There’s this kid. He’s always there. Always sitting just a few rows away. Sometimes he’s talking, and sometimes he’s silent. Sometimes he’s bored and sometimes he’s excited. But he’s always there.

Next to him, there’s this other kid. She’s kinda like the first kid, but she’s also kinda different. Sometimes she flirts with the first kid, and sometimes he flirts back. Often she ignores him. But she’s also always there.

There’s a whole room full of kids. There’s a whole school full of ‘em. They’re all kinda different, and they’ve all got stuff in common. Each is a unique individual, and all together, they make up this complicated whole termed a high school.

Our high school is vast. It is filled with characters so complex, no writer could ever hope to match them. It’s not hard to find them- you just have to notice them.

These are their stories, better than even they could tell them. Because they don’t know how; Underneath it all, they’re still just kids.

Once upon a time, Angelina had been from India, too.

But all the man behind her in line saw was her pale skin and her hazel eyes and what was that silly Midwestern girl doing buying extra-hot chili?

Angelina stepped out of the International Foods Emporium and into the cool fog of a San Francisco autumn. She slid the plastic shopping bag over one wrist, crossed her arms over her chest, and started walking toward the nearest trolley stop. The driver was a man with long, curling gray hair and Ringo Starr spectacles.

A long, long time ago, Angelina’s parents were hippies who kissed the sky and named her after the angel that had visited them when she was born.

Two years later, they divorced, and Angelina’s father moved to New Mexico.

Ding, ding, the city toured past them up hills and down avenues. People came and went; not so many tourists this week as there had been last month. Angelina liked it better this way. She didn’t like a lot of outsiders cluttering up her living space.

After the break-up, her mother had moved to Kansas, braided her hair in one thick rope, and sworn off men and moonshine forever. Angelina’s grandparents approved.

An old woman with jagged, sunken teeth grinned a mischievous warning at her from across the trolley aisle. Angelina did not smile back. The woman was a local; she ran- or, more accurately, now supervised (read: criticized) her son who ran the family restaurant in Chinatown.

Once upon a time, Angelina has flown to China and had lunch with a genuine midwife. There she learned that heat and cold in the blood can endanger, and heal.

The trolley dropped her off a block from home, but she took the long way around just to be able to walk past the window of the Portugese man who worked at the green grocer’s.

Last summer, a mysterious man with a dark, thick accent had seduced her into putting aside her responsibilities for a weekend of sensual exploration.

Her key was buried in her pocket below old gloves and movie ticket stubs. She took a while to fish them  out.

In Africa, she had sat beside monstrous rivers watching youths and men catch shining, scaly dinners for their families. Each time they checked to see if the fish could speak, and apologized even it couldn’t.

Up three flights of stairs she walked, with the chili powder burning in the Emporium’s bulk-stock “Thank You! Please Come Again!” bag. Another key turned the lock to her very own apartment, and she stepped-

Into a midwife’s clinic.

Onto the bank of the Nile.

Through curtains to a lover’s boudoir.

-over a pile of old magazines left there by her aging, hippie mother, and into the same Midwestern Kansas home she had grown up in. Almost-chili smells mingled with a library’s worth  of books, and Angelina breathed them in deeply.

Miles from anywhere, she knew she was home.

It began in the comforting warmth of a frame. A part of a whole, each organ working toward a purpose. Structure, digestion, breath.

A pattern was soon established. For weeks, for months, everything worked in harmony. Muscles stretched and contracted, pushing and pulling fluids from one end of the system to the other, recycling and rejuvenating. Maintenance, that was all that was required. Then one part was taken from the frame, and a new life began.

It was chilly out here; bone and flesh stirred. Need and motivation flickered into being; there were necessary tasks to be accomplished here. The new form grew; lengthened. The cold brought awareness, and desire. Pleasure came as insulation took place, nearly as comforting as being part of the first whole. New structures formed, patterned on the old, but still unique.

She drew in her first breath, still stretching into her final form. The richness of the air filled her, life spreading through every limb, to every finger and toe. The very tips of her hair curled with it. She opened her eyes, realizing that she had her own eyes now, and her head fell back to take it all in. How gorgeous! How green! Light, everywhere! Soft earth, a plethora of sweet smells. The taste of her own saliva, the sound of her own breath.

Rustling sounded behind her and she turned to see her old body rising. Adam stood, staring at her in amazement and dawning joy. After a contemplative moment, his hand rose to point first at himself, and then jab a thick finger toward her chest. “Ish. …Isha.”

Woman.

II

She wasn’t sure how long they had spent in the Garden. Time was still a slippery concept for her. Every so often she would recall that she had last seen a particular stone the day before, or several days ago, but then the relation would disappear as she became distracted. There was much to be distracted by in Eden.

Every morning she awoke beneath a canopy of brilliant blue sky. Long grasses tickled her bare skin, and soft ground cushioned her sleep. When it rained, the droplets fell like a delightful mist, energizing her into gay laughter. When the sun shone she was visited by wonders. Small, hard creatures flitted about in the air, or crawled across the plants. Large mammals lumbered across the landscape, pausing to look at her when she approached, her eyes bright with curiosity. She stared at tongues and tails, ran soft, sensitive fingers over rough skin and silken fur. She shared her food with little beggars and ran in the wake of flyers, trying to reach them with her wingless arms. When the green plants bloomed she buried her face in their beauty, and did not let the resultant sneezes stop her from smelling every flower again and again and again. She longed to discover everything. Each daybreak was a new opportunity to explore. Down every path was something new. And every uncovering sent her running back to Adam, pointing excitedly.

She skidded down a dirt trail, worn by her repeated hurrying back and forth from the comfortable space Adam referred to as ‘home.’ The dust flying up around her clouded her vision, but she burst free and into the clearing, calling wordlessly for his attention.

Adam knelt over a knot of teeming blackness that originated from a sculpted pillar of soil. His brows drew together, and his mouth contorted, tasting different sounds, trying to find just the right ones. “Ram… Arn… Nat… No, gnats were Named already…”

Isha tumbled to a stop, eagerness making her careless. She gestured wildly, pointing back the way she came.

“Not now, Isha.”

Unfazed, she tugged at his elbow, trying to draw him to his feet. He didn’t budge, and she tugged harder, planting her feet firmly in the earth—

Something crawled over, around, and below her left food, and she shrieked, letting go of Adam and falling backward in a heap.

“Isha!”

Her eyes fell on her leg, still prickling with sensation, only to find it covered in tiny black bodies crawling across her ankles. “Aa’ntng!” was her cry of distress, and she tried futilely to swipe the invaders away.

“Isha! Isha!” Adam’s huge hands clasped round her wrists, pulling her away from the creatures, which were already fleeing. She began to calm immediately, sure that Adam would put a stop to it, Adam she could trust to look after her. Wise, clever Adam—

But his hold was too tight and he shook her wrists to gain her attention. “Isha! What were you thinking? Look at what you have done! You have scattered the—the ants! How will I ever find them all again?” he said with hurt and what may have been anger. “I have spent all morning watching them, trying to find just the right Name for them!”

She stared at him, unable to understand him. Thinking? Scattered? What ants? All she could really see was that she had distressed him. Poor Adam! Her expression changed to one of apology and she pulled free of his hands to wrap her arms around him in a gesture of comfort. She didn’t want him to be upset, certainly not because of her! He was too good to be made unhappy; God’s first human creation deserved only love and joy. She could remember, vaguely, the time when she was a part of Adam, a resident deep inside his chest, close to his heart. How joyously everything had begun, how proud he was to be given the responsibility and opportunity of Naming all the creatures in the Garden! And how wounded, how confused, he—and she, inside him, an inseparable part of him—had been, when suddenly some precious thing had been wrenched away from him. That was not long before she was brought into the world, and her recollections of the time immediately preceding that event were muzzy. The best she could recall were these emotions, so strongly felt that they had left a permanent mark on her own soul. The very last thing she wanted was for Adam to feel anything even remotely like that pain again.

He was stiff at first, unwilling to give up his righteousness so easily, but the words of God filtered back to him, and he opened his heart to her once more. Thou shalt not bear grudges. Forgive, Adam, and find in this, Grace. The words had meant little to him at the time. Now, he thought he could understand them somewhat. He hugged her close to him and rejoiced in the feel of her soft body. “Isha… Please. You must not do that again.”

Repentant, she pulled back and looked him in the eye as she nodded. Whatever it was she had done, she would make sure she did not repeat it. She searched his face for some sign that he had forgiven her.

Adam could feel his discomfort melting away, replaced by clean relief. She had understood him and made a promise to change. He hugged her tightly again and smiled. “I am done here, I have Named these creatures. Ants.”

Isha peered over his shoulder, down at the pile of writhing black bodies and dirt. “Ang… ant.” The word was so like what she had shouted—perhaps speaking was not as difficult as she had first thought.

Adam’s face lit with excitement. “Yes, ants! Ants. Many of them.”

She nodded, and tried again, and again, until she had satisfied him with her first attempts at speech.  Gleefully, Adam swept her into another hug, and then took her by the hand. “Come, Isha, let us celebrate! There are figs growing by the river. Did I tell you I had Named figs? You will recognize them when you see them.” Together they ran back up the dirt path worn by Isha’s eager feet, and made a feast of the pulpy fruit. That evening they exhausted themselves in idle play, and fell asleep together amid the soft grasses and sweet flowers.

He isn’t exactly a catch, and he knows it. He doesn’t need to look at his reflection in the large gilt-framed mirrors scattered about the room to know that his face is round and red, his jowls puffing out of his collar. The suit is informal but it is choking him anyway. The gray wool is too heavy for a room full of excited adults; the sweat is running down his back. He does not dare take off the jacket that is both his torment and his shield.

“Hello, Martin. Ready to sweep some lucky lady off her feet?”

Martin turns and nearly misses the speaker—George McArthur is a diminutive five foot three. It is only out of habit that Martin drops his gaze to find him; when they first began working together he had spent entire conversations searching for the source of the voice.

“I suppose so. If she’ll have me,” Martin says slowly.

