The Solitude of Passion (9 page)

The noxious fumes from the compost penetrate my nostrils. It burns my lungs as I stare out over the speckled green and brown rows of Mitch’s blood, sweat, and tears. The dark, rusted soil has always captivated me. I’ve never thought of it as dirt, or like the soot you find in the yard. This was nourishing, life-giving soil, raw earth at its finest—warm and moist, every bit the clay that God formed man from. Now, Mitch himself has become a part of the earth, and all I want to do is bury myself in its moist clay and join him on the other side.

The baby gives a viral kick, and I snap out of my Mitch-inspired stupor. I’d better get home before I hurt his only living heir with the viral scent of manure that Max laid out.

I take the long way back to the house, watching the acacia’s sway in the breeze. The marigolds light up the border gardens with their manes turned toward heaven as if they too were waiting for Mitch to come home. I hope Mitch has a flower garden wherever he is. I hope when he sees a tree sway in the wind it makes him smile as he thinks of me. Mitch always pointed out the beauty that existed outside the windshield when he drove. He couldn’t get past the glory life had to offer, and all I could ever see were the potential hazards—the potholes, the wreckage on the side of the road.

I get home and sigh into the silent doorway, tossing my purse down as I head over to the couch. I’ve had mild cramps all morning, just below my pelvic bone, hard, long lasting episodes, one of which evoked a spontaneous groan. It sounded sexual, and it made me miss everything about a man.

It’s not until I hit the sofa that a wild squeeze grips my abdomen like a punishment.

“Shit.” I drop to my knees and fumble for my purse. I’m going to kill Mitch for doing this to me.

A tiny laugh rumbles through my chest as I victoriously snatch my phone and call Kat.

“What?” She doesn’t bother with the niceties.

“I just threatened to kill Mitch,” I pant. Of course it was all in my head, but the thought amuses me on some level.

“Well if you see him, tell him I’m in the mood to commit a few felonies myself.” She breathes into the receiver. “What’d he do now?”

“He impregnated me and left the country. Now I’m dying in pain.”

“I’m there.”

It takes less than five minutes for Kat to burst through the door. I’ve yet to regret my decision to gift her with a key, and today for sure I’m glad because I’m too busy writhing in pain to crawl to the door.

“What the hell’s wrong?” Her face is rife with worry. And I can’t help notice her lips are rioting for attention, stained a bright fuchsia pink. It distracts me just enough to ebb the pain, and I’m grateful for her cosmetics-based misstep. “You just sitting here by yourself?”

“You’re observant.” I’d readjust myself, but I’m too afraid my belly will go off like a grenade. “What did your lips ever do to you?”

She makes a face. “I was playing.”

“Don’t play. It’s not Halloween. It’s scary. And, yes, I’m sitting here by myself. Who’d you think was going to be here? Mitch?”

“Lee, this is serious.” She wipes her mouth over her jacket and leaves an indelible smudge over the denim.

“It’s nice to see you’ve evolved past the seventh grade.” Wish it
was
the seventh grade—any grade when I wasn’t knocked up for that matter.

“We need to call Colt and Janice.” She fumbles for her phone and spastically jabs at the screen.

“No thanks.” I snatch the phone from her and hang up on Colt. “I’m not calling them until I get to the hospital. This is probably just a false alarm. I don’t want to worry anybody.”

She eyes the swollen peak of my belly with a look of longing. Kat is dying for a swollen peak of her own. She and Steve have been trying to conceive since before he proposed.

“How about Max?” Her forehead wrinkles with concern. “Should we call him?” She’s so frightened for me like I might be dying.

“Max?” I’d be lying if I hadn’t thought of calling him. In fact, it takes everything in me
not
to call Max. We’ve logged so many hours together getting Townsend up and running again, it feels unnatural not to have him here. And he cares. He would want to know—hell, I want him to know. “I’m okay. I have you. You’re all I need.” I bite down on the lie. I desperately need Max. I don’t know why, I just do.

