R<\/span>andall Kilburn didn’t allow himself\u00a0to use\u00a0the term love as more than a descriptive\u00a0expression for warmth and camaraderie, not that he wasn’t married, enmeshed in a workably open marriage,\u00a0and reasonably happy.\u00a0 To his knowledge, considering his former history,\u00a0he had never been “in love” so\u00a0tended to\u00a0disbelieve that his recent affliction of pain and sensory memory affiliated with\u00a0a woman he had slept with\u00a0on a research trip\u00a0could be such a thing.<\/p>\n

The desert woman, the\u00a0woman not his wife,\u00a0\u201cthe one who caused the ache\u201d as he referred to her, simply became an unbearable person for whom he may have used the word love, if only because, though\u00a0dull and mostly diffuse, since their break-up, this ache was a constant source of worry and it had not left him for months.<\/p>\n

If pressed by a crony in his old age, much, much later, he could imagine his story about the ache-girl could begin, were he unblocked enough to tell it, with a simple statement such as: \u201cThere was a woman I knew once who challenged me, who I hated and who I loved, if such a thing exists\u201d– but even his therapist got only his repetitive and practiced dismissal of love, the gnashing of his teeth, and the wrinkling of his brow.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Still, after\u00a0one too many\u00a0instances of Randall’s refutation of his affection,\u00a0even his jaded shrink wised up.\u00a0\u00a0It was the matter of Randall’s\u00a0stylistically accomplished and yet completely ridiculous diatribes about disengagement that\u00a0the learned man\u00a0caught onto, telling Randall then that he could see Randall\u2019s bland remarks and negativity for what they authentically were,\u00a0which was not, his shrink stressed,\u00a0Randall’s true dismissal of aforementioned events\u00a0or\u00a0his lady interest, but Randall’s own desire to dismiss that which his mind had no capability of controlling, or setting free.<\/p>\n

On this point, Randall immediately agreed.\u00a0 “I want to set this free,” he said.\u00a0 \u201cThe ache is a terrible ache in my stomach.\u00a0 A burn like an ulcer.”<\/p>\n

“You say you want to let this go, Randall, yet you can’t,” the therapist said.\u00a0 “Again and again, we return to her, so it might help to\u00a0explore what it was about this girl that you can’t forget.”<\/p>\n

“I can\u2019t forget that she wants to kill herself every day,” Randall replied.\u00a0 “I\u2019ve had\u00a0my own problems with depression, you know?\u00a0 So why would I want to know about that or even remember it?\u00a0 Except, each day I want to fuck her and wonder if she has done the big sorrow.\u00a0 Maybe that is causing the ache, wondering if she’s offed herself out in the desert and is currently hanging from a\u00a0rafter of her trailer, maybe shored up in her backyard, bled out, having decided that I wronged her somehow.”<\/p>\n

“Why feel responsible?” his therapist said.\u00a0 “You don’t control her.\u00a0 Remember, we discussed this?”<\/p>\n

“She said she loved me.\u00a0 I couldn’t love her.\u00a0 I don’t love.\u00a0 I told her this, but she was fine with that.\u00a0 And then she left me when I\u00a0said\u00a0my wife was pregnant,” he said, raking his hand nervously through his thinning sandy blond hair.\u00a0 “Yes.\u00a0 I’m probably just wondering if she’s still alive.\u00a0 That’s it.”<\/p>\n

Randall looked at the clock, a silver\u00a0deal with glistening hands that reminded him of butter knives.\u00a0“My wife is waiting for me,” Randall\u00a0said.\u00a0 “I have to go.”<\/p>\n

Returning home, he paid bills and booked travel.\u00a0 He frantically wrote letters to friends and editors and picked up one project after the next.\u00a0 Still, despite\u00a0endless distractions to exile her from his memory (he did not allow himself to think her name unless\u00a0by accident), she who caused the ache had still taken up large residence in the back of his head, pulled up an old wingchair to get comfortable, naked in his mind save one of his button-up shirts and a pair of small white panties, and he could not (despite fine news\u00a0of his child’s\u00a0good ultrasound, despite his agent’s email to say he’d won a new award out of Newfoundland, and despite any number of\u00a0successes) shake her loose.<\/p>\n

He found her presence was a constant, ever muted\u00a0engagement that fluttered behind his eyes or below his ribcage and also caused a low-grade schizophrenia where one moment he cast her out completely, swearing he was better off without her, and the next he longed to be near her\u00a0so fervently it fairly drew\u00a0his hands up from his sides, as if he could reach out to touch\u00a0her, but her air was not his air.\u00a0 His air was rarified island air,\u00a0the air where the smog and the ocean took turns with\u00a0monopolizing breezes.<\/p>\n