“Nonsense. She’d be a fool not to,” says George pleasantly, lightly, giving Martin a friendly pat on the arm.

Martin promptly resents it.

There’s no reason to be jealous. George is hardly attractive himself, even compared to Martin. Besides his height, he began graying in his twenties, and now long white threads dull his hair to a muddy sort of mess. To Martin’s grotesque fascination, he sees that George is still trying to grow a beard. ‘He becomes more and more like David the Gnome each day,’ thinks Martin, picturing a tall red cone upon the little man’s head. ‘David the Gnome was also bald,’ reminds his mutinous conscience. Martin chooses to ignore it.

George is rising to his toes, teetering in his good shoes, trying to peer through the crowd. “They ought to be starting soon. Do you see her?”

Martin looks anxiously toward the microphone at the front of the hall before he can pretend nonchalance. “Not yet.”

George drops back to his heels with a little huff, like an annoyed hedgehog. “It’s almost seven.”

“Perhaps she’s had an emergency,” says Martin, giving voice to the worry that has taken up residence in his belly. “Perhaps she won’t be coming.”

“Do you think so?” George is again trying to see the front of the hall, his own upset obvious. “I hope not. She can’t not come.”

To their great relief, a smattering of applause begins and spreads throughout the hell. She is here.

Eliza Quinn ascends the stage, blushing and smiling shyly at the applause. Martin’s hands drive together like drums, striving to be the loudest, the proudest. Her cheeks still pink, Eliza motions for silence and both Martin and George immediately stop their applause, long before the rest of the room dies down.

“Thank you, everyone, for coming to the town of Fenimore Flats’ Annual Tomato Harvest Ho-Down!” she begins with genuine enthusiasm and gratitude. In the room of 150 people, only she looks the part of a small farm town ho-down attendee. The Quinns are a family of dirty blonds, and Eliza is no different, her ashy hair pulled away from her face by bobby pins. She wears a red gingham dress cut from a modern pattern, but the white lace collar gives her the distinct look of a young girl who has not yet realized that she has become a young woman. She stands out even more against the backdrop of women looking to impress: high heels, low-cut blouses, and short, stylish skirts abound. Yet she could never dress as they do; she hasn’t the temperament for it, nor the form.

Martin is, as always, enchanted.

“Tonight we have some very special bands here to play for us,” Eliza continues somewhat nervously, voice growing stronger as she goes forward. “Several local bands from across the county are here to play for us later, including the Flat Hats, Mona and the Daisies, and, er, The Fury of Madame Bovary. Also, the high school orchestra is here to play the Stars and Stripes for us to begin the night. Mr. Underhill?” Another burst of applause, and the hall directs its attention to the cluster of students taking up a corner of the hall. Their conductor, Mr. Underhill, raises his arm, waits, and then begins.

George’s hand is on his heart, tears coming quickly to pool in his eyes. He never fails to find meaning in these little ceremonies. He snuffles through Sousa’s opus and doesn’t seem to notice as the partyers in the hall begin to slowly drift away toward the newly unveiled buffet covered in fresh tomatoes. He squeezes Martin’s arm with his free hand, truly moved—and truly preventing any escape. Martin is searching the crowd for Eliza’s pale head, but his opportunity to reach her before George can insert himself has been lost.

Resigned, Martin waits through the rest of the piece, forcing an untroubled expression, even when the brass go in and out of tune. George is puffing into a handkerchief when Martin sees a flash of red gingham. With a brief excuse about being thirsty, he pulls away from the tiny man and makes for Eliza Quinn.

It is not Eliza; another woman thought to be ironic in a long plaid skirt. Martin sights blond hair—everywhere. Some are obviously from a bottle, though the town is full of fair-skinned, light-haired men and women. Her faintly darker coloring is lost among them. He finds himself despairing of ever finding her such a crowd.

Then George’s keening chuckle reaches his ears from beneath the sway of the orchestra’s rendition of ‘Take the “A” Train.’  Martin’s vision narrows, spiraling inward to the exclusion of all else: between the dancers, beyond the buffet. Eliza’s elbow is caught by George’s stubby little hand, bringing her around to face him. He is introducing himself, reminding her of the last time they met, ever so briefly. She is nodding, in a way that could just be politeness, or cool recognition. George barrels ahead—complimenting, cajoling, ingratiating himself.

Martin believes at first that his vision is zooming in on them supernaturally; it is only as he clears the last knot of people in his way that he realizes he has crossed the room. His forehead has gone chilly with a fresh sheen of sweat; even his swaddled torso feels cooler. His limbs do not feel like they are his own.

It is Eliza who glances up first, in her nervous way. She looks as though she would like to acknowledge him, but she cannot decide how best to greet him. George has not stopped talking.

It is up to Martin to break in. “Good evening, Ms. Quinn. George.” He tinges the final name with disapproval.

She smiles awkwardly, “Good evening to you as well.”

“Oh, Martin. Hello. Nice to see you again. I thought you’d gone to speak to Theresa,” George interrupts, the slightest hint of suggestion in his tone.

“No,” Martin replies coolly. “I was trying to find our hostess to congratulate her on coordinating such a fine event.” He turns his full attention on Eliza, even bobbing a slight bow in her direction. Her cheeks light from within, as she stammers a thank you.

“Well, of course. Eliza is a marvel,” George says coyly, using the familiar. It nettles.

“The Harvest Dance is no small feat,” insists Martin.

“Nothing she cannot handle.”

Ms. Quinn is rosy-cheeked and embarrassed, perhaps more so than when she was on stage. She says nothing.

Martin is keenly aware of their bodies, of where they stand. They are a small, triangular island in the ocean of the hall. Martin himself is bolt upright, every muscled tightened and waiting. No doubt his thinning scalp is blazing, no doubt there will be talk as there is always talk. He does not think of that, only of the rigidity of his spine; the tense balls of his fists. George is a supplicant, his face upturned—even she is taller than him—to her beautiful face. He is dutifully ignoring Martin as best he can, clutching Eliza’s thin, pale hand in his meaty one. Her poor, frail body is angled between them, her eyes darting from one to the other like a startled doe. She cannot tell who is friend and who is foe. She has been cornered in the midst of the largest public space in Fenimore Flats.

George sees Eliza’s distressed eyes darting to meet Martin’s again and again. With a leering mouth, he leans toward her and she is forced to duck her face toward him to hear the words he whispers in her ear.

A red filter comes across Martin’s vision. Too far. George has gone too far. Martin’s muscles twitch and flex, writhing for permission to rend and to tear. The little man has overstepped his boundaries, has violated Eliza’s space and become far too intimate with a woman he barely knows. Any moment he will cross the distance between them and—

“Marty?” Eliza looks up at him in shock, her eyes wide and watery. “Is this true?”

“Is what true?” he asks testily, barely maintaining his control.

“George says… George says…”

“I believe I must take my leave now, Ms. Quinn. Mr. Quinn.” George says all too pleasantly, squeezing Eliza’s hand one last time and then stepping away. “See you at work, old chap,” he offers Martin, and disappears below the shoulders of the dancers.

Eliza is looking at Martin in absolute horror now, her lips curling apart—wide enough to engulf his throbbing heart. The eerie strains of “Why Don’t You Do Right” cast the room in sickening, copper hues. “George says you are in love with me.”

How can he possibly reply to this?

“Yes, sister, dearest. I am.”

Burnt protea flowers.

When in bloom, protea are flat, fat blooms, with a large pollen center surrounded by spiky petals. When baked in a bushfire oven, they are black and hard and lovely.

I fished several from the dirt and began to gnaw on them, enjoying the cracking of breaking, charcoaled petals. There was nothing quite like a hot protea flower.

Thoughtfully gnawing away, I watched the clouds cast shadows over the mountain. That mountain could well have been its own country, flat-topped as it was and being so large. Below it sprawled the city, cast in a large swoop around the ocean. I had never bothered to go down to the water; I preferred staying in the brush. And besides, the city had too many distractions to let me get that far.

The rumble of a jeep climbed the worn track, and my ears twitched. Tourists. I could hear the guide prattling on about the burning. I considered leaving, but there were more proteas buried nearby. Aah, protea, my love- you will be my undoing!

The car lurched into view, full with a passel of the most peculiar people I had ever seen. I fisted another flower and stuck it between my jaws, chewing while I studied them- just as they studied me.

Muffled behind glass and metal, the guide spoke. “You can see one, there.”

“What is it eating?”

“Protea. They love to come out after the burning and eat them.”

A middle-aged woman in the backseat said something in the most obscure language I had ever heard. I kept expecting her to open her eyes more fully, but they remained half-closed. Beside her, a small girl with similar features pressed her face to the glass.

“Will it come talk to us?”

“Bah-nie!” exclaimed her mother in harsh English. “They dangerous!”

The guide looked over his shoulder to speak to the girl apologetically, his white teeth flashing against his dark skin. He was almost as dark as the burnt proteas. “I’m afraid they are very dangerous. They’re very strong. Do you see his long arms?”

I stopped listening. It was the same babble all the time. The child seemed equally disappointed. She twisted around, trying to see me better. This afforded me a good look at her, and I stared right back. Her skin was unlike that of other humans. She was not burned flowers or brown like the bark, or pale like milk. Rather, her kin was like cream- but mixed with straw. The yellow of grass that must be burned before it catches fire on its own. I wondered if she would be dry like that grass. Her hair was glossy, and perfectly straight- and she had those same small eyes. No matter how wide she opened them to look at me, they remained… closed? I can think of no words to describe it. As the jeep began again to move, I wondered if she were ill.

“Bah-nie! Sit down!”

“But I want to stay and watch the monkey!”

And I wanted to watch her. With a regretful last look at my patch of flowers, I scooped a few into my gangly hand and followed them.

Only the child noticed. She wisely kept silent, allowing the guide to lecture her parents in blissful ignorance. They took the track back toward the city. I began to worry that they would leave my pack’s territory, but to my relief they stopped at one of several human homes on the mountain itself. I had seen it before; most of the humans living there only did so for a short time. The old man who remained kept fruit trees in the back, and I hid myself in these now.

