I wiggle my ugly toes under the bathroom door. I move the locked door knob back and forth so it goes click clack. “Brian,” Jen says. I pull my toes out and let go of the knob, even take a step back. I’ve been hovering since she passed her eighth week. I want to be close, since this bathroom has seen so much loss. She flips magazine pages, presumably waiting another few seconds before saying I’m still there.
**
“Daddy’s going to have a football player,” the sonogram tech says without smiling.
I hold Jen’s hand, hoping she doesn’t recognize the tech, an Indian woman with a mole near her eye. Jen’s hand sits in mine. She is likely thinking what I am: this tech said the same thing last year, before the second miscarriage.
Can’t she at least say I’m going to have the next Marino, Elway, or Favre? If she insists on assuming all guys love sports, maybe she could take the time to learn names like Ripken, Shaq, Gretzky, reduce the chances of offending repeat customers.
**
“Oh, no,” Jen says. She says it so quietly I think I’m imagining things, my head pressed up against the bathroom door. Am I dozing?
“What?” I say. We’re already into week fourteen, the furthest we’ve made it.
I shake the doorknob. Even for a half bathroom, it’s tiny, a town home specialty. Sitting on the toilet, even with her stubby arms, she could easily unlock the door.
I give it a few seconds, try again without hearing the click, then run out to the garage and get a tiny screwdriver. I toss things out of the tool kit, cursing myself for secretly naming the boy Brian.
She’s waiting for me in the kitchen. Her eyes are red. I go to hug her but see the little hand, all five fingers cradling the right side of her neck. The fingers are proportioned properly, in fact exactly what I’d expect a newborn baby’s hand to look like. Little half moons look up from the fingernails. The knuckles look like little squished faces. Is this what Brian’s hand would have looked like in the delivery room? Is this the closest I’ll come to a child of my own? I blink and look again. Of course the hand is gone.
She looks at the counter. “I knew it would happen.”
I hug her, the crook of my elbow touching where the little hand was. “No more trying,” I promise again.
**
Months later, I find myself hovering near the bathroom. Even when I put my toes under the door, she never says a word.
**
After a secret appointment, Jen explains what a tubal ligation is.
Ugly things are said in the kitchen. Her neck reddens. I stare at the spot on her neck, where I saw the tiny, white fingers. They were almost shaped like a wave.
David Erlewine used to write longish stories where everyone coughed and picked up items only to later put them down. His flash fiction appears or is forthcoming in Thieves Jargon, FRiGG, Los Angeles Review, The Pedestal, and other places. He edits flash for JMWW. He blogs, interviews, kvetches, and other things at http://www.whizbyfiction.blogspot.com
Wow. Terrific story. So much said in so little space.