Her air was as dry as her desert.\u00a0 Besides, he could not extend his hands to her now, even if he wanted to, even if she screamed for his return.\u00a0 He should not return to her in any case,\u00a0since she caused the\u00a0question of why he’d meander with a\u00a0damaging\u00a0attraction\u00a0bordering on obsession\u00a0and burning like a brush-fire\u00a0grown too close.\u00a0 He was happily married to someone else, he reminded himself.\u00a0 Someone perfect and nice.\u00a0 He had done no wrong.\u00a0 Their marriage had been open for years.<\/p>\n

Bullshit.\u00a0 He hated his wife, his cold, socially demanding wife.\u00a0 The other woman\u00a0knew this.\u00a0 The other women knew this.<\/p>\n

Yet\u00a0his wife was expecting now, he reminded himself, having passed the first trimester in her pregnancy with no troubles like the\u00a0last time she\u2019d miscarried and they\u2019d grieved, though already distant from each other, so\u00a0it was all that it could have been.<\/p>\n

He had wealth.\u00a0 He had connections.\u00a0 He had everything he possibly needed.\u00a0 Besides, he doubted the validity of the ache she (who caused it) had caused.\u00a0 Could\u00a0his reaction to her be more simply\u00a0an aggravated lust complicated by the pain\u00a0of pursuing her emotional train wreck?\u00a0 He was determined to ride out the pain.\u00a0 Thus, after the last weekend’s bout of tennis and sundry shopping, replying to editors and strangers, staring out at the waterfront view from his home, he knew only that instead of progress, he had backtracked, tasting the blackest bile he had known since the split\u2014since everything lately, but mainly the water before him, saddened him so severely he was nearly moved to uncustomary\u00a0tears solely because she (who caused the ache) saw no similar expanse!<\/p>\n

He wanted her eyes to see through his, and vice versa.\u00a0 But they could not.\u00a0 His separation from her was therefore more than distance tracked with miles, more\u00a0like belonging to another universe that she could not see, where she stood in the sand, which was hot and dry as the bone of something that\u00a0died there, and he and his wife stood\u00a0in a habitable dwelling on an island with glittering promise, perusing the daily, oceanic splendor of\u00a0the urban skyline.<\/p>\n

In this place, he had an identity with a constant household.\u00a0 His wife was concrete.\u00a0 Yet travelling caused breaks in his realities when he approached the desert landscape; it always had.\u00a0 There was never any wife amidst the shifting dunes, only a lover who cut her wrists with dull tools\u00a0and wore the scars\u00a0to\u00a0show her long hobby was not new, a\u00a0lover with pale hair and full lips, a\u00a0lover\u00a0with track marks that had all but faded at the insides of her elbows–for she had been an addict too.<\/p>\n

He had given up the drugs and liquor long ago, landing back in his wealth and privilege and surmounting his brief bouts with self-destructive decimation in decided triumph.\u00a0 Two million dollars his flat cost.\u00a0 He was far from the place where he’d trade anything important for a bottle or a hit.\u00a0 Yet today, he missed the lover so much it seemed that even his gums hurt,\u00a0missing her totally and viscerally, even missing her dangerous and overly dramatic moments when she, bleeding, shivering after an episode, clung to him and pressed her wrist wounds to the bare skin on his back to close them, pulling him deeper inside her, half\u00a0crying, half demanding, “Get closer. \u00a0Shove inside me, you asshole,”\u00a0as his body obliged her.\u00a0 He had long, strong, capable arms.\u00a0 She loved how he lifted her.\u00a0 How they held her.<\/p>\n

But he needed to turn to his wife, to forget that other thing like a\u00a0 nightmare\u00a0deferred.\u00a0 His wife\u00a0was pregnant and needed him, which meant that although their marriage had always been a party to new women or men entering their world, more now was expected of him by way of conversation, gentle touches, and soothing reassurances.\u00a0 This was to be their first child.\u00a0 Her other lovers had abandoned her. They had gotten married in order to have such a child.<\/p>\n

When the news went out, their friends rallied around them, thinking it might mean the end of the suffering for one or the other, the same suffering these friends secretly believed was caused by the couple’s constant\u00a0flirtations with marital disaster,\u00a0and “A baby,” one good friend said.\u00a0 “That will show them that they need to be strong together. Else why stay together so long?”<\/p>\n

