Cal had purposely stayed away for as long as possible, so as not to overhear Frida’s conversation with August, her confession about the pregnancy. As if August were a priest, or even the pope. August was powerful: he knew everyone, could travel freely, and had probably heard everyone’s secrets. But why did he have that privilege? That burden.
“Babe?” Cal called out. He said the word lightly but not obsequiously; he had apologized when Frida returned from the well this morning, and he wouldn’t do it a second time. He was keen on getting past their little quarrel, and he hoped she was, too.
He tossed the mushroom bag on the card table in the kitchen area. He placed one of the torches next to the washbasin.
He heard Frida suck in her breath, not from their bed, but by the cots that Jane and Garrett used to sleep in. He shined the torch in that direction. She was on the floor, lying on her back with her hands behind her head, her legs twisted like a pretzel. Was she doing sit-ups?
“And then there was light,” he said. He smiled. She was safe.
“I see that.” She began bicycling her legs frantically.
“Are you okay?”
“No. I mean yes.” She laughed; there was mischief in it, he thought. “I guess I’m just feeling antsy.”
“Is it anxiety?”
She sat up, rubbed a hand across her face, as if to wipe something away.
He helped her to standing. Her eyes were pink. “You look terrible,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“Not like that. Sorry.” There was the accidental second apology. He wanted, stupidly, to take it back. Instead, he laid the torch on the cot and, after a moment, took her in his arms. She let him. She felt fragile and hard, like a marionette.
“I got the garlic,” Frida said. “For free.”
“So you told him.”
She didn’t answer.
“How did he react?”
Frida sighed and leaned away from him. “Can we talk about this later?”
“Why?”
“Because it was so anticlimactic. He doesn’t have tests, he doesn’t know any midwives. It’s not like he’s tight with a shaman. And if he were, he’d never introduce us.” She picked up the torch and leaned it against the wall. This one they would leave here as their night-light. It would fade before dawn. Without it, back when they lived in the shed, Cal had felt his very limbs disappear in the merciless darkness.
“He wasn’t worried? Or excited?”
“He let me ramble,” she said. “And now I feel embarrassed.”
“Don’t be,” Cal said, but he could understand it. There was something about August that made you want to confess, and his silence kept you talking even after you wanted to shut up.
They began the nightly task of setting the card table for dinner. Frida peeked into the mushroom bag but said nothing disparaging about its contents or lack thereof. She seemed to move about the room as if in a fog, humming along to herself. In Cal’s youth, his mother would sometimes stay up all night, editing a local commercial for extra cash or designing banner ads that no one ever clicked on, and in the morning she’d say, “I’m out of it,” with a look that conveyed that he was, conversely, in it. That’s what Frida was doing now, with her little floaty movements, her lack of conversation, those strange sit-ups. She was sending herself out of it. At least she didn’t seem angry anymore.
“I want to know where August goes,” she said suddenly. She held the bowl of beets aloft, like a trophy, and with an exhale placed it on the table. The torches gave the room a streetlight glow, a marry-me dimness, but Cal was used to it by now, sick of it even.
He sat down without responding. They hadn’t had this discussion in a while, but Cal realized he’d been waiting for Frida to bring it up ever since she told him she’d missed her period.
“You know it’s too dangerous,” he said.
“So says August.”
“You don’t believe him anymore?”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what? We have no idea who’s out there. What if there are Pirates? Don’t tell me you aren’t frightened of them.”
“I’ve never run into a Pirate. Have you?”
“You know I haven’t.”
“So we still don’t know if they’re out there. But we know someone is. And August, with his goods to trade, his vague answers. I’m sick of it.”
“I want us to be safe, Frida. That’s what matters most.”
She said nothing.
“I know you’re mad at me.”
“Oh, stop it,” she said.
She began to serve the beets, and Cal did the same with the sprouted beans. They were healthy, necessary to surviving out here, but they tasted terrible.
“I’m just curious,” she said. “Don’t you want to know what they do with the bras?”
“What bras?”
“Before,” she said. “I traded him a new bra.”
“Before when? And for what?”
“It’s not important. What matters is what’s out there. I need to know, Cal. Don’t you?”
“If we leave, who will protect this place?”
She snorted. “Maybe we can find another house to steal.”
Cal was about to bring a bite of the awful, humid-smelling beans to his mouth, but now he paused. “Don’t do that, Frida,” he said.
“Do what?” she asked. She was acting like a kid playing with her food.