I look out the window at the plain butter sky stretched like a crisp sheet. A car drives up the street, unassuming and banal. Dew beads over the calla lilies sitting beneath the window as their phallic protrusions nestle proud in their white cocoons—the bleeding hearts with their curled pink tails dangle in rows. I want to galvanize this moment into my memory—the last of our world that Mitch knew—the one without the baby. I seize the scene, logging random events into an imaginary file that falls in the timeline after Mitch’s death. My whole world is rearranging without my husband by my side. Not even the house will look the same once the baby is born. It never looked the same without Mitch, and now he’s coming back to me in the form of a child—a phantom with his face. I don’t know if I can bear it. How can I have Mitch’s beautiful eyes, his perfect structure, staring at me day after day? It’s nothing short of genetic cruelty. At least with Colt, his personality offsets the startling resemblance. He’s always been Colton, the wild donkey of a brother, but the baby might be Mitch through and through, and it scares me.

Another hard pull of pressure erupts at my waist.

Maybe I should pretend it’s Colton’s baby. That would make it easier for sure. I could harness all of my pain into anger at Colt for impregnating me. God knows I have enough rage stored in me to deliver ten babies at least.

A gush of liquid warms my thighs and floats up around my bottom.

I look up at Kat and blink into a smile. “I think we’d better get to the hospital.”

“
Dry birth.
” The nurse squints into me with the face of a beetle.

I shrink in the bed with my bare bottom cool against the sheet, the thin hospital gown rising in all sorts of unflattering directions.

“Dry birth?” I look to Kat in a panic. I need to get out of here—as in out of my body.

I make wild eyes at Kat, signaling her to do something.

“It doesn’t sound comfortable.” She shakes her head, devoid of her smartass superpowers at the moment.

This is all affecting me on a disturbingly horrific level. It’s all real—there’s no turning back. This baby has to pass through my so-called birth canal, i.e. my very narrow vagina. It’s no wonder television portrays birth like some scene out of a horror movie with nothing but blood curdling screams and bodily fluids soaking the sheets—because it happens to be factual. I do want the screaming and the blood, but I want all of it to belong to Mitch. Suddenly knocking me up seems like a horrible act of cruelty, and he’s responsible in the worst way.

“I changed my mind,” I say it so cool it almost sounds plausible. “I’m not doing this.”

Kat and the beetle share a laugh in light of my newfound misfortune.

“You’re going to do fine,” Kat squawks with no real evidence. “You’re not in pain
now
are you?” It comes out accusatory, and I suddenly feel the need to shove her face in the urine filled bedpan.

I glare at her.

Kat is mistakenly convinced I can do this without the aid of high power pharmaceuticals. She’s gone over the ramifications of a drug-induced delivery at least a dozen times these past few months and twice on the way to the hospital. Of course, I foolishly agreed before I was enlightened to the magnificent amount of torture my body was capable of inflicting. And, now, I rather look forward to having a blessed-by-narcotics birthing experience. If anything, this builds a strong case for Colton and his self-medicating. I might join him in the effort should I survive the trauma.

“Here comes another one.” The beetle tracks her finger over the tiny monitor in an upward motion.

My entire person seizes with panic.

“I think I need something to take the edge off.” Like a bullet, but I decide to leave assault weapons out of the equation for now.

“I’ll get you some water.” Kat springs up trying to escape the room, but I snatch her by the wrist.

“What did you say?” That Kat even thinks for a minute something as docile as
water
could cure this misery proves how useless she’s going to be through this entire experience. “You are not leaving.” My stomach tightens at an accelerated rate. “Drugs!” It rips from my lungs like a battle cry. “
Strong
fucking drugs!”

Kat lets out a little laugh, and I sear her with a look. I haven’t taken slitting her throat off the table just yet.

“Oh God.” I squeeze her hand as though the ceiling were about to crash in. It’s like a vise is tightening around my waist at Mach five. “I can’t do this.” I scream, high and shrill like a whistle.