When he heard this as he walked back into his study, his blood went cold.\u00a0 He hated them and wanted to flee.\u00a0 He looked cruelly to his wife’s stomach.\u00a0 The\u00a0word baby started to give him a chill, though he had thought, at one time, that he wanted one.\u00a0 A baby was something he imagined they needed many times, obsessed by his own ancestry as he was, but he had no practical experience with childrearing.<\/p>\n

Wanting a\u00a0baby occurred to him, suddenly, like wanting a Lamborghini, the one of few things in his late forties that he still wanted yet did not\u00a0have.\u00a0 Yet, such a thing did not appear from mid-air.\u00a0 Babies were made.\u00a0 Sex and proximity were required.\u00a0 Perhaps this was part of why she-who-caused-the-ache\u00a0had abruptly cancelled\u00a0his trail-membership in her life.\u00a0 As his wife Karen expanded, her expectations expanded too.\u00a0\u00a0 The lover could see this, feel it in his removal.\u00a0 The baby had made this happen.<\/p>\n

Now, he was to go to medical appointments with Karen.\u00a0 He was to help pick nursery d\u00e9cor.\u00a0 He was to be around and\u00a0cook when the nausea overtook her, also: avoid long trips.\u00a0 He was to call if he were gone more than a few hours.<\/p>\n

Often, lately, for she was five and a half months along, he watched her growing belly and wondered what that tiny soul would expect when it emerged enraged and squalling at the drafty surface of the world.\u00a0 Would that soul be a miracle or a disappointment?<\/p>\n

And what if it was damaged somehow, the fetus?\u00a0 What if it was not what he wanted?\u00a0\u00a0 The child would be a teen when he was in his sixties.\u00a0 It could ruin all major travel they did for some time.\u00a0 Karen would be affected too, he decided–was already being affected\u2014researching preschools and sitters.\u00a0 So\u00a0what sort of effect would a constantly\u00a0pressing need have on both of their\u00a0lives outside of home?\u00a0 It, meaning the baby in this instance, could be a problem.\u00a0 It could change everything.<\/p>\n

But “You have to call the baby he or she, Randall,” Karen admonished this afternoon, tossing her burnished\u00a0hair behind her back and stretching\u00a0on her toes to put soup cans in the cabinet.\u00a0 “Stop calling the baby ‘it.’\u00a0 That bothers me.”<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything bothers you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFuck you, Randall.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI did that,\u201d he said.\u00a0 He walked behind her and placed his hand on the small of her back. “We don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl,” he said.\u00a0 “So I call the baby it.\u00a0 How can I assign a gender?”<\/p>\n

“It’s not an it,” she said.<\/p>\n

He took another can from her hand and put it up on the shelf. He blocked her from reaching the rest.\u00a0 “Sit down, Karen,” he said.\u00a0 “The baby<\/em> is what I meant every time I said it<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

She sat.\u00a0\u00a0Clouds gathered.\u00a0\u00a0She watched them with dull eyes.\u00a0She was the somewhere else he often saw her go when she thought of someone or something other than him.\u00a0Years of that had happened.\u00a0 Her hair was neat, groomed as\u00a0usual.<\/p>\n

Yet he was somewhere else, too, fighting the roiling despair that rose in waves.\u00a0 He wanted fresh sunburn on his skin, arid heat, sand below his sandaled feet.\u00a0 He wanted she-who-caused-the–ache to apply aloe to his burns, smiling and mocking him as he winced,\u00a0while the sky darkened around their solitude.\u00a0 He wanted to walk through her house and find her somewhere, seated on a loveseat in torn jeans or some other perch where she would have been reading, and he wanted\u00a0to make love to her wherever she was.\u00a0 He wanted to see a lizard appear in the shower stall or watch the\u00a0light drop behind her house, with a cool drink in one hand, ice rapidly melting,\u00a0and her small\u00a0hand in his other hand.<\/p>\n

But he had a philanthropic publicity gala tonight, had rented a monkey suit.\u00a0 He would ride a ferry to the shore then a taxi to the party.\u00a0 Here, where the water and city lights made a\u00a0sparkling urban\u00a0smock of\u00a0flash and humidity, nothing was dry.\u00a0 Even the air from the air-conditioners\u00a0had an alternate smell.<\/p>\n

