Mother

by Patrick Logan

  “There is no baby!” She threw her arms into the air and spun around, presenting herself to all the party guests. “You hear that, everyone? There is no fucking baby. Hope you’re all happy.”

  She stopped just short of a bow.

  What happened next only infuriated her further: nothing. Apparently, everyone was so shocked or confused that they failed to react to her outburst.

  Her vision blurred as tears started to flow, and she wiped at her face with the subtlety of a blacksmith. When she turned back to Martin, she was surprised to see that there were tears in his eyes too.

  No, you don’t get to be sad, Martin. I’m the one who is sad. Not you. I wanted a baby, not you with your ‘I’m enough woman for you’ bullshit. I wanted the baby… needed a baby.

  You didn’t even fucking want it.

  She remembered the words she had whispered almost every night for the past seven years, and they made her cringe.

  Put a baby in me, Martin.

  “You had one job to do, and you couldn’t even do that,” she spat at her husband.

  Something in Martin’s face broke, and tears spilled unabated over his handsome cheeks. He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could offer a reply, Arielle turned and ran from the backyard, leaving everyone with three parting words: “Fuck you all.”

  Chapter 12

  Arielle walked for a good hour, not really knowing or even caring where she was going.

  It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair—definitely not the part about her not being pregnant. Or that the Woodwards had a kid while her fucked up body wasn’t able to carry one.

  A life for a life.

  And she didn’t care what the troll at Dr. Barnes’s office said, she had been pregnant. The woman could talk all the psychosomatic bullshit that she wanted, but she had been pregnant.

  Had.

  But wasn’t anymore.

  Arielle eventually found herself at a small convenience store about fifteen minutes from her house buying, of all things, a package of cigarettes.

  She hadn’t smoked in more than five years. In fact, she had quit around the exact same time that she had started her boxing classes. At the time, she had told Martin that she was just making some changes to become healthier, but the truth was that she knew that quitting smoking and getting into shape would improve her chances of conceiving.

  Everything she had done, from quitting her stressful ad agency job to work more reasonable hours from home, to quitting smoking, to working out, to limiting her alcohol intake to just a few glasses of wine on the weekend, to trying every goddamn trick in the book, including being assaulted by some psycho churchgoers, was in order to try and get pregnant. And, in the end, it had all been worth it because it had worked; she had conceived.

  But now this.

  “Give me a bottle of wine, too,” she told the man behind the counter.

  “What kind would you like? I have a brand new—”

  Arielle pulled her sunglasses down her nose, revealing her raw lids and cheeks that were still wet with tears.

  “Does it look like I care? Just give me a bottle—any bottle. Something cheap.”

  The man behind the counter with thick, bushy eyebrows and deeply tanned skinned frowned, but obliged.

  “Seventeen fifty-six.”

  Arielle paid and headed to the park near her house. Even on regular days—not just on days as fucked up as this one—she often found herself at this park at some point during the afternoon. It was a great place for her to take a break from trying to come up with creative copy for a new client or just generally to clear her head.

  It was just a small, simple park, with one swing set and plastic slide, but there was almost always a child or two playing with their nanny during the warmer afternoons. Arielle typically sat on the bench, drinking a coffee and watching the laughing children with a smile on her face.

  Today, however, it was probably a blessing that there were no kids in the park. Because today she wasn’t sipping coffee, but drinking sour red wine from a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag. And she wasn’t smiling, either; she was grimacing with every drag from a cigarette.

  Less than three sips of the wine and an equal number of drags later, her head started to spin… most likely from the nicotine more than the wine.

  “What the fuck am I doing?” she whispered.

  She looked down at the cigarette, a brand she didn’t even know, and then the crumpled brown bag concealing a wine bottle, the name of which she also didn’t know.

  “Seriously, what the fuck are you doing, Arielle?”

  Go home, apologize to Martin. Then think of a way of how you can somehow make it up to the Woodwards.

  She shook her head.

  Did I really say that horrible stuff?

  She hadn’t been thinking, clearly, but it just wasn’t fair.

  Her throat and lungs burned from the smoke, but she took another drag anyway as a sort of penance.

  Why can’t I have a baby? Why can’t I just let Dr. Barnes do his stupid tests and figure out if there is something he can prescribe to help me conceive?

  These weren’t just rhetorical questions, but ones that she had posed to herself for years, ever since…

  Stop it. It wasn’t your fault; she made you do it. You can’t keep punishing yourself for something that you had no choice in.

  With trembling hands, she brought the brown paper bag to her face and took a swig of the wine.

  Although she had told Martin many, many times that she remembered nothing of her childhood, that wasn’t exactly true; there was one thing that she remembered.

  Maybe I could have stopped her—run away, maybe. Or hidden it better.

  Another gulp of wine, another hard pull from the cigarette.

  I was just so scared. I was young and terrified and…

  Arielle tossed the cigarette to the ground in disgust.

  “Stop it,” she scolded herself.

  You don’t get to feel sorry for yourself. You’re being a baby—an immature child. A child drinking wine at a park and smoking.

  She was more than disgusted with herself; she was ashamed and appalled.