“Breathe!” she commands.

Breathing. Panting. Surreal moments stroke by filled with delirium. Finally it gives, and I’m filled with dread at the thought of having another one. I wish I could go back in time and smack Mitch at the thought of ever pointing his penis in my direction.

A visual of Mitch writhing over me infiltrates my thoughts, warms my heart, heals the emotional and physical pain like liniment if only for a moment.

“Will they get much harder?” I ask the nurse as she thumbs through my chart. Her wiry hair sprays out every which way.

“Could be.” She purses her lips, doesn’t bother to look up. “You’re only at three centimeters. This is just the beginning.”

“
Three
?” I sit up in horror. “That’s like seven away from ten.” It’s a bad time to prove I’m good at simple math. “I need to see somebody about an epidural.” I spit it out so fast I can practically see the words dart around the room.

“You need to be at four to have one.” She strides to the door. “I’ll send someone in about an hour or two.”

“What?” I dig my fingernails into the fleshy part of Kat’s hand. “I can’t deal with this for another hour. Get my phone.”

“You want me to get your drug dealer on the line?” She mocks.

“Yes,” I hiss, reaching past her and diving into my purse.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” She holds up her hands and backs away. “Who you gonna call? Vagina busters?”

“You are a real fucking comedian, you know that?” I fumble until I manage to dial Colt.

“I’m at the hospital,” I pant into the phone with disregard for hello. “I’m having the
baby
.” I say “baby” like it’s a disease. “Bring whatever illegal shit you have and get the hell down here now. I’m dying, Colt. I’m going to die if you don’t do this for me.” I take in a controlled breath trying to stave off the tears. “If you ever loved Mitch, you will do this—”

Kat snatches the phone away before I have a chance to threaten his life appropriately. “She’s not dying. They’re giving her drugs.”

“In an
hour!
” I shout in distress.

Kat drops my cell in her pocket safely out of reach.

“You are going to have a baby one day.” I fix a venomous look at my sister who I suddenly hate with all of my mortality. “It is going to hurt like hellfire. You will beg for something to make it all go away. And I’ll make damn sure you don’t get so much as an aspirin.”

Kat belts out a laugh. “We’ll see about that.” She points to the needle rising on the monitor. “Now breathe.”

Time warbles by in a delirious pain-induced frenzy—a haze of polemic cramps— the tearing and burning of muscles and tissue—the splitting of my entire existence. I close my eyes and try to will myself out of my body—beg for God to take me. I have no desire to see this through. A current of agony rails over me, unrivaled by anything I’ve ever felt before. My entire body is in revolt. This was the pain Mitch put me through when he died, and just when I thought he was incapable of giving me more, here I am.

Voices ignite in the room. A flash of white uniforms, Kat appears, then disappears.

Mitch strides over. He leans in and tries to comfort me.

“
Mitch
.” I take his hand. It’s so cold. I pull it over my forehead and hold it there. “Help me. Help me die,” I give it in a fevered whisper. I pull him down until his face is over mine, securing him by the back of the neck and cry out in pain.

“It’s okay. The nurse is here,” he whispers as his hot breath rakes across my face. “She wants to check you. I’ll be right back.”

“No! You’re not leaving.” I wrangle him closer and whimper. “Please, God, don’t leave.”

“Lee, it’s me, Colt.” He pulls away so I can see his face, but all I can see is the outline of the man I love, the one that put the baby in me to begin with.

“Colt?” I don’t bother hiding my disappointment.

Someone props my legs back and a cool hand tracks up my thighs.

The pain ratchets up again. Molten lava burns through my belly. Every nerve inside me is so horrifically alive, it’s sublime on a hysterical level.

I pull him in hard and sob into his neck like the night I lost my parents, the night I lost Mitch.

“Don’t die, Colt,” I whisper.

“I’m good.” He picks up my hands and threads our fingers—bumps his nose against mine until the nurse extricates her hand from my bowels.