 This story is part of a new web feature: the calendar Pinup Series. We'll be bringing you great new work online each month. —The Eds. Tied to Us
by John Maradik
She was an excellent kisser so we couldn’t help but have a baby. It got born with no brains for a mind. It peed on our floor and I could hardly stand it. It took a dump on our green carpet while I watched NFL. Medication kept it ticking.
The mortgage made us unromantic. She started looking tired as if it were my fault. Our car came from a nightmare. Parked in back, it breathed. Flies moved around it like it was a horse who’d just died.
We were quiet at the table, wedged tight. She smoked a cigarette. I nibbled a roll.
“I’m glad we found one next to the interstate,” she said.
“You always wanted a house,” I said.
Our baby hunched oddly even after it wasn’t a baby anymore. It trembled blood-nosed with fine white hair. It mewled if we turned on lights. I watched it chew on the bathroom rug when it didn’t know I was there. Its eyes were always open.
Our windowsills filled with bugs. From our bedroom we heard the highway as if it were a sea. We cuddled under blankets. When our feet touched we were warmed. She left salt smells on our pillows. We talked about what happened or what was happening. “I saw it pretending to sleep again,” she said.
We wanted things like everyone else, only one or two things more.
“I’m just curious why you’re sitting on your ass?” she asked.
“You are a very angry person,” I told her.
“Do you think this is a life?” she asked.
“Why not?”
It crouched there, taking no part.
The baby was grown but it couldn’t swim. It played with dolls. The dolls were made of wood. It couldn’t sound. It couldn’t smell. It couldn’t eat. It sucked kisses with its mouth like a monkey. We bathed it.
I woke up and turned over to share something with her, but she was not in bed. She hid in our linen closet and cried like an old woman.
She told me we owed in the neighborhood of $149,000. Tired and dreamy, her words and our coats. Her sweaters with no low necklines.
“Do you want to go for a walk?” I asked.
“Maybe in the morning,” she said.
The moon hung from a peg.
“No,” I said from the top of the stairs. “That’s not how clothes go.” Its T-shirt was on backwards and its face always smiled. We had to take it back and forth to a doctor because it couldn’t be a real kid. The medications ensured our fridge was empty.
I brought it to the zoo. It seemed happy. Then it put its foot in the duck fountain and fell in. Everyone watched it thrash.
I made a remark like, “Why don’t you people worry about your own defects?” They looked embarrassed for me.
“What happened?” she asked when we returned.
“Nothing,” I said.
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