  Arielle took a deep, shuddering breath, and ground the still lit cigarette with her heel.

  Grow up. You desperately want a child, and yet you consistently act like one. Maybe you should accept the fact that maybe you aren’t fit to be a mother. What did someone famous once say? Some things just ain’t meant to be.

  Arielle took one more sip of wine and then screwed the cap back on. Part of her wanted to smash the bottle right there on the ground, like she had destroyed her phone at the Woodwards’. A big part of her wanted to do just that. But, like an addict trying to get sober, she knew that the pain and regret that would chase the few minutes of satisfaction would just sink her lower. Still…

  No. This self-pitying has to end.

  She had to grow up and face the facts, no matter how much they threw a wrench in her master plan.

  It wasn’t the first time that she had considered just giving up all hope of having a child, but this was the first time that she felt like she meant it. All it had taken was to blow up at her husband, the Woodwards, and a bunch of people she barely knew, and find herself crying in the park, drinking wine out of a bag and smoking cigarettes. What she was going through definitely didn’t qualify for rock bottom on any global scale—she was not naive enough to think that it was—but she didn’t know how it could get any worse for her.

  “Get over it. Move on.”

  Saying the words out loud seemed to empower her decision and, surprisingly, it actually felt good to say them. It was like a weight was lifted off her shoulders.

  Can I do it? Can I really move on?

  Martin had repeatedly told her that she was enough woman for him… but the real question was, was he enough for her? After going so many years wanting, expecting, to have a child, could she be content with just having Martin to love and to hold?

>   Arielle rose from the park bench and stretched her legs, which had already started to stiffen up from all the walking.

  She didn’t know the answers to these questions, but she did know that they wouldn’t be answered here, in this park, or anytime soon, for that matter.

  As she dropped the nearly full bottle of wine into the wire trash bin, a flash of orange suddenly crossed her peripheral vision. A Frisbee flew within inches of her still outstretched arm and skittered across the sandy park.

  What the…?

  Arielle turned in the direction that the Frisbee had come and caught sight of a young girl—four, maybe five years old—with long blond hair high-tailing it toward the park, waving a hand high above her head.

  “Throw it back!” the girl hollered.

  Arielle stared at the girl for a moment without moving. Then she surprised herself by smiling. It was hard not to; the girl was incredibly cute, with a small, upturned nose and rosy red cheeks. She was wearing a navy t-shirt with the words ‘I luv Mom’ written across the chest in pink glitter-type.

  “I’ll get it!” Arielle shouted back, surprised at how quickly her mood turned.

  Hustling back into the park, she reached down and grabbed the orange disk, squeezing it tightly in her fingers. It was an uncomplicated piece of plastic, just a flat, circular disk with a half-inch curled lip, but when she picked it up, it induced a strong emotional reaction in her.

  Did I play with one as a child? Is that it?

  Frustration at not being able to remember threatened to overthrow her pleasure, but she wouldn’t let it.

  So what if I can’t remember? I can pretend, can’t I?

  “Throw it back!” the girl repeated. Her wide grin revealed two missing front teeth.

  She was so cute it made Arielle’s heart ache.

  I luv Mom.

  Arielle’s throw was true, and the Frisbee whirled through the air, aimed directly at the young girl’s navy t-shirt. At first, she thought she might have thrown it too hard, and cringed a second before the girl reached out and snatched it without hesitation.

  Arielle clapped her hands together in both relief and surprise.

  “Thanks!” the girl shouted, turning away from the park.

  Arielle glanced around quickly for the girl’s parents, but saw no one. The park was strangely empty for a sunny Sunday afternoon.

  “Wait!” Arielle yelled, her maternal instincts taking over. The girl didn’t acknowledge her cry.

  Arielle’s eyes kept darting back and forth, trying to figure out where the girl had come from.

  She can’t be out alone, can she?

  The girl was almost out of view now, and without thinking Arielle broke into a jog, following after her long blond braid.

  She was nearly in a full sprint by the time she hit the street corner, and as she turned, she stopped so abruptly that she almost tripped and fell on her face.

  The girl with the blond hair was standing just around the corner, the Frisbee dangling in one hand. Arielle had nearly run right into her.

  “Jesus,” she said between deep breaths, “you scared me.”

  She brought a hand to her chest as she heaved. The girl’s light-colored eyebrows lowered suspiciously.

  “Why are you following me?”

  Arielle took another deep breath and finally managed to straighten her body.

  “I just… I just wanted to know where your mother was.”

  “Do you know my mother?”

  Now it was Arielle’s turn to make a face.

  “Well, no, but—”

  “Do you have any kids?”

  Arielle looked away. Somehow, with those five words, this girl had made her feel both confused and ashamed at the same time.

  “No,” she admitted quietly.

  The girl shrugged.

  “I need some more friends to play with,” she said simply.

  Now it was Arielle’s turn to offer a suspicious glance. This girl was confusing the hell out of her.

  “What’s your name?” Arielle asked.

  The girl’s face suddenly changed from wary to cheerful.

  “I have to go,” she said. “It was nice playing with you.”

  And with that, the girl whirled on the heels of her sparkling high-tops and sped off. This time, Arielle let her go, parent or not. Clearly this girl was able to figure things out by herself. Still, the entire encounter left a strange taste in her mouth.

