Fiction

I thought it would feel freer out in the field, outside of the trapped air of the car. I’d hoped that whatever had been crushing me all those nights would rise up and pop like a balloon.

She will smile and nod a yes. She will fill the hollowness with his happiness.

Then the baby comes along, and it’s like she’s that nuclear-fueled car in Back to the Future, yanking me to some alternate universe where I am not just dirty and tired but also insecure and petty.

Those children want Mama back, but their father asks them not to wake her yet. He worries she may not be ready, may never be ready.

Like her own mother, Sara chose her career over endless hours of diapers, games of peekaboo, and mindless chores. Janet, was an exuberant stay-at-home mom, the kind of woman Sara was raised to scorn. 

Lydia was intent on conjuring another child; I was terrified I’d lose the one I had.

Later that evening, they sat alone in their apartment, wondering if they had made the right decision.

The alder is more beautiful dead than it was alive. When its leaves fell away, they revealed slender arms, silvery wrists of bark. Woodpeckers swoop and slip inside the craggy maw that has opened at the top of the tree. The birds are deepening the alder’s transformation. In death, it has opened itself up to the sky, and the birds have moved in. 

When the door slammed, my sister wrapped her arms around my leg and cried. I eased her down to sit on my lap and rocked her until her shuddering breaths subsided. She poked her finger in my chest and said You-Boo. I nodded and hugged her tight—Yes, only me.

In a normal world, families up and down the country would have had the kids breakfasted and out the door for school. But this isn’t a normal world.

Gail has given Mother Nature a run for her money. Thirty pounds lighter than when she first conceived, she lifts weights on her lunch hour and kick-boxes after work three times a week. She’s had regular blood tests, ultrasounds, uterine surgery, two endometrial biopsies, and six cycles of Clomid.