour ride, through the sundown fields, back to Windsor. When we hit Chatham, I tried not to cry. I wasn’t hungry these days, but I’d forced myself. If I went a few hours without eating that’s when I started getting nauseous, and I didn’t want to throw up on the train.
‘Sami!’ Alicia wore a hoodie over her scrubs, Nurse Life in flowy cursive on her back. I’d thought, maybe, True would be there, too, because the last time we’d spoken on the phone he’d sighed, Sam, I miss you, but he was nowhere. ‘It’s so nice to see you again. I’ll take that bag.’ And before I could say anything, she’d pulled my suitcase from me.
‘It’s okay, I can handle it-’
‘Sami, let me take care of you.’
I shuffled after Alicia, watched her pack my suitcase in her car. She even opened the door for me. Maybe he was waiting in the car, I thought, but inside her car it was empty and perfectly clean, smelling like hand sanitizer and apples. Nothing Compares 2 U on the radio when she started the car, Sinead’s sorrowful voice as we left the parking lot of the train station. The end of February and a hard glitter of snow crusted everything.
‘I hope you’ll be happy staying with us,’ she said. ‘For as long as you want. Okay, Sami?’
‘Thank you.’ I stared at the scuffed toes of my leopard-print boots. Alicia was wearing white Skechers, and I wondered how she kept them so clean, streets and sidewalks slushy with salt.
‘How does it feel, being back?’
‘Well, I just got here.’
‘I mean, were you super sad to leave Montreal?’
‘No.’ Before I’d thought of myself as an open person, but these days it seemed easier to lie. Since I’d been pregnant, I’d felt like a sick animal – at times lethargic, then vicious.
*
‘True won’t be home.’ Alicia drew keys from her quilted purse. ‘Fake Chanel,’ she said, almost apologetically, tapping her nails against it, polished creamy white, like almond milk. She led the way into the apartment. ‘We just have a one bedroom, but the sofa in the living room folds out.’ White walls with the faintest tinge of tan, like water chestnuts. Pileas in pale green ceramic, monsteras in matte blue. ‘Maisie must be super happy you’re back.’
‘Sure.’ We’d all worked together before, at the same grocery store, Alicia in the floral department, Maisie and I cashiers; only Maisie was still working there, taking evening and weekend shifts as she finished her degree.
Alicia glanced at me. ‘Isn’t she your best friend?’
On the wall was a black and white print of the city map, small red heart besides a pair of coordinates indicating something of romantic importance, where they’d met or where they’d ended up, I didn’t know. Alicia’s imprint everywhere, like a watermark, and True’s nowhere, and I knew he would approve, would admire the quiet refined taste of the place. He would not want who he was to appear anywhere, like a tarnish on fine silverware.
I almost said the truth, that I hadn’t told Maisie, yet. That for all she knew I was still in Montreal. But then I thought about how it would sound and let Alicia’s question linger unanswered.
She had moved on, flipping through mail in a woven banana leaf basket. ‘True’s working late. But I’m sure you can catch up later.’
I couldn’t help myself. ‘You do know we used to be together, right?’
‘Yeah, but you were teenagers.’ She waved an indifferent hand. ‘It doesn’t really count.’
‘I guess you never read Romeo and Juliet, then.’
‘Did you?’
‘Of course.’ I hadn’t, but I’d seen the play in a park in Montreal. These violent delights have violent ends. I’d remembered that.
Two months ago, I’d called True, from Montreal. He’d missed the call at first but then he called back, right away. Sitting on the balcony of the apartment I shared with Bodie. Snow was falling, heavy silvery flakes. I’d held the phone, watched the ghost of my breath in the night. Fake fur coat over pyjama pants I’d been wearing all day. The snow stuck to the fur collar, moonstruck sequins.
Come on, Sami, True had said. Bodie gone to bed already.
Things happen.
Right, True said. Things happen. But you can’t do this.
I closed my eyes. I think I’m going to.
Listen, Sami. I watched this documentary on orcas, okay? These captive ones that got released and then when they had their own babies, they had no idea what to do with them, because they’d never been raised by their own mothers. And it didn’t turn out good. That’s what’ll happen here, too.
We’re not animals, I said although I had never felt more mammalian.
How are you going to be a mother when you never had one of your own?
I have a mother.
Sure. Celeste’s out there somewhere. But she was never there for you.
She was there.
Was she, True asked. Really? So where was she every time I came around?
Alicia undid her ponytail, snapped the elastic around her wrist. A lashing of freckles over her cheeks, almost cosmic. ‘You might want to shower, after traveling.’