The black man drove away, and the family stayed. I sampled a pear, listening as the woman babbled to her daughter in that strange tongue. Her husband replied, and soon they shooed the girl into the back yard to play. I set my snack aside and leaned down to watch her.

Her sleek black head gleamed in the African sun as she toddled across the grass. She examined the plants, fingering the leaves with stubby, pale hands. My own were dark and lithe. I had never been able to understand the height or proportion of humans. This girl child was probably of a height with me, but she was, comparatively, no more an adult than my niece, who still suckled at my sister’s teat. Yet I knew from experience that she was weaker than a lion cub, which at least had some claw and tooth. This babe had nothing to defend herself with, and she fascinated me.

Dragging her feet from boredom, she made a circuit of the garden, until her attention was caught and held by the pears. She licked her plump lips and came to the base of my very tree! Startled, we blinked at one another, she shining in the sun, and I hidden amongst the leaves. Delight and then fear crossed her smooth features. I could see everything she thought in her dark, dark eyes. She was afraid to scream, or run for help… and yet, she was enchanted by me, and her curiosity provoked this little speech.

“Hello. …are you a Bab-boon?” She paused, waiting for me to reply. Slowly, I munched on my pear. “Will you hurt me? Mum says you will. Will you?” This didn’t appear to bother her, that she might get hurt. “My name is Bonnie Song. We’re on vacation here from New Zealand. There aren’t any monkeys like you there.” I blinked in reply, fingering the sticky fruit. She was fascinating, all dauntless and round-eyed in my primal presence. For a moment I flexed, and knew again how easily it would be for me to tear her apart if I wanted to. “Mrs. McCoo, that’s my teacher- my last year’s teacher- she says we distended from monkeys. Is that true?” Her odd, fleshy little face tilted to one side. “You don’t look like anyone in my family. Your nose is too fat. And so- sticky-outted.” She scratched at her own nose, barely a bump on the slope of her skull.

A dog barked somewhere down the street, and I became aware of the time. I had been away too long, really. The pack might move on. I was not prepared to leave and join another; I liked this pack, with my sister and her children to keep company with.

The wind changed and I caught the small girl’s scent: salivating. I looked closer, and indeed her lips were wet and her eyes hungry. How foolish, I scolded myself. The child had come here for a snack, not to stare at some old baboon with a sagging bottom. Without hesitation, I reached far above our heads to pull down a branch laden with pears, and neatly plucked one. She squeaked at the abrupt snap upward when I released it, and quickly backed away when I offered her the new fruit. She blinked at me, surprised, and then carefully reached for it, hesitating. I moved it closer, and she took it, cradling it in honey-colored hands. At first I thought she was- bizarrely- challenging me- but then I saw the happiness in her eyes, and realized she was not baring her teeth at me.

She was doing what humans call smiling.

“Bah-nie! We leaving now! Come!”

“In a minute, Mum!” Her shoulders were tense as she glanced up at me again. Then joy lit her face once more, and she ran out from beneath the tree. Puzzled, I remained in the tree, mulling this over. Humans were such strange creatures. Everything about them seemed out of balance. Off-kilter somehow. Like not using their arms when they moved, or not having tails.

And then Bonnie appeared at my feet again, stretching up on her toes with something clutched in her soft, harmless fist. I stared, uncomprehending.

The fat pink blossom stared back at me, its spiky leaves touched with purple. “Isn’t this what you like? Proteas? You eat them, right? Right?”

“Bah-nie!”

“The guide said you like them…” Her little smile began to falter, and it pulled at something within me like the death of my nephew in the last drought. With great solemnity, I accepted it, and bowed, as I had seen other humans do. I did not fully understand the motion, but I knew it meant deference. Respect.

I swear, I could see nearly all her tiny teeth when she smiled. With another yell from her mother, she was off, across the lawn and back to another car for another trip to another tourist attraction.

Feeling some sense of accomplishment, I turned the fresh protea over in my hand. I would find out where the next burn was to be, and hide this flower where no other baboon would find it. And when I ate it later, I would think of this cheerful child and wonder again what it meant to be human.

With each name that was erased, she felt the burden of singularity pile upon her thin shoulders. One page at a time, she became weighed down with a forest’s worth of individuality.

“But I am not alone,” she wanted to protest. “Marcello will always be with me. He swore it. We spoke it before a priest…”

The bureaucrats ignored her, and continued stamping and shuffling her papers.

All the family in the tri-state area came to the funeral. Such a shame. Will you be all right on your own?

“I am never alone,” objected Alejandra, in her wispy, breathy way. That day, the television company called to ask why the payment was late. She hadn’t the heart to explain that they were a one-income family now, and would likely have to cut back. Instead, she let her sister handle it and went to lie with the dog on the rug her great-grandmother had made. The house felt empty, even with so many mourning people drifting through it.

That night, she lay in their cramped double bed and tried to breathe in his rich scent of Man and shampoo, but already it was fading. Comfortless, she wept herself to sleep.

Her psychic sister, her Linda, stayed on to help. There were meals to be cooked, garbage to be taken out. Mundane things that could, by turns, console or destroy. Alejandra felt guilty watching her perform them all, even going so far as to dust the shelf of Portuguese knickknacks Alejandra had collected during her year abroad.

“This is unhealthy,” warned Linda. “You cannot mope inside forever.”

Alejandra ignored her. Inside was where Marcello remained.

After some days, “Go outside! You are so pale it frightens me.”

Alejandra decided that pale was the new tan.

“Could you at least take the time to groom yourself?” groused Linda.

Did cave-people shave? argued Alejandra. Where they fastidious about their appearance?

Within three weeks, Linda had had enough. “I will not play nursemaid to a baby. God helps those who help themselves. You would do well to remember that.” Though she had always been welcome in their home, she closed the door behind herself with a certain finality.

Alejandra wept. The dog hid beneath the bed.

More days passed. It rained. The dishwasher sat half-empty while the sink became a tower of dishes soiled by lukewarm leftovers. The bed stank of sweat and tears.

Then the fourteenth came, the day of Alejandra’s period since she was fourteen, and she knew that there could be no going back.

With the alarm clock, she rose, and for the first time since she had left the hospital, felt some irritation when the sheets pulled on the floor. The shower was brutal- high water pressure. The pelting shocked her into wakefulness. Narrowly, she avoided the puddles left on the tiled floor and looked herself in the mirror.

Beside her stood Marcello, his hair damp and ruffled, a razor in one hand and a towel about his modest waist.

Their eyes met in the glass, their weariness and grief reflected clearly.

“I miss you, Alejandra,” he whispered through a throat clogged with sorrow.

She wished she had tears left to cry, but none came for her. “I love you, Marcello.”

As though he could see her, knew her, he pressed his square fingers to lush lips, and then touched them to the mirror’s surface. She could see his fingerprints reflecting off the silver backing. Alejandra covered his hand with her own, now even more slight and delicate than in life. They remained, reaching across forbidden boundaries to the place where eyes seem to look directly at one another.

Reluctantly, Marcello pulled away, and resumed shaving. She watched from the wall, hanging like the towels she would never use again, and drifted after him when he returned to the closet to get dressed. With a last, forlorn look, Marcello gave the dog its breakfast, and left for work.

It wasn’t until midmorning that Alejandra, in her heartbreak, realized she had not made Marcello lunch, breakfast, or even a morning coffee.

Curling up once more with the dog on her grandmother’s rug, she wished to disappear. Death was no excuse.

If you didn’t have money and you had to grow old and die somewhere, this was as fair a place as any. The staff was kind and attentive for the most part, and the place wasn’t exactly decorated, but you could bring almost anything of your own that you wanted, as long as it could fit in the 22x18ft room without giving the staff a problem. He’d seen people expire in worse.

David… David, that was his name. It had taken him longer to recall it today than it had yesterday. The effort was exhausting, but he didn’t move. He had nowhere to go.

Like a victorious king, a new insurgent swept into the room. The fly went on a cursory circuit about and between and over David’s things, at last deciding that they were beneath it. It landed on the window frame– directly in the path of David’s line of sight.

Bzzzzbzzz…

“Shut up,” David mutters belatedly. A beat, two, three, four, “Shut up! God-damned-blasted– Nurse!” With effort, he grasps for the call button, eyes searching wildly for the invader.

“Nurse! Nurse, there’s someone in my room! …Nurse!”

At last the old fellow’s eyes land on the insect, and he falls silent. He squints hard, trying to see it. “Little bastard,” he whispers hoarsely, spitting. “You… why are you here? How dare you come here? I suppose you think you’re smart. Breaking in on an old man. Making him feel insecure. Well, I am secure. I am. I am!” He stops for a moment, jaw waggling, trying to regain control of its spasms.

“You don’t know the half of it. What it’s like here. Surrounded by- by OLD people! Your hear me, Frank!? You’re OLD!”

The man shuffling his way down the corridor turns to look in the room. “So’re you,” he replies obstinately, with no patience for the other man’s shit. Resolutely, he continues his measured trundle.

David stares again at the wall, jaw working slowly. “Bloody-damned… you dunno what it’s like to be left somewhere, do you?” His gaze lands again on the fly. “Left here, all by yourself in this god forsaken hellhole. People always coddling you… they treat us like babies. Can’t walk… can’t talk… Can’t think! They treat us like we dunno how to think! Like we’re stupid! Like we like that! It’s- it’s damned insulting. You know that? I am… insulted. I’m… I’m damned… insulted. Being here. I am. I’m insulted…”

“How are you feeling Mr. Bennet?” a chipper woman comes in wearing the pink-rimmed pin of nursing home staff.

David mumbles incoherently.

“That’s good,” she smiles, taking the handles of his wheelchair. Her calm manner is coached to be soothing. “Come along, it’s time for your afternoon medicines anyway.”

The wheelchair squeaks every time the wheel turns, and, uninhibited, the fly does what he does best. He flies.

