Delphiniums in Silence by Sara Masciola

They ran out of milk three days ago. Looking into the refrigerator for an alternative, Nora saw a white and green carton of orange juice sitting nearly alone, flanked only by withering grapes and a half-used can of tomato paste. That could work. Cheerios are remarkably adaptive to their environment; they could conceivably handle being Tropicana-flavored. But she could tell by lifting the carton that the juice was gone, too.

She glanced at the clock on the microwave. Two-thirty. Ten minutes of somewhat reckless driving, fifteen minutes of speed walking through Winn Dixie, and five minutes of waiting in the express checkout line could get her home just as school let out. It also happened to be Parent-Teacher Tuesday, so a few well-timed after-hours meetings might interfere with the faculty’s shopping plans.

For the first time in weeks, numbness gave way to a real feeling, a slight jolt of panicked motivation. Go now, Nora thought. If I go now, I won’t see anyone we know. She pushed aside a few empty vodka bottles and rifled through stacks of papers on the kitchen counter, trying to find her keys. Next year’s teaching assignment sat on top of one pile. She was being moved to kindergarten. Instead of introducing multiplication and fractions, she’d be wiping noses and rushing kids into the bathroom to prevent them from having to use their back-up underwear. It wasn’t technically a demotion, but it was a slap in the face. She would be a babysitter, a woman who raised other people’s children and then came home to silence.

The numbness was starting to return, and her hands moved less deftly over the open mail. Mental and physical exhaustion had become ever-present companions, and she could no longer determine which one was causing the other. Envelopes fell onto the linoleum floor. Cards of congratulations sent too early mixed with condolence letters sent too late. It was all very well-meaning and, at the same time, completely useless. Notes didn’t make her feel better, so they went unanswered. Phone calls didn’t provide comfort, so they went unanswered. The angel-themed gifts seemed absurd, so they went into the trash.

Ten minutes had passed, and with all her energy evaporating into the stillness around her, she grabbed the spare car keys from the junk drawer and pulled out of the driveway, barely registering the road in front of her. It took 55 minutes to get to the Publix in Crofton. The prices were higher, the lines were longer, and the tourists depleted the liquor inventory at predictable intervals. But anonymity overruled convenience. Crofton lacked pity. No one tried to share her pain, ignorant to the fact that it could not be divided or lessened by force of will.

______________

The concurrent lack of pity and liquor, as it turned out, was an unfortunate combination.  Though it seemed at times that her natural, depressive numbness preempted all need for alcoholic assistance, consuming enough vodka had the added advantage of skewing reality in brand new ways. 

Nora wandered down each aisle, semiconscious of what she needed in each. Her therapist, Celeste, said a mundane task had the ability to soothe her racing thoughts…if she could focus on it.  Milk, eggs, dog food, cheese, chicken, she thought to herself. Milk, eggs, dog food, cheese, chicken. It became a bit of a mantra. She wondered what “milk, eggs, dog food, cheese, chicken” translated to in Pali and pictured monks using it during meditation. Celeste would be proud of her. During their sessions, she always had a Shakyamuni Buddha statue on her desk and gave advice like, “Happiness is in your control now.” She’d probably be less proud of the vodka habit.

It almost worked, too. Dear god, it almost worked. But reality came screaming back, mid-mantra. Turning around from the milk refrigerator, she saw something that made her stomach instantly twist. The pain was enough to double her over, but she stood upright and stared instead. A petite woman with a very round abdomen was standing behind her, waiting for her turn at the milk. This stranger was thirty-eight weeks pregnant, at least. Or…perhaps less? Nora struggled to remember what normal development was supposed to look like. A toddler sat in the shopping cart with his chubby legs dangling. He hummed an unrecognizable song as he kicked the air.

“Excuse me, may I get in there?” the pregnant woman asked. She gestured toward the refrigerator door.

“Oh…y-yes.”  But Nora didn’t move. She held a half gallon of milk in one hand, extended forward, but she didn’t feel the cold burning her palm. There was more to say, but the words would not form. 