There was so much water around his house that, as he ate two soft-boiled eggs and rye toast for lunch earlier, he\u2019d decided the whole panorama of his daily view\u00a0was not\u00a0just the symbol but the summary of the problem. For his wife, there was an ocean in her belly, some ocean of repressed\u00a0needs, of new demands, of their failures, for years, to love each other.\u00a0 There was a literal\u00a0ocean around him.\u00a0 Glass and bronze ornaments of the sea accumulated like flotsam throughout their house– and\u00a0there was a clean sterile space within that house, too, albeit humid from the occasional cracked window.\u00a0 Even\u00a0 tap water was piped in invisibly\u00a0and neatly chlorinated.\u00a0 As he wandered around his place that day, he could find no dust anywhere.<\/p>\n

This immediately led him to the connection that\u00a0there was also\u00a0a lack of\u00a0awareness on Karen’s part\u00a0with\u00a0any of the\u00a0very sullied or personal parts of himself that he most despised.\u00a0He had started to tell her.\u00a0 Once.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t want to know.\u00a0 And so?\u00a0 And so a divide.\u00a0 You refuse my dark, he thought, so I cannot give you the light either. \u00a0I am not me when I\u2019m with you.<\/p>\n

She was hydrated motion with unbroken lines– constantly moisturized, clean, flowing–in control of her own emotional well being, no matter what unseen part of her may exist.\u00a0 Everything was beautiful and terrible\u00a0about her unflappable spirit, he mused.\u00a0 She had never disparaged\u00a0his past, unlike someone else, never cut open her wrists and said, \u201cFuck you, Randall!\u00a0 I feel what you do not allow yourself to acknowledge.\u201d\u00a0 Karen did not demand what he said he would not, or could not give.\u00a0 Love. She never had.<\/p>\n

“I will not ask you to be in love with me,” she once said, and this was an early agreement, he remembered, that they’d always kept.<\/p>\n

“Karen,” he\u2019d said.\u00a0 “I’m just not emotionally accessible.\u00a0 I have problems with the idea of\u00a0being in love. I have problems with wanting to die sometimes, too.\u00a0 Like when I work.\u00a0 But my therapist says this is not an act I’m likely to actualize.\u00a0 And my work is everything to me.”\u00a0 The one who caused the ache broke his laptop, flung it from the table and threw herself on top of him, taking him, kissing him, biting him, making him hers.<\/p>\n

When he and Karen married, she was thirty seven.\u00a0\u00a0Her ovaries could stop working soon.\u00a0 They tried again and again to conceive\u00a0and finally got it right. “You must use condoms with other men while we do this,” he remembered saying to her before the confirmation of pregnancy, mixed in his sentiment.\u00a0 “We need to make sure this is our child.”\u00a0 She had agreed.\u00a0 This went on a year before the test\u00a0came back positive in the new definitive way.<\/p>\n

And during this year, halfway through it, this was right about the time when their open marriage grew complicated with his sudden desire not for babies but for blood\u00a0and fire emanating from the\u00a0desert.\u00a0 Or was this after?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Was there a time and space when both desires happened concurrently, but he could assume them to be removed from each other, as if he had two lives, spatially delegated?<\/p>\n

For the wife, he was to be respectful, kind, and decent.\u00a0 In contrast, for the one who caused the ache, he was expected to belong to her, heart and soul, body and mind, to never discuss the wife unless necessary, and to listen to her daily discussion about her desire to kill herself\u00a0or calmly overhear the many ways she might go about doing so until she climbed on top of him and let this all go.\u00a0 Sometimes, this sickened him.<\/p>\n

The demands were heavy.\u00a0 She did not say, “Be yourself, as long as this fits an appropriate image,” as Karen did.<\/p>\n

She said clearly, in many ways, “Be who you deny being, but really are.”<\/p>\n

“I am like her,” he\u00a0thought that evening while regarding his tux, his hand on his abdomen where the bulk of her ache sat like a small anvil.\u00a0 But he always felt most similar to her, the other, while sitting in the dark,\u00a0pondering his own thoughts.<\/p>\n

“Get ready, babe,” Karen then called from the living room\u00a0and he turned on\u00a0more lights to contemplate the suit\u00a0wrapped in plastic.\u00a0 And as the lights blinded him he felt nothing like her,\u00a0that girl in his sandy memory,\u00a0as soon as he was\u00a0fully dressed for\u00a0the party, wearing the false face he wore for guests and acquaintances.\u00a0\u00a0He was a different man.\u00a0 The one who had no doubt about his right to stand among the\u00a0well-heeled people he called his acquaintances.\u00a0 No one would say to him here, \u201cShut up, you little bitch, and mount me.\u00a0 Give me what I want!\u00a0 Now.\u201d<\/p>\n

