Night fell, and just walking in the dark tightened her insides.
Outside, her lipstick slicked her smile, her hair hit her shoulders just the way she liked it, and her jeans hugged her hips nearly perfectly.
He will like me, she thought, and then it will all begin again.
From above, the highways became rivers, the traffic glinting like water droplets so tightly packed they streamed. In the oxbow lake of an exit ramp, red and blue lights flashed like minnows.
She would have preferred to remain above it all, but the plane descended, carrying her like a diving tern. Soon, she would have no choice but to join the rest of the water, swim the pre-carved channels and tributaries.
It is possible to hate babies, their miniature appendages, their powdery-shitty smell, their violent cries, their ham-handed eating.
It is possible, she thought, as she fingered the square of worn blanket in her coat pocket.
The banana apples overflowed their bins, but this year, so many fewer flowers budded into Asian pears. For that reason, she saved the small pear she selected for a moment when she could slice it thinly, hold each translucent half-moon against her tongue. After all, she had lost so much already.
He pointed into the empty swimming pool. “There,” he said. “There is where it all happened.”
Leaves rustled where water once lapped. He pressed a book into her hands, filled with pictures and stories of the ways he’d made her smile. She declined to open it, set it on the lip of the pool.
He gasped as she dove, but her arms took hold, and she swam to one end and then the other, propelled through the air so much more easily than she expected.
In the morning, she walked down to the end of the dock. In the early light, she sat, her legs hanging off the edge, toes very nearly reaching the water. In the water, small fish swam. In her stomach, a small rumbling began, but it had nothing to do with the fish or the water or the light or the dock. In the weathered house behind her, the children stirred.
I baked a boysenberry pie with a lattice crust, hoping it would function as performance art. The positive reviews resounded, but it did not make a difference–I was no closer to where I hoped I’d be than if I hadn’t baked the pie in the first place.
Since then, I’ve given up desserts, reverted to working in meats and fish, solid food that better serve the body. He eats them, his only review a solid nod.
100 Proof 