I have a child, too… He’s just not here…We are the same, see? She almost forced herself to think those last, desperate and childlike words.

They were not, of course, the same. In the last month of her own pregnancy, when the doctors knew things would not end well, Nora did not cheerily talk with strangers in grocery stores. She was the Grim Reaper, a warning to all pregnant women and mothers around her that life could go wrong. Not every story is happy. Not every child is safe.

Yet, she had a need to tell this woman that she understood, that someone once grew inside of her, too. It was a story that she lived happily for eight months and wanted to reclaim; instead, it was erased in full because she could not finish it to its idealized end. She couldn’t explain the urgency of her feelings. It was as if evidence of her child would not exist in this world unless she forced her own memories upon those who didn’t know the story — those who didn’t know the story’s end.

By this time, the pregnant woman had moved with her toddler further down the aisle, having clearly noticed the glazed stare that accompanied “Oh, y-yes.” It was for the best. Nora couldn’t hold the well-meaning grief of family and friends, so there was no reason to expect that anyone could hold hers.

______________

Nora unlocked the kitchen door on the side of the house two hours later. She had actually made two trips to the store. One to buy milk, eggs, dog food, cheese, and chicken. One back to return the dog food. 

Timberland work boots, leather gardening gloves, and a blue flannel shirt lay in a pile underneath the coat hooks.

“Ben?” The soft thudding of socked feet grew closer, until her husband peered into the kitchen from the hallway.

“Hey. I’m here.”

“Hey.”

“Hey.” There was an elongated pause as she took in his unshaven face. He had pink indentations in odd places around his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, as though he had been sleeping in his glasses.

“Where did you go?” she asked quietly.

“What d’you mean?”

“You’ve been gone for a while.”  Silence.

“I told you I was going to the memorial plot.”

“That was two days ago. I texted you.”  Silence again, as he looked at his feet.

“I didn’t have much to say, that’s all.”

“You slept there?”

“No…well, yes. Sort of. I slept in the truck. I wanted to watch the sun for a while. Make sure it was hitting the flowers at the right time.”

“That’s…thorough.”

“Yeah. I didn’t want them to die.”  Silence from both sides now.

Ben had been solemnly supportive when the pregnancy ended — when it was terminated. He understood the reality of the disease and saw its effect on his wife’s mental and emotional state, but he was quietly detached from the pain until the moment when the due date passed, and no baby came home. The full force of the loss followed at the next doctor’s visit. The obstetrician mistakenly believed that Ben would be interested in the medical explanation. He proceeded, with all lack of bedside manner and no lack of detail, to describe for him the deformities, the extra body parts, and the “interesting scientific phenomena” that accompanied his baby’s death. Since then, Ben drove to the memorial garden every few days.

“What did you plant?”

“Delphiniums. The nursery guy said they attract butterflies. And they’re blue, so I thought, you know, that it would be nice.”

“It is. That was a good idea.”  More silence.

Ben inhaled. It was much louder than he intended. Nora looked at him with expectation, hoping for an end to his days-long terseness.

“Do you still want to try again?  For another kid?” The voice didn’t sound like his own.

“Oh. I do, yeah. Are you still thinking about it?”

“I was never thinking about it. I didn’t want to before, and I don’t want to now. How sure are you? Do you think maybe we should start by getting a dog or something?”

“A dog? We just got rid of a dog.” Nora unconsciously held her breath.

“We only got rid of Bud because he nipped at kids. It would be different with a different dog. A big dog, too, now that we have…space.”

“We bought this house to put a baby in the extra bedroom, not a dog.”

The depth of the pain was simultaneous and mutual. Both chests tightened. Both bodies felt suddenly cold and weak. There was nothing more to say.

***

Sara Masciola is originally from Pittsburgh, PA, and now lives in Evans, GA. She is the Development Director of The Mosaic Center, a nonprofit dedicated to serving those at the crossroads of poverty and disability. “Delphiniums in Silence” is her first short story.