The first part of this story, Greener Grass, can be found in my right sidebar, under I Like To Write.
*****
By that night, there was still nothing much. Tamara felt bloated and nauseated and also a little crampy. She nibbled on stale Ritz crackers Brad found for her in his cupboard, and sucked her Lifesavers.
When Paul and Brad and Brad's roommate devised a plan to go out for drinks, she waved them away and said, "I can't go anywhere, but thanks."
Paul sat on the edge of the couch. He folded his hands between his knees. He said, "What's going on, TaMARa?"
"It's TAMara, okay? TAMara."
He held his palms up and grinned a little. "All right, TAMara, then. You don't seem well. Care to fill me in?"
A fan placed on a high shelf blew toward them. His pink dreadlocks quivered in the breeze. "No, Doc Baker," she snapped. Then her voice softened as she said, "Thanks. But I just don't feel well."
"Who the hell's Doc Baker?"
"You know," she said. "Little House on the Prairie."
He stared at her blankly.
"Forget it. It doesn't matter."
Paul said, "We're gonna go then. I'll bring you back a slice of pizza. Does that sound good?"
She nodded, a little kid ever so slightly comforted by this bizarre man and his offer of pepperoni and cheese. "Pepperoni and cheese, please," she said, rolling onto her side.
He patted her hip and she heard them troop out the door, Paul's big boots clunking across the wood floor.
Once the locks clattered into place, she groaned and clutched her stomach. How was she going to do this? Here? In some strange guy's apartment in Queens?
She'd never miscarried before. Her previous three pregnancies had been, while not enjoyable, at least stable. There'd been a little spotting with Eli, but nothing else. Nothing remotely like a dead fetus still inside her.
She stood tentatively and tiptoed into the kitchen. She rifled through shelves of food, killed a roach with a rolling pin, wondered why two single guys would have a rolling pin, found a bag of chocolate chips and a brownish banana and carried them back to the couch. She peeled the banana half way down and stuck chocolate chips into the mushier parts, like a tree trunk riddled with termites.
The thought almost made her think better of eating it. But she was hungry. She needed fruit. She needed carrots and fresh asparagus and strawberries and cantaloupe. She thought of the market back home, the one with the best produce and the high glass ceiling where she liked to go when she had time to herself. Which was almost never.
Here, a banana spiked with milk chocolate blobs was the closest she was going to get.
And it was good, sort of.
She eyed a six-pack in the fridge. She thought, That would help get me through. Then she thought, That would also set me squarely in the front fucking car of a roller coaster I don't want to get back on. But then, how could it be any steeper, any more unsettling and twirly than what she was already strapped into?
As long as she stayed away from that six pack and its ilk, she knew she'd end up okay. She knew this would sort itself into something resembling a normal life. She had no idea how. She just had a hunch. If she didn't. touch. the. six-pack.
She pulled up the living room window and leaned part way out. The sash, unable to stay open itself, rested on her spine. She gazed across stark rooftops and the bones of buildings going up and delivery trucks rumbling down narrow streets and even a few fringy green treetops. She smelled cooking meat and heard someone's TV.
She went into Brad's bedroom, opened his top dresser drawer. Underwear: boxer briefs in dark colors, the best kind. T-shirts: round-necked. A faux-velvet Crown Royale bag that she pulled out. She sat on his tidily made bed (damask green striped comforter and fluffy pillows). She unknotted the bag and reached inside. Her fingers fumbled with something circular and metal. She pulled out a ring. A white gold diamond solitaire. Huge. Two carats? Three?
She fiddled with the stereo–an empty iPod dock, and a receiver. She found a radio station that played a kicky spanish song. She wasn't in the mood. She flipped it off.
She went back to the fridge and looked at the six-pack. She squatted and ran her palm over the smooth bottlecaps. It would be so easy to take out a bottle and pop it open.
She felt a slow wash of pain that started in her core and radiated outward until she was trembling. She eased her way back to the couch and laid down.
*****
Tamara woke a few hours later. She thought she was in her bed at home, that she smelled the fake floral detergent, that she heard Joshua in the bathroom, that she'd bump against Dave when she bent her knee.
She opened her eyes, though, and it was dark. Not dark-dark, like at home, but bluish. Quietish. She sensed she was alone.
She sat up slowly and made her way to the bathroom where she swallowed several generic ibuprofens. She grabbed a few of the scratchy towels and laid them on the couch before she reclined again.
Her sleep, when she fell back into it, was fitful. It was populated by her children, plus one baby that turned from solid and opaque to transparent, that had Craig's face and long fingernails, that cried as it faded to nothing.