The megalithic air conditioner next to me’s busted. Trent took a swing at it last time he was here and knocked it hellways to Sunday, so now I don’t got no AC. It’s chill, though. Cuz I got me crooners and I gots me a moon, and that means I own the night, with its twinklings and its wooshings and its leanings. Leaning like the buildings seem to lean over the streets, looming at us as we waltz on by, half drunk and the other half skunked, as we stumble on in too-high shoes and laugh raucously. Leaning like those skunk-drunk girlies who leer like prostitutes at any piece of flesh they pass, tipsy-like. The night leans like I lean out my window, bra-less in my sleepshirt and breathe it in. It feels cooler out here somehow, with Frankie on my radio and streetlamps bathing me in their glow. So cool it makes me wanna dance and sway, right here in my window, in the oversized t-shirt that still doesn’t quite cover my butt so my panties show to all the world. Or all the world that cares to see what goes on in Apartment 9B at 1am on a hot July night.

Bet you thought I’d say August, didn’t you? Everybody says August. If it’s hot, it must be August, they think, but not ‘round here. Here the city bakes no matter what time of summer it is. Summer’s just one big oven you’ve gotta stumble your way through, same way you scuttle through winter slush til it thaws out inta spring. Spring and fall are enigmas. They come and before you know it they’re gone. A few days of perfect weather and then we’re caught in the extreme again, pushed and pulled and tugged and shoved, but we’ve gotta keep passing over that center point. July’s the center of the year, so right here it’s July. Not August. Tough shits if you don’t like it.

I’ve lived here a long time. Not all of it in this tiny apartment, just a long, long time in this ugly, baking city. I did my time. I went to preschool and dayschool and middle school and high school and then I even did some college. ‘Nuff to get me a job working reception for a 24-hour doctor’s office down the street and a couple’a blocks over. They don’t talk to me ‘bout doctoring and I don’t make then listen to my crooners. It’s a deal and it works like clockwork.

There used to be a clock over what used to be a bank that sat across the street from what is now my apartment, but this part’a town’s long since been too run down for that kinda shit. Now it’s a dance club and a bar and a delicatessen, and the clock was took down for a big sign that says Marty’s. I can tell you one thing- I ain’t never seen this Marty fella, but if I do, I’m gonna kick his ass for putting his bigass name right in front of my window. A lady can’t sleep with all that bright pink light streaming in. I ask you- what kinda man named Marty wants his name in lights in _pink_?

At any rate, I can’t tell what time it is anymore just by looking out the window. I used to be able to, right when I first moved in. The bank was closed but the clock still worked. Then Marty moved in and now all I get’s fluorescent whatnot. But Marty’s major business hours are winding down and the sign’s not so bright right now, so instead of pink, I’m bathed in golden streetlamp, and I feel like a goddess of the night, in a shiny gold skin and my clean white t-shirt.

I can’t help it. There’s a groove coming from Marty’s and my crooners are really on it tonight, they’re singin’ it like it is, baby, and I just can’t stop my butt from raisin’ itself and wiggling round and around. “I am here!” it says, shaking itself in the window as the rest of me follows, exhilarated. “I am here and I dance, and you can shove it if you don’t like it! Take that, Marty’s! I don’t need no cover charge to be free!” So I dance and I shimmy and I turn up the radio, laughing as I do so because it is Saturday night and I am wild.

There are always people passing on the streets beneath me. Going by to clubs or going home or calling cabs or finding whores. They never look up; they are always too busy to see me. One time I sat out here with my middle finger up for a whole long hour and nobody noticed, they was all so wrapped up in their stupid ol’ lives. I have a life, too, ya know. And right now I’m dancing it. And right now, some guy’s stopped in the flow of the river of people and he is looking up at me.

He isn’t Trent. I can see that even in the briefest of moments when I first catch sight of him, in the time it takes for me to realize that I have been spotted, and that it’s a man, and that he is handsome, and that he isn’t someone I know. In the next moment I falter, my rhythm broken. I’ve been seen and I’m caught. Caught in the act of enjoying my life and my body, like my mama meant me to. Halfheartedly, my muscles continue though my mind has stopped and my eyes are on something else. They are trained on the guy down on the street below, as he looks back at me, and he doesn’t care when people bump into him. He isn’t Trent.

Trent is my “manager”. He thinks that I can sing, or dance, or act, or one or all of those, and he wants to try to make money off me. Off _my_ apparent talent, mind you. I don’t really like him, but he’s good for a screw, cuz he thinks that I look up to him, that I want him to represent me, but really I just want him to stop being so full of himself and go make himself useful. Like by fixing my air conditioner instead’a breaking it. He hangs around only cuz I let him, and someday I’m gonna throw all his stuff out my window. Maybe some guy at Marty’s will pick it up and use it to wipe their toilets.

My eyes are locked with the stranger’s. Even from this far away, I can see that they are dark, darker than his hair and his eyebrows and even his eyelashes. Yes, I can see his eyelashes from here, and I think they are a paler brown, but it’s hard to tell in this golden light. He has his hands in his pockets; a sweatshirt or something, Lord knows why. It’s ninety something degree even though the sun’s been down forever. Stored heat in the concrete, you know. But he’s looking at me, and he doesn’t seem to care, so I look back at him, and I don’t really care that I’m not wearing a bra, even if I was just dancing to the crooners. Somewhat impulsively, I want to invite him up.

You’ve got to understand, though, that I don’t normally do those things. Sure, I’ll fuck around with Trent when he’s here cuz, ya know, he’s Trent. Not like he wouldn’t be trying to get into my pants anyway, so why not take advantage of him before he does it to me? I should be getting something more out of this deal than some motormouth hanging around my apartment and drinking all my beer.

Yeah-huh, so I put my hands on the windowsill, leaning out just a little bit, letting my panties show down to the street. I wonder what he’s like, if his lips are real smooth, or his hair is real soft. It looks soft from up here, all shiny and gleaming and clean. I don’t know many guys with clean hair, not like that. For that matter, he looks like he knows how to shave, and that’s important too.

A new song comes on, and I can feel myself swaying already. I close my eyes and let my hips pick it up, find the beat, bring it home. I straighten up and let my body go, moving and swaying to the rhythm of my lounge lizards. I’m lazy like them and alive like them. I am trapped in this moment; only my window and the street below exist. I am a princess- I am Rapunzel cheering on her suitor. I am Juliet calling to her Romeo- but I am teasing him, too, and I know it. I think he knows it, too, because he is still standing below me, the only boulder in a preoccupied river.

I twist. I bend. I rock, and I feel every inch of my body. Words like “sinuous” keep me going. I don’t know where I heard that word. Nobody gets me cuz I use words like that. They don’t get how I can be a street kid and a scholar at the same time. “They’re different sides of the same coin,” I tell them, and they just shake their heads at me. Well, that’s their deal and this is mine. Cuz no scholar knows how to swing her hips quite like I do and no street girl’s got the finesse to do it right. Sensual-like.

I can feel his eyes all over me. He held back at first but now he’s tempted and I’m reeling him in. He’s feeling it too. He’s here inside the room with me, not on the street anymore; he’s here and he’s touching me, dancing with me. We don’t care who sees us down on the street below because we are in a different world from them. His hands are smooth but rough; hard but not, ya know? Guy’s hands. Short nails. A little hairy. Delicious hands. The hands I always knew I _really_ wanted holding me, not some pansy-ass manicured, inhuman ones. He wraps one around my waist and lets the other play in the air with mine as I leave one on his shoulder. He’s just that perfect bit taller than me, and his eyes are brown. Toffee. I stare into them as we swing together, my lounge lizard serenading us not two feet away.

It’s heady in here, with the heat and the pink and the gold and the dark. He spins me, and I come back to him, my hips lining up perfectly with his. I am wearing a smooth summer dress, the kind that just flows down your torso, and he is in dress pants and a button-up shirt… but he’s left the top buttons undone just for me. The party is over and we are the last ones on the floor, the last couple dancing at the wedding, long after everybody else has left. His nose is just a little tiny bit crooked, like someone beat it that way when he was little. His eyes are smiling at me as his free hand finds its way to my neck and I start to smile back before he kisses me. It doesn’t matter how hot it is outside, because all I can feel right now is the heat that we two create.

Languorous. That’s me. Swimming through the air and tasting imaginary lips with only the crooners for company. Baby. My eyes are still closed from that kiss I can taste in my mind, but when I open my lips for air, the illusion is broken, and I am back in apartment 9B, in front of my grubby old window, looking down onto my street, lit by Marty’s and the streetlamps and the occasional car driving by the delicatessen. Wistfully, I open my eyes, and drop them down to the pavement below. But it is empty. Taken aback, I lean out the window, the better to search. Where’d that motherfucker go?!

He is walking away. His hands still in his pockets, just another body in the sea of bodies. I can’t believe it. My skin has a fresh sheen of sweat on it, and he’s walking away, like he doesn’t care, like we have shared nothing at 1am on a Saturday night in my street. He doesn’t even stop at the crossroad, just keeps on going with a li’l look left and right, to make sure he doesn’t get run over. I lose him beyond the next streetlamp, in the twilight between gold circles.

My hair is plastered to the back of my neck. Drunken party girls laugh as they stumble home, and it’s an ugly noise. My crooners try to comfort me, singing their songs of broken loves and far-off homes. The radio DJ comes on, with his too-smooth, too-calm voice, reminding me what time it is and that I can donate to the station, if I have the money next week with my next paycheck. But I don’t hear him; I’m still staring into the darkness. Resolutely, I shake myself off.

‘I hope he’s got the mother of all boners,’ I think maliciously, and I slam the window closed.

Where the wooshing of cars driving between the great columns of steel and glass buildings is all that’s heard on the street. Where all you see when you look into buildings, and cars, and eyes, is the reflection of the brighter lights outside. Where people walk by with their heads down; they never meet each other’s gazes. They’re too afraid to.

It’s where everything seems darker, always. It’s where a teenage guy stands with his hands in the pockets of his pleather jacket, and watches the glaring, gaudy light flicker on the extra-wide TVs in a display window. He’s not really watching them.

“Last night’s attack on the hill lead to massive losses on both sides. Here with me now is Kurt Monroe, RHN’s expert guerilla strategist. Thank you for being here, Kurt.”