‘I’m okay.’
‘Well,’ Alicia said. ‘I’m going to bed. But if you need anything-’
The sofa bed had pale blue sateen sheets, like ice. A white duvet. A muted grey rug patterned with lines intersected at irregular intervals, like the landscape from a plane. Table lamps with linen shades and wavy hexagonal amber glass bases. I wondered how True had managed to snake his way in here, into a life like this. How if Alicia knew who he really was, what he was really like, she wouldn’t love him anymore.
*
The violent crunch and then the whir of the blender woke me, the sky dark still, Alicia at the kitchen counter, tidy and efficient in her navy-blue scrubs. Her clinical placement was in a pediatrician’s office, and she had a collection of seasonal headbands. She still wore a Valentine’s one, little red glittery hearts.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I use the avocado pits, too. They’re super high in antioxidants. You can’t just throw them out.’
‘Right,’ I said, although I usually had milk and candy for breakfast. ‘You must have a really powerful blender.’
‘Oh, it’s heavy-duty,’ Alicia assured me. ‘It absolutely pulverizes.’ She poured something chalky green into two glasses. Sitting down on the edge of the sofa bed, she handed me one. ‘I made it with extra bran. I’m sure you need the added fibre.’
‘Thank you.’ I didn’t exactly want to discuss my terrible irregularity with Alicia of all people, but she was a nurse. It was nothing to her. I glanced around, wanting to see True, and at the same time trying to act like I didn’t care at all.
*
Marjorie doesn’t think you’re the right kind of influence for her girls, my mother had said. I was sitting on my aunt’s sofa in Toronto, in a neighbourhood noted for high rates of auto theft. After Montreal, I’d landed here first. She said she hopes you don’t expect to stay here. Raise them here. Flicking a hand towards my stomach, where the soundwaves at my recent ultrasound had revealed two hearts beating in the dark below my own. At least she’d answered my call, from Montreal. My father had hung up the phone.
No, I’d said. I wouldn’t dream of it, although it was a possibility I’d considered. Ridiculously, I saw now. And that I still ached for my mother in so many hopeless, improbable ways.
*
For the next day and night, I didn’t see True. During the day, when Alicia left for classes, I flipped through the magazines she’d left. They were not my usual selection; I loved lurid tabloids with articles about mermaid sightings and sex with aliens. They were psychology magazines with headlines about finding health and happiness and quick tips on acquiring life skills like organizing and overcoming pessimism. Alicia wanted me to read articles about emotionally absent mothers. She’d even bookmarked pages.
‘Whatever True told you about my mother-’
‘He didn’t tell me really much of anything,’ Alicia said, immediately, and I knew he’d told her everything.
‘I’m fine.’
‘I don’t want you to be fine,’ Alicia said. ‘I want you to be thriving. I want you to be healed.’ Her face shiny tight with the colostrum gel she applied after her shower.
By this time, I’d read a few articles about pregnancy. I knew the basics, like how the cartilage in my pelvis might split and the first milk you made. ‘Colostrum, like-’
‘Well, it’s bovine,’ Alicia said. ‘It works.’ And maybe it did, because Alicia was luminous.
When she left, I listened to the shuffling of neighbours in the hallway. Watched shadows on the walls move with the sun as I lay on the sofa, earphones of my Walkman in. I’d only brought two CDs with me, Live Through This and a mix Maisie had burned me in high school – Ludacris and Britney Spears mashups, Tori Amos. I listened to Doll Parts and thought of Maisie, and how I should call her, but I didn’t.
Last time we’d talked on the phone, now months ago, Maisie said so, how’s Bodie, and what could I say, really, Bodie was the same, he was still stealing and had these warped blue spots on his hands from a failed try at tattooing his knuckles and had recently shot himself in the leg with a nail gun while he was at work. He worked as a roofer but wasn’t certified, he just did jobs for a guy people hired off Kijiji because he was so cheap.
Maisie said, well, there’s other people out there, and I said sure. Men who message you ‘hey pretty’ and post pictures of their girlfriends saying, ‘my sunshine’, and Maisie said, that’s not all men, Sami. That doesn’t happen to all girls, just – and I heard what she left unsaid.
Instead of calling Maisie or thinking about her anymore I used Alicia’s computer to shop for shoes I wasn’t going to buy, pink platforms, clear heels, and to fill out an application to adopt a cat named Noodles, even though I didn’t send it. I couldn’t. I was allergic to cats, and I knew I was going to need to save all the love I had in me.
