Futures and Frosting

by Tara Sivec

  The man I love more than anything wants to marry me, we have an amazing little boy who keeps us on our toes, a new, healthy baby girl, and the best family and friends. Okay, maybe not the best. Tolerable. Life is good. Nothing can take this feeling away right now unless the anesthesiologist turns off my morphine drip. I’ll just take away his manhood if that happens. I’m sure the doctor can find an extra scalpel in my intestines for me.

  “Wow, would you take a look at that?” I hear the doctor say.

  “Oh my,” one of the nurses replies.

  “Uh, what’s going on?” I ask.

  “Can someone get me a camera?”

  Okay, that’s not something you need to hear when your stomach is cut open and you’re strapped to a table.

  Someone take this mother fucking sheet down. I don’t give a rat’s ass if I can see right through my stomach and out my vagina. I’ll even help you stuff shit back in.

  I can hear some whispering, which makes me a little uncomfortable. I mean, what could they possibly be whispering about? Is there another baby in there no one knew about? Have they found an extra stomach? Maybe I'm supposed to be a twin and I ate her. Have they found my twin sister? Is she looking at them right now like, “What the fuck, people? Get me the hell out of here. I’m twenty-five and I’m the size of a fist. Do I look like I’m comfortable?”

  I have always wanted a sister. I can carry her around in my purse like Paris Hilton carries her dog. I can perch her up on my shoulder and she can be like the good angel telling me what decisions I should make.

  What if she’s mean though? Twenty-five years is a long time to be in someone’s stomach. Jesus himself would probably even drop a few F bombs about that nonsense. She might sit on my shoulder and just shout insults at everyone.

  “You’re tired? Fuck you. I’ve used a uterus as a pillow for twenty five years.”

  “I’ve taken dumps bigger than your penis. And I had to do it in a stomach with a baby looking at me.”

  “You’re so ugly I wouldn’t even let you fuck my tiny, fossilized punany.”

  Mmmmm, this morphine is delicious. Like pot cookies and vodka but without all the weird side effects like hallucinations and crazy talk. I love morphine. It’s so pretty.

  “Oh, no worries,” the doctor finally answers. “Your uterus is just in a weird shape right now. We have a wall of pictures in my office of people’s organs and it’s kind of like when you look up at the sky and guess what a cloud looks like. Except we do it in my office with pictures of afterbirth and uteruses. I’m just going to take a quick Polaroid and then finish sewing you up.”

  Nope, that’s not at all weird. Doc, can you supersize that morphine for me?

  “So, what does it look like?” I asked.

  I don’t really want to know the answer to this do I? The drugs say yes but the brain says no.

  “It actually looks like a face. And it’s smiling at us.”

  OH MY GOD, SISSY! I’m coming for you sissy!

  “HOLY SHIT!”

  Epilogue

  “I think this will be the first bubble bath I’ve taken alone in three years,” I tell Carter as he sets a glass of wine on the edge of the tub and bends down for a kiss.

  I wrap a wet hand around the back of his neck and hold his face to mine. He sweeps his tongue through my mouth and I taste the wine he had taken a sip of before he gave the glass to me. Even after all these years I can never get enough of kissing this man. It's our third wedding anniversary and a few months after Sophie’s third birthday. For the past three years, we've spent our anniversary the same way – at home with the kids. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. We don’t need a fancy restaurant or a night out with friends. We have all we need right here.

  Our wedding had been just a simple ceremony on the beach with our family and friends. After all the drama about getting engaged, both of us realized we didn’t care about anything but becoming husband and wife. It didn’t matter where it happened, just as long as it did happen. For an early wedding gift that year, Carter had given me all four seasons of “My Fair Wedding” and a box of porn. He still holds out hope my porn addiction would become a reality.

  Carter slides his hand down into the water and lets it rest on the inside of my thigh. As the kiss became more intense, his hand inches further and further down. I groan into his kiss as his fingers graze between my legs and make goose bumps break out on my skin.

  “Happy anniversary, Mrs. Ellis,” Carter whispers.

  The wet, smoothness of his fingers slide through my slit and I thrust against his hand as he slowly pushes one finger deep inside me.

  A commotion from outside the bathroom door ceases all activity and we pause, my lips brushing against Carter’s and his hand resting between my legs.

  “What was that?” I whisper.

  “It’s nothing. The kids are in Gavin’s room playing. I gave them a piggy bank full of pennies to count,” Carter reassures me as he begins kissing his way down my damp neck and goes back to gliding his finger in and out of me.

  “Ohhhhh fuck,” I moan, tilting my head back until it rests against the tile wall. “You should probably check on them. The penny thing worked when Gavin was four. I don’t think it’s going to work now. He’s almost nine, knows how to use the internet and is tall enough to reach the matches and lighter fluid in the laundry room.”

  A crash and a yell sound down the hall and I sit up quickly, splashing water over the side of the tub, forcing Carter to fall back onto the floor on his ass.