“Thanks for inviting me, Lucille.”

Someone walks past him and their shoulders collide. “Watch it!” comes the throaty reply, more intended malice in it than actual oomph, and the insurgents’ shoulders hunch once more as he hurries on his way.

Paul watches him with guarded eyes, and turns away from the smiling anchors on the TV to begin his own walk home.

Home isn’t really all that far from here. It’s a few blocks down, and over; the flashing, zippy, fluorescent advertisements fade away somewhat, and he climbs the creaky metal steps to his front door. He’s lucky, he knows. A lot of people don’t have homes to go to.

*

Inside is just like the outside, lit by the yellow glow of old light bulbs. The TV is on here, too. Brian is glued to it, playing vicious video games, his swaying punctuated by the realistically pathetic screams of actors pretending to be dying soldiers. Paul glances at him briefly, kicks off his shoes, and makes his way to the kitchen.

Their mother is seated at the tiny kitchen table, a single fluorescent light fixture shining down on the room like a heinously cheerful bug zapper. As Paul enters, she doesn’t look up. “Hi, hon. Enjoy your walk?”

“Yeah, Mom,” he says, leaning down and kissing her on her cheek. It’s still soft. Not soft in the way it was when he was little. The elasticity is fading. It’s soft in the used way. Pliable. His eyes skip from Denise’s tangled hair to the masses of shiny papers strewn across the table. She’s clipping coupons. Again.

She doesn’t have to say anything more; he knows where dinner is. Paul crosses to the refrigerator, its chrome handle a remnant of long outdated fashions, and opens the freezer. Four frozen dinners sit in a neat stack on an otherwise empty shelf. Each a different brand, each a different meal. The rest of the freezer is full of them.

Unthinkingly, Paul reaches for his, and pauses. “Who’s coming for dinner?”

“Matt’s home on leave, remember?”

“Oh. Yeah.” Paul tosses his dinner on the stained counter.

“He’ll be home at 7,” his mother continues absently, flipping blindly through the ads.

“Sure.” Five minutes and thirty seconds, fifty-percent power. Stir. Two minutes at full. Let sit. Stir.

A groan comes from the living room. “I can’t believe I died! Dumb cat!”

“Brian, leave that cat alone! You know she just wants you to play with her!”

“Why can’t we give her to an animal shelter or something?”

“You begged me for that cat for your tenth birthday!”

Paul walks to the living room, and picks up the indignant tabby, scratching her head. She purrs, body molding to his immediately.

“Make her shut up- I can’t hear,” Brian complains, restarting his game.

Without a word, Paul carries the tabby upstairs. She’s happier with him. She knows Brian won’t pet her, especially when he’s playing his games. She must have been out to piss him off on purpose. ‘Smart cat,’ Paul thinks, stretching out on his bed and letting her make herself comfortable on his chest.

She’s still purring when he wakes up nearly an hour later. Groggily, he looks at the clock and winces. His dinner will be inedible, gone hard and cold in the microwave.

The cat sits up abruptly, and bounds off. There is the sound of the front door opening, and Paul’s stomach drops.

“Hey, Mom! I’m home!”

A hero’s welcome.

“Oooooh, Matt!” Their mother’s chair scrapes on the linoleum floor, and then she and he are hugging. Slowly, Paul gets up, and runs a heavy hand through his hair. It’ll have to do.

“Oh, Matt, you’ve grown, I swear! Let me see you! Oh, Matty… My baby’s home!”

“Hey, take it easy, Mom,” Paul can’t remember ever hearing that loving note in his older brother’s tone before. Or that weariness. He trudges downstairs, and stands extraneously at the foot.

“Put those down, put those down! Come on in, Matty. I’ve got your favorite for dinner- pork and potatoes. And ice cream. Let me take your coat. Look at all these pins!” Denise holds the heavy jacket, running her cracked fingers along the rainbow of pins. Her hair is still a mess. She’s still wearing her old, worn, sea green bathrobe, the one she’s had forever. Brian was probably born in that bathrobe. There are dark, puffy bags under her eyes, and her skin is sallow. The yellow light doesn’t help. “Paul, come get your brother’s things.”

The teenager walks forward, hands in his pockets, and meets the eyes of the man who is also his brother. There’s a full four-inch height difference between them now. They size one another up, remembering that the last time they saw each other, it was nearly a foot separating them. There are other differences. Matt’s hair is shorter. Much shorter. It makes him look like a different person. He’s still in uniform, still has his hat on. Paul hates this man, and the creature he’s turned Matthew into.

Mutely, Paul takes Matt’s duffle from the floor. They exchange a wordless greeting, and Paul disappears down the hallway to put Matt’s bag in his old room.

“How was the flight, Matty?”

Chuckle. “Left a lot to be desired, but, hey, that’s flying for you.”

Tinkling, girlish laughter. “That it is, that it is. Brian, come say hello to your brother.”

Grunt. She lets the kid get away with it.

“Christine called to ask when you’d be home, you know.” Her voice fades; they’ve gone into the kitchen.

“Aw, no, Mom… What’d you tell her?”

“I told her you wouldn’t be home ‘til Thursday. After that, you’ve got to sort it out yourself. She’s such a nice girl, Matt. She obviously likes you.”

“Mom,” Matt’s uncomfortable with the topic.

Paul lugs the duffel onto Matt’s bed in the dark. Fumbling a bit, he turns on the lamp beside the bed. His brother’s room looks like something out of a 1950s recreation catalogue. Plaid. Baseball clippings. Wooden furniture. Model airplanes hanging from the ceiling.

“Brian! Brian, put that thing down! Say hello to Matt!”

“Just a minute, Mom!”

Paul glances at the drawer where Matt always kept his stash. Drugs. Porn. Condoms. Bad attempts at sketching. If Matt was a girl, he’d keep his diary there.

“Brian!”

“Just a minute!!”

Paul turns away from the too-perfect, empty scene and plods downstairs.

“It’s OK, Mom.” There’s an attempt at laughter in the voice, even if it falls short. “I bet I know where he is.”

Somehow, Paul knows. Perhaps he’s been watching people too long. He just knows. Time seems to slow down as he puts one unsteady foot in front of the other.

Matt stares at the TV with its mock battles, his every muscle tense. Blindly, he pushes past Paul and goes to bed.

Their mother is still chattering happily in the kitchen. “He’s always glued to that thing these days,” a loving chuckle. She hates those games. “So, Matt- Matt?” She comes to the door and looks at Paul.

Paul shrugs helplessly.

*

The next morning, the world is another place. Paul gets up early to take another walk, and to think. The sun is shining. It makes everything seem slightly brighter, even though the light never really reaches the cement.

People flow around him like mercury. Heads down, shoulders hunched, and eyes averted. Something in him wants to meet their eyes; seek them out. He wants to defy convention and find another aching human soul in this built-up monstrosity. Someone else like himself. The neighborhood changes, and there are more veterans on the sidewalk. The lucky ones are still asleep. Any one of them could have been, could become, Matt. Gone mad, or just useless.

Ahead is the newsstand where Mom- Denise- would always stop, a boy in each hand and another staring into the distance boredly, and skim the racks for new magazines. Venus and Rapture and the like. Stupid things full of clothes she would never be able to afford or wear, gossiping about people she would never meet, and stuffed with samples she would never use. He asked her why she bought them, once.

“I like to look at the pictures,” she had told him, as she grappled with Brian, trying to get him to eat his peas. Paul must have been about seven.

Ten years gone by. And the stand is still here. It doesn’t do much to comfort him, not here, where nothing changes.

A man stands on either side of the counter, one selling, one buying. Both talking. Both hushed, careful to keep their voices low. At once, Paul knows it’s not a conversation they want overheard, and that it is imperative he hear it.

“…the hill was a bungle.”

“Course it was. But whose?”

“Military’s, of course.”

“Don’t shit me. The military knows what it’s doing. Gov must’a put pressure on them. Said, ‘Boys, this war’s takin’ too long. Wrap it up.’”

The man behind the counter rolls his eyes. “Army guys don’t know shit.”

“They don’t take dumb risks, Joe. They don’t wanna die. The gov’ll cut their funds.”

“Like they couldn’t afford it. Defense budget’s inflated past next week.”

“It always is.”

“We spend more on defense than anything else.”

“You want them flaggies ta take over?”

“You know they won’t.”

“They could.”

“And my eldest could come home tomorrow and say the war’s over.”

“Don’t joke about that.”

Their eyes follow Paul as he walks by, resolutely facing forward. They wait until he has passed too far to hear them before they continue. Always hushed.

Paul fights down the tiniest flicker of something in his chest. The city’s full of it. Full of all these hushed, wary voices.

When he gets home, Matt’s sitting on the stoop, smoking a cigarette. One of those new, specially flavored, non-damaging ones they brought out specially for the army. There’s a whole box of them sitting on Matt’s dresser now.

Paul stops a step below him, hands weighing down the sides of his brown jacket. Matt looks up at him. “What?”

“I thought you didn’t smoke.”

“Didn’t. Don’t.” Self-consciously, Matt tosses it away. “Where’d you go so early?”

“Town. A walk.” Paul leans against the stair rail.

Matt’s fingers fidget without anything to do, and he scratches the back of his bare neck. He’s only in old jeans and a white t-shirt, despite the morning chill. He looks up at Paul again. “You do that a lot these days?”

“Yeah. Sort of.”

“S’good exercise.”

“Yeah.”

A neighbor starts her car, and drives away. It doesn’t leave any visible smog, but the noxious fumes sting Paul’s nose and eyes. They always try to improve things without going so far as to make them environmentally sound.

Matt stares after her, and his fingers meet at the tips beneath his chin. “Think I can come next time?”

Paul shifts his weight, ready to go back in. “Yeah.”

As he closes the door, Matt lights another cigarette.

It’s all the same anyway.

*

“Christine called again,” Denise bustles around the kitchen, a spatula in one hand and a plate of browned sausages in the other. The microwave pings, as hard-boiled eggs wait to be served. In the time that Matt has been home, she has returned to life. She glows again. She combs her hair. She puts on makeup. Her voice always has that special trill.