I found a video Bodie had up on YouTube, rapping in front of our neighbourhood dépanneur. He’d got his neck tattooed since I left, and he looked good. The video had a thousand views, and after the first two days in the house I was probably seven hundred of them. I only stopped watching when my nose, newly prone to bleeding, started dripping again. When I couldn’t find any tissues, I sopped the blood with my sleeve, not wanting to stain Alicia’s mossy green cotton towels, Alicia who always said nice towels were an important part of a proper morning routine. Bleeding into the sleeve of my sweater, I found Maisie’s online journal. I’d long ago stopped writing in mine, which I’d set up only because Maisie had said I should. A few entries, some quizzes, copied and pasted from Maisie’s, and then I was done. There used to be photos of us in her journal, but now when I tried to see them there were only squares of text informing: This image is currently unavailable.
17 July 2005 — so tonight Wesley and I went to the movies and tomorrow we might…the day after writing I just have a hard time trusting him…I’m done with him only days before so this is so bad and I know it, I have a chance with Asher who’s a really nice guy and I just told Wesley I’d see him again…and even though she had written this, posted it on the Internet under subject lines comprised of Fiona Apple lyrics, I felt still it was trespassing, somehow intruding.
Wesley, now a real estate agent smiling slickly from bus stop ads all over the city. Wesley Brooks Gets the Job Done, specializing in waterfront properties. My Maisie the daydreamer who used to collect unicorns, who gave me books inscribed with notes from her, books which I hadn’t read and now regretted, Maisie who I spent all my summers with, who I had once known everything about, and now knew nothing.
*
When I finally saw him—when he walked into the apartment at five o’clock as I read one of Alicia’s magazines—I must’ve looked surprised when I said his name, True, because he said, ‘what did you expect? I fucking live here.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yeah.’ He wore a pale blue dress shirt, buttoned cuffs, stainless-steel watch. His hair newly cut, slicked back, a little messily; he had a wave to his hair that was hard to tame. ‘Last time you saw me I was going nowhere. But I’ve done alright for myself, haven’t I?’
‘A lot happens in a year and a half, I guess.’
‘Obviously.’
When I’d left, he still wore scuffed Doc Martens, t-shirts that said things like Bad Example, and when you took a photograph of him, he shot the camera the finger.Now he looked like someone who would respect public property. He didn’t look like a man who bought his cologne from convenience stores anymore.
‘Alicia’s done alright for you; you mean.’
True smiled, that easy smile that got him what he wanted, most of the time. Quick, with closed lips, a little tight-lipped so you wouldn’t see the inside of his mouth, the evidence of the stunning lack of dental care in childhood, the back teeth capped with silver.
‘I work,’ he said. ‘I make good tips. What you see here, I paid for.’
I closed my magazine, placed it with the others on the sofa bed. ‘Good for you.’
‘This is everything I’ve ever wanted.’
‘Is it.’ The details, the décor, even the girl, I knew—they could be swapped out. All his life he’d heard, you’re just like your father, but here he was, now, surrounded by evidence he was not. The Ikea wicker baskets, the thyme-scented reed diffusers in the bathroom, the pricy clothes, they all corroborated the contrary.
‘What do you think? Do you like it?’
I said, ‘I liked you before.’ Hating how his voice still felt in my chest like a finger on a piano hitting key of C, eighth octave, a high sharp note, a little painful.
‘It’s still me. Only a better incarnation.’ And he smiled, but I could see his teeth this time.
We’d had childhoods of constant want, which left us with terrible hungers. But you can’t get blood from a stone, and True had been bled out years ago. True, cold as stone—his blue eyes, his good cheekbones, all mineral gone crystalline—but I’d become all blood.
*
True was working as a waiter for a Greek restaurant. He’d served so many plates of flaming cheese the hair had been burned right off his forearms. He showed me, bitterly, sleeves cuffed at his elbows. ‘Look at this.’ He’d come back from work, white dress shirt with a tight buttoned collar, black apron, his piercings removed—the earrings, the silver ring he wore at the left side of his lower lip. He hated it there, he told me. The owner was experimenting with creating his own energy drink, a blend of caffeine and honey, and True would return from his shifts pissed off from customer service and overstimulated from being frequently recruited as a test subject for the drinks.
‘They give me heart palpitations,’ he said.
‘So, get another job.’
‘It’s just like that easy, right?’
‘Weren’t you supposed to go to college?’