  “Shit. I’ll go check it out,” he says with a sigh as he stands up and opens the bathroom door. “We’ll continue this after I’ve duct taped them to the wall.”

  He closes the door behind him and I lean back into the warm, soapy water with a smile on my face.

  The past few years have been hectic, but I wouldn’t change them for the world. A year after Sophia was born, we had moved into a new home. The small, ranch house was perfect when it was just the three of us, but once you had a baby, it came with a lot of shit. We had quickly outgrown that house and moved into a two-story colonial a few streets away from Liz and Jim.

  Business at Seduction and Snacks is still booming. I've added more items to my menu so people can have breakfast or lunch there, and I've hired five additional people to the staff. Liz and Jim had just gave birth to their second baby girl last month and Jenny and Drew are planning a weekend wedding in Vegas in a few months. I’m pretty sure that plan includes being married by Elvis and spending time in a lot of strip clubs. Jenny had finally found another job in marketing but still works for me on the side. She refuses to take any money from me though so I pay her in chocolate. Drew still begs me to pay her in sexual favors and is sadly disappointed every time I refuse.

  Gavin is now eight and a half years old and getting ready to start third grade and our baby Sophie is growing up entirely too fast. She'll be going to preschool this year and I want to sob every time I think about it. Gavin is an amazing big brother and has spent the past three years teaching his little sister everything he can about tormenting us. The other day, Sophie had come into our bedroom and announced she had a song she wanted to sing us. It had gone a little something like this, “I have a vagina, vagina, vagina. I love my vagina, vagina, vagina.” So far I haven’t been able to convince her that this song should never be sung at the top of her lungs in the middle of the cereal aisle of the grocery store.

  My father had married his long-time girlfriend Sue a few months ago in a small ceremony in his backyard. Gavin, Sophia, and Sue’s granddaughter Sarah made up the wedding party. Sarah and Sophia were the same age and Gavin escorted both of them down the aisle. And by escorted, I meant kept the two girls separated since they kept trying to smack each other with their flower girl baskets as they walked until they eventually took Gavin down with them in a big pile of flailing arms, legs, screaming, and crying. Carter and I ran down the aisle and tried to break up the fight but Jesus, those girls were strong. Carter got
kicked in the nuts and dropped down to his knees, and I got scratched in the face. Regardless, it was a beautiful ceremony and my mother, in her usual fashion, took control of Tee Time at the small reception. Jenny almost became “that person” who puked on the dance floor, but a cousin of my father’s dragged her into the bathroom and showed her a trick where you drink straight from the faucet and then make yourself burp three times. Jenny had wound up making out with her as a thank you, and Drew passed out cold when he witnessed it.

  I sink down further into the water and let out a big sigh. We’ve all come a long way since that frat party nine years ago. Carter and I still play a round or two of beer pong on the anniversary of when he asked me to marry him though. There are some traditions that you just can’t put a stop to. Beer pong is how we started and beer pong is how we will end. I have a picture of us on our death beds years from now with a hospital table set up between us as we argue over who sucks more. And then that happy picture is ruined by Drew ambling in with a walker shouting, “Jenny can still suck a golf ball through a garden hose and she gums my cock like a champ since she misplaced her false teeth!”

  I can’t wait to see what the future will hold for us. We've had our ups and our downs, and we've had our fair share of struggles over the years, but we have proven that we can get through anything. Our beast of a dog, aptly named Gigantor, recently became a big brother himself when Carter’s parents dropped off a cat for Sophie. Of course it had come with special hoity-toity cat papers that said it would walk around with a stick up its ass and demand to eat off of our good china. Since I nipped the whole Sopranos thing in the bud when we named our daughter, Carter had adamantly insisted we name the cat Meadow, after Tony Soprano’s daughter. Aside from that, Carter has proven a thousand times over what a wonderful father he is. I had been a little nervous at first how he would handle having a little girl, but he was amazing and he was very protective of his daughter. So much so that my father had bought him a shirt that said “Sure you can date my daughter. In a completely unrelated topic, have you seen my shotgun?”

  And now my wonderful husband is off taking care of the kids so I can relax in a bubble bath alone without someone coming in to pee, brush their teeth, or ask me why monkeys have nipples. Nothing can ruin this perfect moment or my happy mood thinking about the future.

  “Hold still for a second. I need to get it in the right spot,” I hear Gavin say softly on the other side of the door.

  “What’s going on out there? Where’s daddy?” I shout out to him.

  “He poopin', Mommy!” Sophie yells back.

  Thanks for letting me know.

  “You guys be good out there, okay? Mommy will be done in a minute,” I shout to them as I picked up my wine glass from the edge of the tub and took a healthy sip.

  I close my eyes and let the tension ease from my body until a few minutes later, words are loudly whispered by Gavin that you never want to hear on the other side of the door when you’re taking a bath.

  “Okay, the clothes basket is in the ready position at the edge. All systems go. Sophie, hold on tight. And don’t let go of the cat.”

  The End

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