Brian doesn’t care. He just wants to be left alone in front of the TV with his game console. He doesn’t want his mom to give him big kisses on his cheek while he’s eating, or to remind him to clean up his room. He liked when she didn’t care.

“Again?” Matt glances up from the newspaper. He shaved this morning. He smells like aftershave; something akin to their father’s favorite brand. Perhaps a descendant product. His hair is growing out, and he’s slowly relaxing. He’s like Dad in a lot of ways now. Denise treats him like an adult, and he acts like one. “When? What did you tell her?”

“Oh, you know,” Denise’s tone is too gay: strained. “A little of this, a little of that. Us girls catching up on old times.”

Paul glances up from his food. Were they, too, talking in hushed voices? Hell, even Brian’s friends talked in hushed voices. Then Brian would shift uncomfortably and change the subject; especially when he saw that Paul was watching them.

“Did she leave a number?”

“On the notepad.”

“Thanks.”

The family eats in silence. The oldest brother has replaced the father, in a warped sort of way. The mother has put on a cheery façade, forcing herself not to remember that in a few weeks, her son will be gone again. She doesn’t want to acknowledge that Paul, too, in a few months, will be the subject of the gruesome photographs on the front page of every newspaper in the country.

Shiny photographs of men in uniform, carrying weapons said to be accurate a mile away, even in the smog of grenade smoke. Even if the soldier can’t shoot straight. That’s progress for you: better ways to kill.

“Anyone want more hash browns?”

Breakfast finishes, and they disperse. Denise does the laundry. Brian returns to his video games. Matt closes the kitchen door, and calls Christine. Paul sits with the cat on the stairs, letting her nuzzle his hand.

It’s almost like a normal Saturday for a while. Then the kitchen door opens, and the cat slinks away. Paul goes to the living room, certain something is wrong.

It is.

Matt’s blood runs cold. Another virgin actor is torn apart by a badly rendered three-dimensional missile. ‘Blood’ sprays across the battlefield, and Brian’s army continues on, ravaging the make-believe landscape.

“YEAH!” Brian crows triumphantly, as he takes careful aim and sets off the final animation. He eagerly watches the nuke careen between chicken wire and broken bodies, zeroing in on the terrified face of his opponent.

The enemy’s scream is long, and loud.

And then the screen is black. Matt stands up from behind the TV, hand shaking faintly as he throws the cord away, like a dead snake. Disgust is written in every line of his face.

“NO! You loser! How could you do that!? It took me three months to get this far!”

“You don’t have any idea, do you!?” A deep voice bellows up from the depths of Matt’s chest, and all five of them are shocked. The cat escapes the brawl. Paul takes Denise’s trembling hand, putting his arm around her; being strong for her, as they watch that which has possessed her firstborn son and his oldest brother rage against the family baby. “You haven’t a clue! It’s all just a game to you, is it? Those are people dying!”

Brian whimpers, staring up at Matt with wide eyes. They shine brightly, wet. There’s the faint smell of urine. Matt’s eyes are blazing with a fire none of them have ever seen before. He is another person.

His diatribe lasts until Brian has broken down in shame and tears. Still, he would continue on, but Denise is crying as well, and Paul’s eyes are moist. The elder brothers’ eyes meet, Paul’s pleading, and Matt recoils, seeing himself reflected there.

He flexes his hands, unsure what to do. Without realizing it, they fall back into a ready combat position. Gruffly, he walks over Brian and to the front door. “I’m going to have a smoke.”

*

It’s almost noon. The tabby lies in Paul’s window, sunning herself luxuriously as he strokes her mottled fur. Below them, and a little to the right, Matt sits on the stoop and smokes another of those smokeless cigarettes. It really makes the old name redundant. Things aren’t what they used to be. The fumes that drift their invisible way up are making Paul dizzy, but he doesn’t want to leave Matt alone. He doesn’t want Matt to get hurt. He’s also a little afraid of him.

A car pulls up, and stops in front of their house. It’s not old, or new, or expensive, or cheap: just somewhere in the middle. Matt’s eyes watch it pull up, and Paul follows his gaze to the driver.

She steps out carefully, and closes the door, key in hand. Her purse is still on the front seat. She leans against the car, and she and Matt stare at each other for a long, long time. Finally, he throws his fag away, a little ashamed of himself.

“It isn’t easy, is it?”

Matt laughs bitterly. “What the hell kind of dumb question is that?”

Christine’s eyes are sympathetic, and pitying. “What are you going to do with them?”

When he speaks, Matt’s voice is hushed. Paul almost misses it. “Can’t tell what you don’t know, Christine.”

She sighs, and stands. Reluctantly, she opens the car door and removes an embossed hardcover. “Sign my yearbook? For old times?” she offers it to him with a pen.

Matt signs the book, and hands it back to her. They say their good-byes, and this time their voices are too quiet for Paul to hear. She drives away, and Matt comes back inside.

The tabby jumps from the sill and leaves the room. She follows Matt into his room. Paul is slower. He leans in Matt’s doorway, watching the cat rub against his brother’s back.

Matt turns on the bed and looks up at Paul. He almost smiles. He has dark patches under his eyes like Denise’s. “Hey, you,” he says. “C’mere.”

Paul does, and he sits on the other side of the bed. The room looks more like Matt’s room again; the cover isn’t smoother than smooth, and there’s miscellaneous junk on the bedside table, and clothes thrown onto the chair by the window.

Matt’s dog tags hang from a drawer knob.

Methodically, Matt opens a small white envelope, and removes the contents. Paul frowns, watching him. They say things like “Passport” and “Flight 882.” He doesn’t get it. Or, he does, but he doesn’t want to. Or he can’t. He shakes his head, denying it. “Matt-“

“Shut up,” Matt says grimly, and Paul does. He sorts through the papers, naming them all. Fake ID and plane tickets. To Canada.

“Matt…” Paul starts quietly, head whirling. “Matt, you’ll get caught… They have border patrols and shit… they have your name… they have your thumbprint…”

“It’s not for me, dumbass.” The papers are pressed into Paul’s palm. His fingers close over them instinctively. Willingly.

A moment of silent communication between the brothers. Paul gives a minute nod, and stands. The cat mewls in protest.

Matt nods back, and gives a mocking, self-loathing salute.

Paul gives a giddy grin and returns it; Thumb and index finger touching, the other three splayed outward. The salute of the anti-war activists. Matt grins back, and adopts the fingering.

*

Fall, and Paul is at the border. His heart is pounding. His hands are thrust into the depths of his pockets. It’s a helluva lot colder this far north. He wishes he’d brought gloves. There’s a long line of people waiting to get to the desk. Every one of them clutches their papers like their dying hopes. Which, of course, they are.

It is Paul’s turn. He hands the man his passport, and awkwardly shifts the weight of his bag over his shoulders. The man is checking his papers. They’re all in order. Paul triple-checked them a thousand times.

He watches the stamp fall with a thunking thock onto each page. Once, twice, three times. He watches the clerk sign his name to the documents, lending them validity. Paul is so, so close.

As the man hands back the papers, he meets Paul’s eyes; holds onto the passport and the stubs for a second too long. Paul’s gut falls into his shoes. It’s over.

“Enjoy your stay, Mr. Barnabas.” A quick nod, and the eye contact is broken, the man returned to his repetitive tasks.

“Thank you.” It’s so smooth. It’s so subtle. It’s so surreal.

Paul is walking through the gate, putting the papers back in his backpack, his suitcase floating neatly behind him. He walks through the terminal doors, and sunlight- real, white, warm sunlight- nearly blinds him.

Matt is back on the front. Fighting daily for his survival. Brian and Denise and the cat live in the bubble of frustration that is teenage sons coming of age and their mothers. But Paul… Paul is free.

With a giddy grin, he walks on, and leaves the city of hushed voices behind. With a smile, he walks into his father’s arm, and smells the glory of sweet and musky aftershave.

Her cigarette curls into the gloom, where she leans beside Anne Marie’s window and watches the sunlight that appears and disappears in odd patches on the floor. The curtains still swing, tempting her to draw them back and see what is outside. The sunlight glows like broken bits of paradise, while the heavy paisley fabric may as well be the iron curtain now hanging over Europe.

She takes another slow drag and leans her head against the wall. ‘All this time,’ she thinks morosely, the words becoming bitter in her mind. ‘And all that learning wasted.’ Utterly, inescapably wasted. On this. On children and a husband and a house- just like her mother. A college education spoiled on babies who spit and screamed and never though to say thank you, thank you, Mommy, for giving up your life for me. Instead they tug on her earrings, her last attempt to stay fashionable, and put marbles in their mouths and even up their noses. Hunter Jr., he did that just yesterday, showing off for his little brother, who thought it was hilarious and tried to do it too. And Anne Marie kissed the neighbor’s cat.

They’re even smelly when they’re sleeping, and she can’t stand it, except for the tobacco, but that’s just covering one ugly smell with another. Her own mother would throw a fit if she knew her only girl, her Karen, The Smart One, was smoking in the baby’s nursery.

‘The nursery,’ Karen thinks shrilly, able to hear her mother’s voice within her skull, snorting at the old woman’s predictability. Who has nurseries these days? Who can afford them? The rich. The ostentatious. The extravagant. The lucky? But then again, there just don’t seem to be babies in the world anymore. Everybody either has ‘kids’ or is a kid. Kids older than Hunter and Annie and Mike. Kids who hate everything their parents were or did and want to change the world. They reject everything that worked for the last 30 years and create this new counter-culture of old jeans and unwashed hair and sex and drugs and who knows what else. Karen doesn’t. She’s inside with the ‘babies’. ‘Little’ Michael is already three. Babies don’t know how to play hopscotch.