‘Yeah, well, we’re all supposed to do a lot of things we don’t,’ True said. ‘I thought you were supposed to not let yourself get knocked up by Bodie. Of all people. The whole point in us not being together was that we were supposed to do better. Go somewhere. Be successful. Get nice things.’
‘Well, I guess I’m just not really interested in that.’
‘Obviously,’ he said.
He left to shower. When he came back out, he wore his half of the matching pajama set he owned with Alicia—plaid pants, long-sleeved navy-blue tops. They’d worn them for their couple’s Christmas photos, gold lights blurring the background. In one picture, they held up two candy canes to shape a heart. They were framed on the bookshelf, beside the television, across from the sofa I slept on. Next Christmas, they were going to take photos at a tree farm in Kingsville, Alicia told me.
‘You gonna turn on wrestling, or what?’
I reached for the remote. We’d always watched Smackdown on Friday nights. At first, I would help him fold the bed back into a sofa before he sat down. But one night he said, just leave it. I’m tired. And from then on, we left things the way they were.
*
‘I stopped by Zehrs after work, to get groceries.’ Alicia stood behind the kitchen counter, lifting out an egg carton. ‘Maisie was working.’
‘Yeah?’ I went to help Alicia put the groceries away. In the pantry, everything was labelled—glass jars of dried lentils, split peas, amaranth.
‘She says you haven’t called her the whole month you’ve been here. In fact, she said you never even told her you were back in Windsor.’ Alicia was wearing her glasses, square tortoiseshell frames. She had a habit of pressing her palms lightly against the sides, adjusting her glasses this way. She had to go to the optometrist, she said, get a new pair; by the end of the day, she hated the tight way they felt behind her ears. ‘It’s a little funny.’
‘What’s funny?’
‘How you didn’t say anything to Maisie. I mean, you called True, right? You let him know you were coming back.’
‘I guess it slipped my mind,’ I said. ‘Me and Maisie drifted apart, a little, when I left.’
‘But you stayed close with True?’
‘We didn’t. We’re not close.’
‘Maybe you should call Maisie.’ Her back to me as she watered the plants, the pilea, the monstera. Its full name was monstera deliciosa, True said. Delicious monster. Named for their edible fruit, but that was mostly in the wild; the houseplants kept indoors, potted and removed from their habitat, would seldom ever bloom. ‘Get out once in a while. It can’t be doing you much good, here in this apartment, alone all the time.’
When no one was home in the apartment I wandered from room to room. I’d stopped wearing lipstick, bleaching my hair, getting dressed. I felt like sea glass, edges worn down by the waves’ constant pressure, a bright sharp thing gone cloudy now.
*
In the diner at the back of Central Mall that sold boxes of used paperback books along with greasy egg sandwiches, I waited at a table for Maisie and wondered if she still had the notebook where we wrote all our thirteen-year-old’s secrets in with gel pens. The summers we used to watch Ever After and Cruel Intentions on repeat in her bedroom, Heath Ledger posters on her walls, we both loved him. Maisie with her braces on and her volleyball practices, her fuzzy sweaters that made her look like a sweet duckling.
‘Sami!’ Maisie pulled out a chair, sat down. She wore a white dress, a thin necklace with a small gold initial, M. But then I realized, the way the letter hung there around her neck, how it could be a W, too, and how terrible that would be. ‘It’s great to see you again.’
‘You, too.’
She placed her phone down, glanced briefly at the screen. ‘Sorry, Wesley said he was going to call…. he likes to make sure I’m safe.’
The diner was beside a stand in the mall that sold salt lamps and magnets that cured vertigo, another shop where you could buy t-shirts with pictures of tigers or James Dean or Tupac. Same carousel across from the florist we’d rode as children, paint chipped now, the three horses frozen in motion. ‘I think we’re pretty safe here.’
‘Wesley just really cares.’ Pushing her hair behind one ear, she smiled. ‘So, congratulations! Alicia told me you’re having twins.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I’m just surprised, you and Bodie, right? A couple summers ago I didn’t even realize you and Bodie were actually together and then suddenly you tell me you’re moving to Montreal…. but I guess things are serious with him.’
‘I’m not with Bodie anymore.’ Last night, on the phone with Bodie. Calling him from a payphone at the 7-11, lights shining broken over the salted sidewalk, because I didn’t want to talk in the apartment. True with Alicia in the kitchen, chopping apples for their kale salad.