  What the hell was that all about?

  She watched the girl’s wagging braid fade into the sun.

  With another deep breath, Arielle straightened and glanced around. She realized that despite having visited the park at least a dozen times this summer alone, she had never been on this street.

  She found the green street sign above her head: Grove St.

  Grove Street? Never even heard of it.

  Her eyes drifted downward, and attached to the same pole that held the sign she saw a white sheet of paper. It looked like it had been hastily taped on, with clear tendrils of plastic tape hanging from each of the corners. The paper must have recently been posted too, as it was too white, too crisp, to have been up there for any significant amount of time. Normally, Arielle wouldn’t have paid an ad like this a second thought. But this was no normal ad; there was one handwritten word in thick black ink that held her attention fast.

  A word that had a specific meaning for her.

  One that seemed to call to her, begging her to read more.

  Just six block letters, but they were enough to draw her in. Six simple letters that spelled MOTHER.

  Chapter 13

  Only crackheads, prostitutes, and bookies use payphones in the cell phone era.

  Or so Arielle had thought.

  Well, you can add desperate women who want to conceive to that list.

  The phone rang so many times that she almost hung up.

  One more, one more—just one more ring.

  As she listened to the phone ring, she realized that her thoughts were an odd microcosm that mimicked her decision to make the call: just one more chance—one more chance to try and make things right.

  MOTHER.

  The handwritten block letters had drawn her in, and the irony of her being drawn in by expert copy was not beyond her. The copywriter being coerced by copy.

  MOTHER.

  You will get pregnant and you will deliver a healthy child. 100% success.

  It was the simplicity of the ad that pulled her attention, and it was the assumption that kept it. The ad never asked if the reader wanted a child, it simply assumed that they did.

  MOTHER.

  Those six letters were the key.

  And here she was, cowering in a phone booth that smelled like weed and shit and—

  “Hello?”

  Arielle shook her head.

  “Hello?” she replied, trying to force the desperation she felt from her voice.

  There was a pause, leaving Arielle unsure of whose turn it was to speak next. She heard a soft crinkling sound, like an old leather wallet being twisted, and somehow she just knew that the woman on the other end of the line was smiling.

  MOTHER.

  “Coverfeld Ave.”

  The woman’s voice was scratchy, as if she had spent the night shouting, but, almost paradoxically, it had a soothing quality to it.

  Just thinking about this made Arielle clear her own throat.

  “Sorry? I just—”

  There was an audible click, and for the second time in one day, the person on the other end had hung up on her.

  Fuck.

  Coverfeld Ave? What the fuck am I doing?

  * * *

  For some reason, the fifteen-minute walk home only took eight, and getting changed, packing a small overnight bag, and getting into her car only took half as long as that.

  It took a total of twelve minutes from the time she hung up the payphone to make it home and get ready to leave.

  Arielle refused to believe that he
r speed was due to excitement over the newest prospect—over Coverfeld Ave—because this was a stretch, even for her; replying to an ad pasted to a light pole and a mysterious voice on the phone—a strange voice, an old voice, MOTHER’s voice—and expecting that somehow hidden in there was the secret to getting pregnant was borderline insane.

  At best, it was a scam. At worst… well, at worst she would have to put her years of boxing training to the test. Perhaps Dr. Barnes’s face had just been the opening act—the undercard, if you will.

  Still, even knowing these facts, Arielle employed cognitive dissonance to keep her rational brain out of the equation. She was like a physician who was also a religious zealot; the two completely incompatible ideologies were nestled quietly and comfortably in different corners of the room. Like a complacent couple, without speaking or interacting, they couldn’t rightly argue.

  Nevertheless, she took almost everything out of her wallet save a few twenties and one piece of ID. Without a phone, she had to resort to the somewhat archaic act of searching the Internet for directions. Although there were about a dozen Coverfeld Avenues in the southeastern United States, there was one of them in particular that she kept turning back to. This Coverfeld Ave was located less than two hours away near Elloree, which was probably the reason why it seemed so right to her. Arielle had never been to Elloree, but she knew that it housed a large swamp whose beauty was best encapsulated by its name: Stumphole Swamp. While it was impossible to tell from Google Maps the details of any houses or compounds—women’s shelters?—on Coverfeld Ave, it ran right along the swamp, which also felt right for some reason.

  The woman’s strange, harsh yet soothing voice on the other end of the payphone—”Coverfeld Ave”—suddenly repeated in her head.

  In the swamp, she thought. Coverfeld Ave definitely runs smack in the middle of the swamp. And this woman’s house is probably right in the center.

  Her mind locked up as she debated whether to leave a note for Martin; some half-assed explanation of where she was headed (which he likely wouldn’t believe) and how sorry she was (which would come off as insincere). In the end, she decided against it for two reasons: one, she had been such a crusty bitch that she doubted a hand-scrawled apology on the back of the grocery list would cut it, and two, she was a bit perturbed that Martin hadn’t actually been there when she’d jogged home from the payphone. The latter was a ridiculously selfish notion, no doubt, but she was in a ridiculous mood.