Your girl is stillborn and you immediately make a second one in the back seat of the 2012 Toyota. The vinyl smells of paint thinner and caramel. A spider crawls into the cowl vent. Someone’s singing “Hit me Baby One More Time” on the radio, but it’s not Britney. He stammers he loves you, between the “it’s not the way I planned it” and a distant PA system saying, “Noam Kusoloch is looking for his father.”
The man on top of you (moss-bearded, toenail-less) said the love thing twice already and you’re starting to believe him every time his forehead wipes your breasts. Your liver shifts; your kidneys float up like dead fish, making space for his ambitions how they made space for her.
“Someone’s coming,” you say, though you hear no one, and push him off to yank at your skirt, and stroke the corduroy, naïve to the touch; fabric that’s only just arrived in this world. You fold forwards and rub your face against it.
“It’s freezing,” he says, unsure of what else to say, rearranges himself by unclenching the teeth and climbs back into the driver’s seat. The hood glistens for the icicles.
“You want some dinner?” he asks, the fledgling blue in his eyes a stutter. But you just want to sit here, in the King Soopers parking lot, and watch the people slide on frozen asphalt and snow. The white is hiding all the uglies.
“I love winter,” you say, and you wrap into the faux fur coat with the milk stains on the inside and the fist-sized rip along the satin lining. He starts the car.
“Later. With the food,” you say, signaling him to kill the engine, and stick all ten fingers in your mouth.
“For the heat.” He presses his palm to a vent. And just then, a cry lodges in your throat because you realize that now the spider’s trapped in inferno. Things die in confined spaces. There’s nothing cozy about a vent or a womb.
“Bet ya he’s gonna fall.” He’s pointing to a man in a silver puffer coat, waddling along a row of vehicles, balancing two paper bags.
“Not that one,” you whisper to the window, and it returns a splotch of fog shaped like a penguin.
Silver guy is side to side and back and forth, arms clutching bags though they could balance him. A candy wrapper bullied by a breeze. You sense his agony, wanting to free his arms to steady a fall. His car glints in the distance, mocking him. Snow tires, baby! He stares at it like it’s salvation. Behind him, a woman’s speeding, reckless with her fate. Her steps slap the glassy surface as she gains on him. She holds her head back for levelness. Her breath’s an air bridge between them; her strides too certain for the uncertainty of ice. A misstep is a minor thing. Now her foot skids and her arms flail. You hold your breath.
“Don’t take him with you,” you whisper.
She’s down, limbs splayed, one bag burst open. Apples, bread, a can of soup, pasta, a head of lettuce, a cucumber, a pack of batteries, coffee beans, two bars of soap, onions, a single sock, a toy dinosaur, a teething ring.
Silver doesn’t turn. His gaze holds steady on ahead. You wonder if he even heard her go. Her arms reaching for the sky, remind you of the fat black beetles falling from the kitchen shelf in summer. They’re always landing on their backs. You’ll take a pencil to them, scoop them back onto their feet.
You open the door. The chill chews through your leggings as you walk. When you lie down beside her, your hip finds the spot where the ice is thinnest. Above, the sky is a surgical gown. Moss-beard’s voice floats from the Toyota. “Hon, whatcha doing? Come back.”
The woman doesn’t protest as you gather her groceries and start rearranging them. The can is heavier than a head should be. A sock for a neck. The pasta box for ribs and batteries for bones. Cucumber for an arm. That fucking teething ring like a hospital bracelet. You build what you couldn’t keep.
You suck the monkey pacifier. Someone has to use it. Non-refundable. You tossed the packaging already. The rubber’s tasteless. You had hoped for bitter or chemical or more character.
Stretched out on the sofa (the only place you can endure), one foot trying on the cotton baby carrier, the other wearing mini socks on every toe, you alternate between the sucking and slathering your arms in lotions from the gifted hamper. You inspect one of the bottles of ultra calm chamomile cream. Why does baby skin need coating? They come out perfect and then we put our shit on them.
You bite down harder and the pacifier splits. Rubber shards get lodged between your teeth. You swallow some, keep the rest under your tongue, call your mother.
“The monkey broke.” She’s already ordering another. The woman is so darn considerate it makes you sick.
Moss-beard stands in the door, takeout containers in his hands. He’s not supposed to have keys, said it was “a good idea.” A good idea for whom? His eyes widen as he dangles a rectangle name tag.
“Assistant manager, Lemon!” he yells with glee. Another promotion. You don’t have a badge, but you keep the bracelet with your name they gave you at the hospital. Lemon Puckanitz.
His polyester tie squeaks as he fetches plates and forks and gushes on about four-o-one meetings and insurance warranties, a Brad who’s microwaving fish, the new breakroom policy. You keep the rubber bits under your tongue while he moves onto the bonuses, the purple-head from HR, chip nerd from Design, woman with gastritis in Accounting.
“There’s this old guy, former employee. Sits in the parking lot in his Honda all day just staring.”
“So what?” you say.
“Creeps me out.”
Your toes curl in each sock. He’s still talking about Honda man when he lifts your legs to make space on the sofa. His hands are warm like he’s held them under water. You lock your knees.
“Don’t be difficult,” he reminds you. “I’m trying to help.” The remnants of the pacifier sit between your molars. When he grips your ankles with his management hands, you swallow the last pieces of the rubber.
Yellow sticky notes multiply. They were meant to be a diary “to write down your thoughts,” but your mother got the order wrong.