If only she had been born just a few short years later. . . just a few. She married Hunt Lucas the year before the Beatles arrived. Maybe she wouldn’t have if she’d known that they would show up soon with their bowl cuts and their accents and their yeah, yeah, yeahs. She could have been swept up with the rest of the ‘kids’ in the new wave of defiance. She would be perfect for this era of rock music and freedom. She would sing “Let’s Live For Today” and dance naked in the rain, the wet drops beading on her breasts, reminding her that she was no one’s dependant. That she was free, free to go it alone, free to need and be needed by only herself.

She doesn’t need to see the photograph perched ominously on their mantle to know what it looks like. The one that has come to symbolize all that she hates. Hunt’s face is smiling at the camera, and she is smiling with him- below him. It’s a photograph from 1960, when they had first met, at college. She’s still dressed like it’s 1955, because it might as well have been. Her long skirt matches his sweater, tied nicely around his shoulders. Matching was big back then, before girls dressed like men and men wore their hair like women. A part of her misses that, and the rest of her reviles it. With Hunt’s arms around her in that photo, he already has her prisoner. She used to think she wanted that entrapment.

But Karen knows, too, what was sitting beside them on the grass- no, they were beside Hunt, out of her reach: her textbooks.

How could he not have known that she would want to go on studying? He had looked so surprised the first time she brought it up. It was over burgers at White Castle, while they were studying for finals. She wanted to be a copywriter, working her way up through the ranks, so that she was a part of magazine ads and TV commercials and radio spots. More than a job, she wanted a career. She wanted to follow in the steps of brave, enterprising women, and break new ground, make a better world for all women to work in. It was so, so close then in their junior year. She almost had it within her grasp.

“Three kids,” Hunt mused, wiping ketchup off his hand onto his napkin, not really trying to get clean, just doing it out of habit. “Four is too many. My mom has four, never got a moment’s rest.”

The words struck her as odd, so she paused in sipping her milkshake. “Why three?” Still seemed like a lot to her…

“Well, I don’t want that to happen to you, baby doll,” he smiled, with a patronizing affection that now makes her stomach roil.

Delighted, she smiled back, and reached over to take his hand. He cared about her and he wanted her to have time for her dreams! He did! He understood! “I love you, Hunt.”

‘I love you, Hunt,’ she mocks now, just under her breath before taking another drag on her fading cigarette. She never used to smoke before they got married. Not much before Hunter Jr., either.

Anne Marie rolls over, with a sleepy murmur, and Karen freezes. Shit. The last thing she needs is a sleepy four year old. Across the hallway, Michael’s dreaming like a baby and Hunter’s napping with a toy truck somebody gave him for his last birthday. And somewhere deep inside Karen’s belly, is the big number four. Four kids. Just like his mother. Hunt doesn’t know.

Karen’s shoulders slump, her eyes blurring so the patches of sunlight become a rippling lake. A fourth child, when she herself had never truly wanted even one. It was Hunt’s eagerness and fate that lead to Hunter Junior… and then Anne Marie… and then Michael… and then she swore she’d put her foot down, swore she wouldn’t have another. She could barely handle these three, could barely keep them under control. Hunt’s paycheck just covered them all, kept them fed and clothed, but Michael still was destined for Hunter’s hand-me-downs and Anne Marie’s, too, to a certain extent. When Michael was born, she nearly went mad with the chaos. A four year old constantly demanding her attention and two tiny babies… but then Hunter started school, and like magic, she began to see the light there at the end of the tunnel.

Children grow up. Soon they’ll all be in school and she can have a whole day to herself. A day to actually wash her hair and shave her legs and mend her husband’s fraying socks. A week to do grocery shopping and clean the house and cook them all dinner. A school year… to relax… or- or maybe- maybe she can even get a job…

But not if she’s got a fourth baby to look after. Her hand finds its way to her belly, the neat little place where it just begins to curve out, thanks to three pregnancies before. In a few months her stomach will start to swell like that again and she’ll feel cranky and humongous and angrier than she ever was before. How could Hunt do this to her? How could he be so careless with those goddamned condoms? She’d told him she wanted to go on the pill, but he just didn’t trust ‘those things’. Rubber worked good enough before, for his parents an’ everyone else’s parents, and it’ll work just fine for them right now, too.

‘Well it isn’t working now you fat clod!’ Maliciously, she strides from the room and jams her cigarette out on the coffee table ashtray. The rest of the house is quiet, but hell if it isn’t worse than three noisy kids running around. She stands there indecisively, without purpose now that she has nothing to smoke. She almost goes for another, but then she sees the light streaming through the living room window, and she’s reminded of last Thursday’s conversation.

It’s a word that no one’s supposed to say. A word no good person says. Like sex, or rebellion, or atheist. The teenagers down the block get to say those things all the time, but Louise at George Washington Park couldn’t say it last week, and so she and Karen carefully stepped around it.

“Mary got one,” said Louise, as their kids bumbled around the playground, shouting ideas to each other and kicking up woodchips and sand. Her eyes stay on her six year old, but her voice is low and tacit. They could be discussing the weather, or someone’s new tablecloth. “Went out one day and, snip, it was gone.”

“Did Frank know?” Karen breathes, amazed and reviled at once.

“No. Not ’til after. Sarah said that Mary had a limp at the bake sale the next Saturday. But it must’ve worked, because there’s only the two kids still.”

Both women look across the playground to the bench where Mary sits, chatting peacefully to another woman while her oldest son tries to get her attention and she ignores him. So normal. Can it really be that Mary is a felon?

“Where did she go?” Karen asks, wondering aloud. Her fingers are tight on the worn handle of her handbag, her legs crossed tightly at the ankle, everything reined in.

“Sarah says she must’ve gone into Cincinnati,” Louise purposefully smoothes the way her blouse lies over her stomach. Her wedding ring catches the light, sending off sparkles that dance into oblivion. “No one’d be stupid enough to do that sort of thing around here.”

A fleeting memory touches a forgotten part of Karen’s brain: “What about that doctor- there was a big headline a few years ago. Didn’t he lose his license for it?”

“Probably. Janie, put your shoes back on! You’re going to track sand home!”

The conversation fades, and Karen is left standing in the room again, alone. It’s 3pm and Hunt won’t be home for several hours. The kids will sleep for maybe another twenty minutes. She really ought to get around to starting dinner soon.

“Mary got one,” reiterates Louise deep in her mind. Mary, of all people. Mary is a classroom mother. She helps the Sunday School teacher every week, and is always volunteering for bake sales and fundraisers. She’s the last person anyone would suspect of an abortion.

Thinking the word surprises her, but at the same time, Karen feels liberated. Slowly, she thinks the word again, lingering over every syllable. An abortion. To abort a pregnancy. To halt the existence and development of a newly initiated life-

It’s a vulgar word! How- how could she even think of terminating a pregnancy? A child? Her own child, her flesh, her blood, half of herself and half of Hunt? The baby sibling to her three children- Her three children who already live on hand-me-downs and leftovers and whose futures are dimly lit at best.

She can feel her experience closing in on her, the voices of Society and Religion beating the drums of propriety right in her ears. Vulgar, disgusting, horrific, scandalous murderer. Already you have sinned. Everyone will know, all will ostracize you for your thoughts. You, murderess of your own blood-!

With a physical force she rejects the condemning voices, hurling them across the room as she flings Hunt’s old couch pillow across the room, slugging it into the far wall. The poof and thump are amazingly satisfying. With that air leaving the pillow, the haunting voices are gone.

Slowly, she straightens, breath coming and going. She is released… and now she finds fresh purpose.

3:15 and a note is scribbled, pinned to Hunt’s pillow on his spot on the couch, the one that she threw. The kids are awake, if quite drowsy, and staying at Mary’s- Louise was busy- and confused.

“Mommy needs to go visit Grandma,” she tells them, giving each uncaring child a tender kiss. For a single moment, her eyes meet Mary’s and something is understood. A painstakingly clear note is pressed into Karen’s hand. She tries not to think of what it means to abort a child, the decision she has made between these three and the one now nestled in her womb.

She turns away again and returns to her car. When she pulls out of the driveway, excitement grips her and she heads off fast. She’s going to do it. She’s going to break all the rules like no one ever dreamed of, and it’s going to make her free. So, so free.

It’s nearly an hour to Cincinnati, but she doesn’t feel it. The Mommas and the Poppas are singing to her over the radio, telling her about their California Dreamin’, and she’s got the air conditioning turned way, way up. Hunt never lets them turn it up this far. “It wastes gas,” he tells them, even when the kids are sweating and faint from dehydration in the back.

“It’s not going to kill you to turn it on once in a while,” Karen snapped once, and that weekend when Hunter Junior’s Little League practice went badly, she turned it up just for him. That grubby smile she got was the greatest smile she has ever received in her life.

Hunt’s always saying things like that. “Why do you buy the name brand? Store brand’s just as good.” The store brand table polish ruined her grandmother’s antique table.

“You spend too much money on clothes,” he said when she finally bought herself a new winter coat. The old one was full of holes in the lining and it couldn’t keep her warm in the snow. She’d spent all of September aching over the new designs and watching the prices rise and fall, still beyond her reach. Agonizingly, she was about to admit defeat when she came across a coat at a discount outlet exactly like the ones in her catalogues and for only half the price. The coat came home that day in a box and when she went to model her great deal for her husband, all he said was, “Too much.”

Rush hour hasn’t hit the city yet, and she carefully navigates her way to the address Mary gave her, half a dozen previous visits in for a treat or needed purchases her guide. At last she finds the steps sunken into the pavement of a dirty, shady street, and descends them to her destiny.

The sign on the door reads “Workshop” but the row of waiting women in the front room confirms the rumor. Another woman approaches her and asks her for ID, and proof that she’s here for what she says she is. In semi-hushed tones, Karen gives the woman a summary of her story. Satisfied, this- receptionist? Nurse?- gives her a form to fill out. How long has she known she was pregnant? Does a doctor know? Does the father know? Would she like anesthesia? Her name is not required.

While Karen writes, the door opens again, and this time a couple walk in, hand in hand. Their faces are pale and with a shock Karen realizes how young they are. They can’t be out of high school, this boy and this girl, but they’re here for… Karen returns to the sheet, just as the other women have returned to their magazines. It is no business of theirs. No one asks, and so no one tells, because you can’t tell what it is you don’t know.