No stranger to his own multiple masking or sudden\u00a0bouts with depression, in fact, he sometimes wondered if dating her were not an exercise in self-annihilation or mutilation, but\u00a0an exercise in positive comparison,\u00a0such as:\u00a0 “I am not that crazy because She is far more crazy.\u00a0 I am not that damaged because She is far more damaged.”<\/p>\n

In his moments before sleep, he acknowledged that he\u00a0appreciated her swirl of emotion since it forcibly engaged him with living like he’d\u00a0lived in his doping days, but without the liquor or drugs.\u00a0 She\u00a0ripped him free from his tendencies to minimalize or avoid self-expression or avoid commitment:\u00a0I will marry you but I will not...A,B,C,D– to avoid even friendships that presented themselves as too binding too quickly.\u00a0\u00a0I will speak to you, but on my terms, with a harrowing display of both proximity and removal until I test you to be truthful.<\/p>\n

Really, he was a kind man most of the time.\u00a0 He always tried to be, though sometimes this came off as non-committal.\u00a0 \u00a0Or non-committal came off as non-committal.\u00a0 His\u00a0ache girl’s\u00a0rage forced his responses.\u00a0 His honesty.\u00a0 His heat and pain and passion.\u00a0 It was fascinating to feel these things while sober.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yet now he burned with them, became part of the fire they created even in her absence, himself a burn victim with seeping wounds\u00a0made by the hot licking tips of the life fire itself.<\/p>\n

Before, he did not think\u00a0such feelings\u00a0existed for him anymore.\u00a0\u00a0 Not anywhere.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Certainly not here where the hair from his chin fell to the sink as he shaved, only to be washed away at the turn of a knob.\u00a0 Here where plans were made suavely by a beautiful woman called his wife, with perfect hair and aplomb, who more often wanted to kill him for his transgressions with timing or intimacy than be truly jealous of them or in any way damage herself. Yet even his compliments to Karen were now couched in a comparison mode with the other.\u00a0 What would his shrink say to that?<\/p>\n

He would say, \u201cYou love this other woman, Randall.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Randall would say, \u201cI cannot love.\u201d\u00a0 And another hour would go by.<\/p>\n

And so: There were two lives.\u00a0 One in mild, happy fatherland-to-be.\u00a0 One in hell that sometimes felt like heaven just long enough to rake some coals through his soul.<\/p>\n

Shawna.\u00a0 Okay, that was her name.<\/p>\n

He thought her name, thought it again, and saw her face even now, getting on the ferry with Karen on his arm.\u00a0 Even later, he knew from experience, Randall’s mind would throb for her.\u00a0\u00a0Alone in the bathroom,\u00a0hand on his cock, stroking, he would think of her, picturing how tightly he remembered having pulled her close and the dry, sun-stripped\u00a0texture of her straight blond hair against his cheek that smelled of leaves and sage.\u00a0 But he could not go to her again.<\/p>\n

“You violated me by doing that with her!” she last said, shouting hysterically\u00a0about his\u00a0news\u00a0of making a baby with his wife.<\/p>\n

“She is my wife!” he announced, a little indignantly.<\/p>\n

“Only because you’re afraid I can’t stay sane long enough to have your baby,” she replied.\u00a0 “Or, you think I’m too old?\u00a0 You don’t love me?\u00a0 Or maybe you’re afraid an ex-addict would make a poor child, another addict in the gene pool?\u00a0 Maybe Karen’s family has no history of mental illness?\u00a0 Any of this?\u00a0 You are ripping out my heart Randall and feeding it to the dogs!”<\/p>\n

“I don’t belong to you,” he replied, frightened again by her intensity.\u00a0 “I mean, I do belong to you somewhat when I’m with you.\u00a0 But I can’t say love.\u00a0 I don’t say love.\u00a0 And I don’t love you.\u00a0 Or I do love you, in one way or another, but I’m not in love with you,\u00a0okay?\u00a0 I am fucked up.”<\/p>\n

“Fucked up people say love, Randall, and fall in love,” she replied, furious.\u00a0 “It happens all the time.\u00a0 And you\u00a0are in love with me, so\u00a0you\u00a0need to say that– right fucking now.\u00a0 I want to hear you say it.\u00a0 Tell me you love me.\u00a0 With words.”<\/p>\n

“Stop pressing me,” he argued.\u00a0 “You know how much I care.\u00a0 So, now what? I\u2019m supposed to regret I\u2019ll be a father?”<\/p>\n