Bodie said, I still love you a shit ton, Sami. But he was going to be just fine. Sure, I could have spent the rest of my life with Bodie, I guess. But it would be a numbed existence, like the doped dreamy feeling before an anesthetic kicked in. Nothing would hurt, much, but nothing would feel that good either.
‘Oh,’ Maisie said. ‘I didn’t realize.’ Her gaze flickering back to her phone. ‘Maybe we could go see Heath Ledger’s new movie.’
‘I’d like to.’
‘Okay, great. Wesley can drive us. I know he wanted to see it, too.’
How’s your injury, I’d asked Bodie before I’d hung up, and he said which one, which was fair. He got hurt a lot. The nail gun, I’d said. Oh, that’s fine, he’d said, it’s healed already, my body heals very quickly, and it was true, it did. It would have to be able to, the things Bodie did to it.
‘We could ask Alicia and True, too.’
‘Why?’
Maisie shrugged. ‘Me and Alicia have been hanging out a lot since you left.’
‘I thought Wesley didn’t like True. That he used to call him trash, or whatever.’
‘Well, Wesley really didn’t know him. We go out sometimes, the four of us.’
‘So fun.’
Maisie said, ‘I think I’ll get the BLT, without mayo. Wesley says mayo is like absolutely the unhealthiest condiment. We should order soon; I can’t stay very long. I’m going shopping with Wesley’s mom.’
Before the summer I’d left for Montreal, back in the spring, we’d gone to Paradise Bingo with Wesley. It was Maisie’s and my first time, and I’d won—five hundred dollars on a full card.
Wesley winked. Your first time.
I guess I’m lucky.
Wesley said, I bet you get lucky a lot, and then he smiled. I’m just playing with you. You’ve got to learn when I’m messing around.
The diner’s walls were decorated with dusty photographs of Elvis. A handwritten sign taped to the window Paperback Romances Ten for Ten Dollars. Across the table, Maisie on her phone again, smiling at something I couldn’t see, and I felt somehow further away from Maisie now than I had all the way in Montreal.
*
‘Was it super nice seeing Maisie again?’ Alicia asked.
‘It was nice.’ The television on, a home decorating show. Every place they did over in a modern farmhouse style, plank floors, pine furniture, reclaimed wood.
Alicia between us. When True came in, she’d patted the place beside her on the sofa, the way you do when you call a pet to come join you. Now his hand was on the back of her neck and shoulders. They were good to each other in so many little ways. In the mornings, she put his vitamins out on the counter. When she left for work, I watched him stand there, swallow his multivitamin and fish oil, read the obscure word of the day calendar she’d bought him, lips barely moving as his tongue stumbled over the syllables.
‘Sami, don’t you love what they did to that house?’
‘I like the vintage mirrors they found.’
‘Do you think real farmhouses look like that?’ True asked. ‘Do you think they waste chicken wire as kitchen décor?’
‘That’s not the point,’ Alicia said. ‘It’s just cute, that’s all.’
‘If that’s what you want, I’ll give it to you. A weathervane. Barn doors in the bathroom. Paint everything white.’ And True lifted her glasses with one finger, rubbed the tender place behind her ears.
*
The next evening, I walked down to 7-11. Sucking sour candy, I called Bodie.
‘I’m kind of going through a lot right now,’ he said when I reminded him the money he’d promised to send hadn’t come. ‘Can’t you wait?’
‘Bodie, I’m due in September.’
‘I guess all you care about is money. What do you think I am, Mr. Monopoly?’
‘His name is Rich Uncle Pennybags.’
‘That’s his old name. Parker Brothers changed it in 1999.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘It’s okay, baby,’ Bodie said, and for a moment the baby made my heart dive. Because sometimes I missed Bodie, the way he made us coffee in the mornings, his excellence at old Nintendo games, his hot pink tank top that said Keep Calm and Stay Dope, the purity of his emotions. Unlike True, unlike myself, there was nothing buried, no secret cellar in the back of his heart full of regrets and bones. You could scrub the blood of old love, but the stains remained, waiting to be lit up in a luminol glow.
*
Alicia and I went to Fontainebleu Library, borrowed the books she thought I’d need. Books that told you what to expect. What had I expected, coming back here? Not this—True and Alicia in coordinated pajamas—baby-talking their plants together. Came back somehow believing I could, like a rat with hinged ribs, infiltrate the smallest gap between them.
‘You waiting up for me?’ True asked when he came in. Taking off his shoes, the apron he wore at work. Smelling of oregano and garlic powder, he sat down beside me. The television on, muted. ‘Where’s Alicia?’
‘She’s with her friends. Studying for their NCLEX.’