“Putting it on paper is therapy,” she’d said. And you’d said “aha.” Now you write names on neon squares. The kettle is Maria. She is four and serves her mint tea to the stuffed koalas, who make no complaints about the temperature. The remote control is Jack, who was born with rubber spots and watches Duffy Duck from a bubble bed. Eleanor, up on the ceiling, goes round and round, believing someday she will be an astronaut. Someone told you once that astronauts in training get spun inside a superhuman-sized washing machine.
You paste notes in the dark. Ahmed (coffee maker) collects soda caps and calls them pirate gold. Yuki (bathroom mirror) draws doors on the glass in lipstick; they’re portals to a magic land. The twins up on the coat rack speak a language only spiders understand. Tomorrow, Moss-beard’s name tag will say “Salome” and you think of all the children’s shoes in lost-and found boxes, of parents never finding them because they keep on asking for the wrong things.
He brings home another raise, dental, vision, beer, a heated blanket, and grape-flavored fluoride. You ask him to steal sticky notes from the office.
“We need to get you a therapist.” His voice is a lullaby, busy singing to the windows. One rhyme for each child who sees angels in water stains.
“This is therapy,” you say and place a note on every finger, moving them rapidly until your ears fill with bird wing flutter.
Moss-beard stands in the doorway like he’s afraid to fully enter. His new tie has sailboats on it. You want to tell him that’s the wrong metaphor. We’re not lost at sea, we’re dissolving into the playground. The air gets thicker with each note. Soon we’ll all be breathing children’s wishes.
His head drops into his hands.
“Remember that time we bought oranges? Nothing else,” he says. “The grocery store had a sale and we bought only oranges like we were preparing for some citrus crash?”
“At the market.”
“Yeah. Can we do that again? Just…oranges. No names. No children who see through walls or taste colors or whatever the hell you’ve got planned for the soap dispenser.”
He leads you to the bedroom and you fuck him thinking of a house where no one grew old enough to forget how to fly. When he sleeps, you stick a label on his forehead. “Property of the boy who drowned while climbing up the ladder.” In the morning, he doesn’t notice that it’s there. He sells four sets of software before his manager points it out.
“I called your mother,” he tells you in the evening.
“Did she order more Post-its?”
“Jesus fucking no. No more Post-its or names or imaginary kids living in our fucking appliances.”
You peel a yellow paper off the wall and eat it. The adhesive tastes of the syrup they gave you at the hospital right after the miscarriage. It was meant to sweeten the pain.
“I got promoted again,” he says to the window (Sara, who counts snowflakes in prime numbers). “They’re giving me a damn Lexus.”
The Lexus reeks of pine and corner offices. His hands squeeze white around the wheel while you trace the rubber tubing spiraling along your party dress. The fabric itches. The stethoscope knocks against your throat. You press the metal disc to your ribs, listen to the stabbing in your chest.
“People will stare,” he said earlier and you replied, “Good.” You peeled it from the Fisher Price doctor kit wrapped in pink paper, crushed the box before anyone could suggest returning it. Now Moss-beard won’t talk on the drive because you wouldn’t leave the stethoscope at home.
In the parking lot, dollar signs for Christmas lights strangle the maple trees. Behind tinted glass, tinsel dangles from cubicle walls. An inflatable snowman hugs the popcorn façade.
Moss-beard takes three tries to park between the lines of his special spot (Assistant Manager Only). The concrete barriers wear stains from others’ failed attempts. The engine dies mid-purr.
“Wait…”
But you’re already testing the ice with your heel. The first slide is a disc slap on your sternum, a code for the living. The night air kisses your cheeks. You offer your elbow like you’ve seen nurses do, and he takes it, his grip a moth’s touch. Together you wobble like newborns. You giggle at somehow keeping each other vertical. When you reach the entrance, the doors blow apart like eyelids. “Silent Night” stripped down to pure bass thumps from above.
“I need the bathroom,” you say.
“To the left. I’ll head on inside.” He picks his way toward the party lights. You spin and step outside, throw your breath into stiff air. You glide backwards, heel first, then toe. One slide, three cars. Another twirls you under lamp light. You skate and spin, and gaze up where the stars smear into a soup of circles. The stethoscope flies out, then slaps against your chest. You laugh, and when you lower your head you see the Honda. Behind the windshield, a shadow transpires. You skate closer, find the old man’s eyes. He’s been watching you, apparently has been watching everyone for months. You walk right up to it. The old man’s hands rest in his lap, skin translucent under parking lot lights that you could count his veins. You knock on the window. He cracks it the width of a fingernail.
“I’m Lemon.”
“Frank Olson.” His vowels scrape against another.
“Mind if I join?” You point to the passenger seat. A receipt swings from the dashboard when he reaches to unlock the door. Frank’s breath comes shallow, like he’s not sure how much air he is allowed.
“I used to like parties,” you say.
“I lost my office badge six months ago,” Frank says. “Didn’t bother getting a new one.” He’s probably lying but you don’t care.
“What’s with the necklace?” he asks.
You shrug. “Want me to check if your heart is beating?”
“Ok,” he says, unzips his jacket and leans back in his chair. You press the metal disc between two buttons of his shirt and close your eyes. Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-ba-boom. Not like hers, that frantic shake before it stopped. Ripple-rest, ripple-rest.
“And?”
“All working,” you say.
“Doesn’t feel like it.”
You lean forward, exhale the longest breath into the windshield and draw what might be a ghost. Frank reaches over, adds a wing. Then the heat kicks in, erasing all the lines. You purse your lips and blow again until all the world is milk.
The art that appears alongside this piece is “You Found Me” by JONATHAN KENT ADAMS.