“No,” Shawna had said, her voice dull.\u00a0 “You’re supposed to regret not having that child with me, Randall, because I love you more than she does and you love me and you know it.\u00a0 Because I want to hold you so close every night that I can feel you breathe and I can kiss every inch of your body until there is not one place my mouth has not been.\u00a0 This is goodbye because children are your future and you are starting a new one without me, that does not contain me.\u00a0 Did you think I should be glad for that?”<\/p>\n

“Do you have a future you can see?” he thought then, but he could say nothing,\u00a0and this is where the ache began, the ache along with the silence. The ache he felt right now.<\/p>\n

“I want to kill myself today by standing behind your car and letting you back over me,” he remembered Shawna said as he left that day. “I want you to kill me.”\u00a0 She sobbed as she stood before him, her body shaking and her face hidden in her hands.\u00a0 \u00a0And then she said, backing away from him before walking into her house and locking it. “It’s over, Randall.\u00a0 You have to go.\u00a0 Don’t call me.”<\/p>\n

But that was in the past.\u00a0 He was in the city now with a shoreline and high-rises and a wife.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0His citified\u00a0clean hand rested on the small of\u00a0Karen’s back as he helped her off the ferry and then into a taxi.\u00a0 Karen smelled like linen.\u00a0 She smiled.\u00a0 Her teeth were gleaming white.\u00a0 Outside, everything was clean, wet, and safe.\u00a0 There was\u00a0ocean and also rain.<\/p>\n

As they exited the taxi, he had an umbrella ready.\u00a0\u00a0 He opened it for them, walking close to Karen.\u00a0 When they arrived, he went to the coat closet and sent\u00a0Karen\u00a0ahead to greet the crowd of well-wishers and friends.\u00a0\u00a0 But in that room, with all those garments, it was a warm, quiet place.\u00a0 He hung Karen’s aqua Dior coat beside a faux fur jacket\u00a0and\u00a0found another hanger for his black\u00a0trench, which he placed beside\u00a0a\u00a0sandy camel sports coat.<\/p>\n

The coat looked soft.\u00a0 He reached to touch it, finding it similar in color to the sand he’d considered earlier.\u00a0 But\u00a0all was shadowed.\u00a0 The closet was rather dark.\u00a0\u00a0He touched the fabric.\u00a0 It was soft like the light blond hair on a woman’s upper arms.\u00a0 “Did you kill yourself yet, Shawna?” he asked.<\/p>\n

No answer.<\/p>\n

“I do love you,” he then said, clutching the\u00a0empty sleeve in a maudlin way.\u00a0 “All right.\u00a0 I am in love with you.”\u00a0 It was out.\u00a0 He could not take it back.\u00a0 \u00a0Like a guilty child, he\u00a0dropped the\u00a0coat and\u00a0went to rejoin his\u00a0glowing wife.<\/p>\n

He stood very close to her, as if to wear her like a shield.\u00a0 “Oh, this rain!\u00a0 Oh, this rain,” Karen said faintly, referring to the water cascading down all the visible glass in the bookstore.\u00a0 “Sometimes, it seems it will never stop.\u00a0It’ll be nice to have a nice, dry day.”\u00a0 She rubbed her stomach again, as pregnant women do.<\/p>\n

It’s coming, Randall thought.\u00a0 The baby.\u00a0\u00a0His baby.\u00a0 His baby with her. What was a baby anyway?<\/p>\n

The photographer approached.\u00a0 He said, “Smile.\u00a0 Smile.”<\/p>\n

They did.<\/p>\n

For the perfect shot, Randall put his hand\u00a0beside Karen’s hand on her belly, let it rest\u00a0there until he felt a small insistent movement below his palm, until the camera was done clicking, until he\u00a0almost forgot what he was doing in any regard except trying to hear motion through his palm,\u00a0and then\u00a0his wife, usually eager for his\u00a0affection or touch in a public setting, grew tired of the staid\u00a0weight or\u00a0heat of\u00a0his open palm\u00a0so turned\u00a0half away from him on her sprightly toes\u00a0towards another group of ardent well-wishers,\u00a0removing her belly (because it was hers) from his handhold, which had never felt more precarious\u2014and delicately, smiling in a fashion that never once touched her eyes, \u00a0Karen then, with a casual grimace that broadcast to him yet again that they had never loved each other in a way that caused any kind of heartfelt ache, because she was his wife, because she could, lightly shrugged his touch away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…the one who caused the ache…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1381"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1629,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1381\/revisions\/1629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}