‘You know, she failed that test twice already.’
‘No way.’ It didn’t seem possible that Alicia, so capable and loved, could fail at anything.
‘She gets nervous on tests.’ There was a stack of baby books between us. He picked one up. ‘‘From conception to the fourth trimester.’ What’s the fourth?’
‘The first three months postpartum.’ Alicia had explained it. ‘For the baby. For the mom. The mom has to recover. The baby adapts to this world.’
When I’d first told True, he’d said, so it’s not the end of the world, you know, an unwanted pregnancy –
And I’d said, It’s not unwanted.
So, you’re trying to tell me you want this.
No, I’d said. Just that it’s not always only one or the other. That if what we wanted could be reduced to easy math, like fractions, there would so rarely ever be a whole.
At the library, Alicia picked up a copy of Rolling Stone. Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera on the cover, Hooking Up for the Sexiest Tour on Earth. Justin in a black tank top, Christina lifting it up over his hips. How could they do this to Britney, Alicia asked.
‘Well, good luck.’
‘I won’t be here then. I’m looking for somewhere. Thanks for letting me stay.’
‘It was all Alicia’s idea. She felt bad for you. She’s got a big heart.’
I could go places with her, he’d said.
Sure. You could. Like a barnacle on a whale, like a hooked burr in a fox’s fur. Sweet Alicia a host animal. And it would work, for a bit. But that fox would grow irritated by the spiny burr, would clean herself of it.
Last week I’d gone to a new parent class Alicia was helping to teach, a dozen women in a library basement, a few of their partners. We sat in plastic chairs as Alicia and her nursing friends talked about car seats, explained how to get the baby to latch on. We practiced with dolls. Alicia gave me two. We’ll have to get you some nursing pillows, she said. They should take some of the strain off your body.
True said, ‘so you’re staying. I thought you said you wouldn’t be caught dead back in Windsor.’
‘So maybe I’m dead,’ I said, and I felt like it, like a ghost, sick with unearthly longing, no fixed address.
‘I’ll meet you in the afterlife,’ True said. ‘Be a ghost with you.’
‘You said you missed me.’
‘Of course I do, Sami. But what do you want me to do? You want me to show you how much I’ve missed you?’ True smiled, with his teeth, and I knew. He didn’t let me see because he trusted me or loved me enough to be his real self or any of that bullshit. It was only that he didn’t care. That I was always going to be the messy girl he could run to, fall back on.
When we were kids, the first year his mother was gone, True talked a lot about how she was coming back, any day now. That she would pick him up from school. Take him to get ice cream like they used to. And then as the months scuttled away, he’d said, I know she would come see me, but she probably lost our address.
We were on the front porch. His father had heard. Turned to True, laughing. Your mother knows exactly where you are, he’d said. Exactly where she left you.
But that had been years ago. He didn’t talk about her anymore. In the apartment, everything smelled like Alicia’s natural soy wax candles, sweet scent the script on the jars called vetiver. So fancy, I’d thought, but True said it was only a kind of grass. Wrestling reruns on the television. He used to play with my hair when we watched TV, wind it around his fingers. The Million Dollar Man cramming a hundred dollars into the mouth of another wrestler defeated by his Million Dollar Dream move. The deep green fringe of the monstera leaves took on a slick glow from the screen.
‘You’re the reason I can’t have nice things,’ he said, so low it was almost a sigh, a whisper.
Earlier, alone, I’d flipped through True’s calendar, learned the word zugzwang. German, compulsion to move. From when you played a game of chess and realized there were no moves left anymore that would not cause you damage, that would not leave you with some kind of loss. But still you had to move. True with one finger lifting Alicia’s glasses, easing where it ached. What it would feel like to have someone know the places you were hurt, who’d want to make it all better.
This is everything I’ve ever wanted. And maybe right now he had everything, but I knew what happened to people who had everything. They ended up dying for the one thing they didn’t have.
Months later, when I’m gone from their place, living on my own with newborn twins, when True comes to visit one night and Alicia finds out, her tone is clinical, dispassionate. You should have waited six weeks, she’d said. You could get a uterine infection. You could hemorrhage. But Alicia didn’t know me. She never did. She had no idea how quickly I could heal.
About the Author:
Anne Baldo’s fiction has previously appeared in Riddle Fence, West Trade Review, Pulp Literature, Carousel, and the collection of short stories Morse Code For Romantics. Follow her on Instagram
@annekatherinebee.
*Feature image by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash
Isele Magazine 