She hands the paper in and takes her place amongst the waiting women, most not showing at all, although one looks periodically green. They’re young, mostly. Girls in The Movement, girls who go to college. Envy races through Karen’s heart: if only she had had that same daring! Beside her sits a woman boldly wearing men’s pants and an audacious, gentlemanly watch, reading a feminist publication. She is clearly not wearing a bra. She eyes Karen as she sits down as though daring her in her housewifery to assume things about her or judge her as a heinous, evil radical.

Karen gives her a half-apologetic look that says, ‘I’m here, too, aren’t I?’ The other woman’s face softens, almost to a smile, and she goes back to her book.

Now comes the cruel part: the waiting. With three- no, two women before her (the feminist was just admitted), Karen has quite a while to go. Fear and doubt war within her, so she casts her mind out to further unsettling things.

For some reason, last night’s dinner comes to mind. It was normal enough. Mashed potatoes and meatloaf. Michael trying to make a mashed peas volcano. Hunter telling them eagerly about how some kid at school got in trouble. Hunt Senior enjoying the story. Anne Marie watching her mommy.

“Dammit, Hunt, do you have to encourage him?” she couldn’t keep her eyes on her plate anymore.

“What? It’s was just a couple of spitballs! Kid stuff!”

“Its- Just forget it, ok? It doesn’t matter.”

“What the hell is wrong with you, Karen?” his hazel eyes follow her as she dumps her plate in the sink, no longer hungry, if she ever was to begin with.

“Just forget it!”

Anne Marie’s eyes still haunt her. It feels like a lot of conversations end that way these days.

“They say the pill has an effectiveness rating in the 90s… maybe even 100%…”

“It’s too expensive.”

“But it works.”

“Condoms work, too.”

“Not well enough.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means condoms don’t work as well, Hunt. They break. Pills don’t tear.”

“They work fine!”

“Every one of our kids is a broken condom!”

“You want ‘em to become a missed pill? Then whose fault will it be?”

“It’s not about whose fault it is! Why does it always have to be about fault with you?”

“Because it’s always my fault, isn’t it, Karen? Just forget it- you can have your stupid pills. Be a swinger and shoot up, too, why don’t you?”

The emotions wash back over her and Karen blinks slowly, returning partially to the room. Another woman has gone in and the nurse is ready to prep her, her hand on Karen’s shoulder. With a meek nod, Karen submits. It’s almost her turn.

Indifferently, she zones back out. She’s doing something so taboo already… why not just break all the rules?

That word that starts with a D… Divorce. She savors the word, lets it roll around her tongue. She’s becoming a freedom junkie. Now divorce, that’s freedom. That’s a second chance and a new slice of liberty- without Hunt around to hold her up or hold her down.

A sickening thought occurs. If Hunt’s job, which he’s being working in virtually since they graduated, isn’t enough to run the air conditioning or buy a cheap coat, how would she, at an entry-level job, be able to keep them all fed and clothed?

The dream dies and it’s her turn. She’s all prepped and she goes into the room.

It isn’t what she expected, but she’s not sure what she expected in the first place. A tiny, dimly lit little room, perhaps, with a fearsome old man with a lazy eye performing the procedure.

Dr. Rowling is in his 40s, has a full head of hair and thick glasses. He talks to her as he gets ready to do the surgery, explaining what he’ll do and how she’ll feel. He doesn’t want to know her name. Before he starts, he looks her straight in the eye- his eyes are gray- and without judgment asks her one last time if she’s sure she wants to do this. Yes, she’s sure. She wasn’t certain that she would be at this moment, but now that’s she’s here, she’s sure.

It’s over sooner than she thought it would be, and she spends an hour letting her sensibilities return in their recovery room. It’s dark by the time she leaves. She’s still feeling woozy, so nothing really seems real as she checks out in the waiting room, watching the nurse there shred her notes on Karen’s condition. Money, really quite a lot of money, enough to deny her a dozen small luxuries long before next spring, changes hands. Karen has to steady herself before she can move away from it, giving her a long, slow look at the room. The girl and her boyfriend have long since gone in, and a new set is in line. Another feminist, a half-high hippie, and another housewife, looking scared and out of her element. Wearily, Karen gives her a smile, and lurches toward the door.

She doesn’t quite feel well enough to drive all that way home, so instead she goes on to her mother’s, in a town outside the city. Her mother is delighted to see her- of course she can stay for the night! Business in the city? Without Hunt or the kids?

No, replies Karen, hands circling a warm ceramic coffee mug. No Hunt and no kids… and no baby. It’s like her period only worse. She has to wonder, really morbidly, what would have happened if her mother had been in her position. If she, Karen, had been aborted. Again, envy. If only she had been spared this horrible life with this horrible dream gone wrong that makes her choose between options that aren’t choices.

It’s already eight pm, but she isn’t feeling hungry, and so she just goes straight to bed. Her mother clucks over her as she always has, and nausea fills Karen’s sorely empty belly. She will never have the joy of a baby in her arms again, never kiss impossibly tiny fingers, or soothe a wailing infant, rubbing its back until it falls asleep, exhausted. She knows what young children are like. She has three at home. Too many at once, really. It isn’t fair. It really, truly just isn’t fair.

As an afterthought, she picks up her mother’s kitchen phone, the one she used a forever ago to call her girlfriends and talk sickly sweetly to Hunt as she arranged times to see him. Her mind blanks before she remembers her own phone number. No wonder; she almost never needs to call it. Her mind doesn’t let her realize what she’s doing while the phone rings, and she is startled when a man’s voice- Hunt’s voice- picks up.

“Hunt?”

“Dammit, Karen, where the hell are you?”

“I’m at my mother’s. I told you…”

“All afternoon? Why?”

“I- I needed to see her. To talk to her.”

“That’s what we have a phone for, Karen.” The way he says it makes her feel so stupid, and ashamed.

“I’m sorry, Hunt,” before she knows it, she’s crying. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so- so, so sorry…”

He doesn’t know how to handle her like this. Even less so because it’s over the phone, and he can’t pretend he knows what’s going on by putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. Maybe it’s better this way. She stopped feeling comforted by him a long time ago.

“Just- just come home. Anne Marie misses you,” he finishes gruffly, and then he puts down the phone.

In a huddled mass, Karen slides to the floor, the phone still cradled in her hands. That’s how her mother finds her fifteen minutes later, her mascara streaked down her cheek and her fingers running compulsively through her hair. Without question, her mother hauls her off to bed, washing her face, smoothing her hair and pulling her out of her old clothes and into soft green pajamas, the ones Karen remembers from winters in this house. She’s tucked into her old bed, the room still decorated just as she left it, with old perfume ads pinned up all over her walls. The French ones are her favorite, with their bold, mismatched colors, and their romantic French scrawled across the top. Her father brought those home for her, before he died.

Worn out, she quickly drops off to sleep, and she dreams of when all of her children were babies. She dreams that all three of them are little at one time, and that they all three need her for everything. She can’t keep up, though, and all she wants to do is go to France to be a can-can dancer. The babies start crying, all of them at once, and Hunt is yelling at her, telling her to do better and not to spend so much money. Then there are five babies and ten babies and ten thousand babies, and they all want her, they all need her to be their mommy. But all she wants to do, all that she really can do, is cry for her own mother.

When she wakes up, the sun is shining, and she is warm. For a moment she is confused as to the time and the year. The dull ache in her belly reminds her what has happened, and with some effort she goes and cleans herself up. When she goes downstairs, dressed, her mother is making lunch.

“Hunter called,” her mother says, calmly making sandwiches. She’s always called Hunt Senior Hunter, and usually without inflection. Their son is Little Hunter, and she loves to pretend that they are out hunting together, for wild gooseberries or a toy frog. “He asked where you were.”

Karen falls into her chair, too weak to support herself. Her head is spinning, and she knows she is doomed. He’ll be angry… so, so angry… They’ll fight, and Annie will cry, and Michael will suck his thumb, and Little Hunter will try to get them to make up.

“I told him to go and get bent.”

Her head whips up, and her mouth falls open in an O. Her MOTHER-?

A serene smile graces her mother’s lips, while mischief twinkles in her eyes. “I told him that you weren’t feeling well, and that if he wanted pancakes he could damn well make them himself. I don’t know what happened to you, baby, but if he hit you, I’ll kill him.”

No… no, he didn’t hit her… Not yet, anyway… But, oh, the love Karen feels for her mother at this moment is enough to fill the room and burst out into the street. She finds herself choking on sobs, and her mother’s arms encircle her, rocking her gently back and forth as she purges all the sorrow.

“Sh… sh, my baby…I know, I know… He doesn’t deserve you, my angel…”

Deliriously, now feeling lightheaded after her emotional rapids, Karen realizes that her mother thinks that Hunter is the problem, that they are having problems, maybe that Karen is leaving him. But, no, wouldn’t she have brought the kids?

“Everyone has these troubles, Karen,” her mother tips back her chin and wipes at her face with a spit-dampened napkin, taking away the tears. “Everyone is afraid, at some point, that they’ve made some mistake, but most of us haven’t, and we make our way through it. We’re unhappy for a while but then we realize that we’ve done the right thing. We stay together… what choice do we have?”

What choice do we have? No choice. No choice to abandon three children and a husband she used to adore. It wasn’t a choice to be rid of a baby: they simply just couldn’t afford it.

The afternoon wears on, and eventually Karen heads home. Her insides still hurt, but at least she knows she did right.

Anne Marie will cling to her as soon as she gets home. She probably will not let her mommy go. Her big brown eyes will still follow everything, just as they always have, and maybe someday when Annie is tortured and tormented, Karen will tell her the story of what happened that day, why she drove out to Cincinnati to visit her mother who didn’t really need visiting.

The highway stretches out before her, and the watch her husband gave her a sweet dream ago reads that it is 2:55, but the radio DJ says 3. Perhaps on her way she will stop at the pharmacy and see if her prescription has been processed yet… this isn’t a day that she wants to repeat.