“It would be okay,” he says. “We’ll buy red sheets and red towels.”
“No it wouldn’t be okay. We’d have to fuck in the shower every time we wanted to do it.” She locks eyes with the pissed-off woman’s husband, who sets his magazine on his lap and looks at her.
“I bleed every day,” Terry says.
“Are you being metaphorical? Please don’t be metaphorical right now.”
“No, I’m serious—I bleed every day. I fall off my skateboard or bike or cut myself shaving.” They both know this isn’t usually how he bleeds, that it’s much less romantic—the ingrown hairs that fester and leak, the acne scabs she accidentally scratches open on his back. She looks at her breasts and adjusts her dress, her black lace bra peeking out. There is still plenty of time to fuck up and begin again before she has to figure out a different way of being in the world.
“What if something’s actually wrong with me?”
“Then we’d deal with it.” He waits a moment and says, “I’d never leave you.”
It makes her want to prove him wrong. Of course he would leave; men aren’t expected to stay. Her hair would fall out and she wouldn’t be pretty anymore and he would leave, or he’d stay and hate her and she’d be forced to leave him. He pats her leg and says he thinks it’s the condoms, which he’s told her a dozen times already, and goes back to his magazine. She also thinks it might be the condoms. She’s never really used them before, not consistently, and finds them strange and horrible.
Darcie watches two little girls run around while their mother rests her head against the wall. One of the girls is about six and so fat she has breasts. She has a violent look about her: a flop of hair covering one eye and a jerkiness like it’s difficult for her to stop moving once she’s started, or to start once she’s stopped. One of the straps of her sundress slips off and Darcie waits for the girl’s mother to open her eyes and set the strap back on her shoulder, brush the mop of hair out of her eyes. The younger girl is delicate and pretty, but neither of them is aware of it yet—how they are different, how their paths will diverge.
When Darcie’s bladder is full, she tells the one in scrubs, and the woman leads her back to the sonogram room. She lifts Darcie’s dress and tucks a sheet into her panties, squeezes warm gel onto her stomach.
“Have you ever been pregnant?” the woman asks.
“Yeah but it didn’t take,” Darcie says.
The woman waits for her to say more so she explains that she miscarried very early, that the doctor said most women wouldn’t have even known they were pregnant. The woman asks a few more questions as she presses the wand to her bladder and then the clicking begins.
She alternates between closing her eyes and watching the monitor. She thinks of all the tests she’s had over the years: a brain MRI, hearing and vision exams, screenings for depression, so much blood work. She has recently admitted something to herself—she actually likes going to the doctor. She likes answering questions about herself while someone takes notes. She likes waiting for the knock in a small clean room. She likes the free tampons and starter packs and she likes knowing all of the things she doesn’t have, as if ruling things out can negate the things that are wrong with her.
“This must be a terrible job,” Darcie says, “trying to do your work while a nervous person looks on.”
“I love my job.” The woman pauses to look at her. She’s maybe twenty-five but hasn’t kept her body up. Darcie wonders if she has kids at home, a husband. If she has a house in a neighborhood that has already been gentrified.
“Is all that clicking bad?” she asks.
“No,” the woman says, laughing a little. “I’m just taking pictures. I’m going to have a look at your ovaries here in a minute.”
After about five more minutes of clicking, it’s clear the woman isn’t going to tell her what the pictures show or don’t show.
“Does anything look crazy?” Darcie asks.
“No, nothing looks crazy,” the woman says, and that small laugh again. Then she tells her that the doctor has to go over the results with her, that he’s the only one who can interpret them. Darcie watches the monitor for any large masses or asymmetry, but it could be perfectly normal or indicate certain death and she wouldn’t know the difference. She asks herself if she’s dying and listens for some inner voice to answer. It says no and she knows it’s true, but now she’s reminded that she will die, eventually, and she’s upset about it. She doesn’t want to die. She doesn’t want to go about her days eating and sleeping and watching movies when she’s going to die. It’s ridiculous, this waiting for something else when this is all there is.
“Do you want to ride to Barton Springs?” Terry asks on the bus ride home.
Darcie puts her hand on his leg but it isn’t enough so she grips his bicep with her other hand. She wonders how he can stand it, her constant need to touch him, to be near him. She wonders how long it’ll take her to push him away but they’ve been together since Thanksgiving and he’s still talking about their babies.
“Okay,” she says. She listens to the inane conversation going on behind them, a couple of college boys trying to impress the blonde that’s with them. One of them says, “I wish there was still a popular religion that had multiple deities,” and the other asks if Hinduism counts and the discussion goes on all the way across the bridge, the blonde not saying anything. When Darcie was an undergrad, the boys were drunks who talked about pussy and action movies, and this new crop makes her miss these boys, who didn’t pretend to be something else.
“Hey,” Terry says, directing her attention to a fire truck on the side of the road, one of the men watering a charred area no bigger than a Pinto while the others look on.
At home, she changes into her swimsuit and then loads a backpack with towels and sunscreen, both cans of Four Loko, her driver’s license and a magazine. She looks in the money drawer to see how much they have—twelve dollars in bills and quarters—and zips it up in the front pocket. Then she puts on her helmet and they carry their bikes down the stairs.
It’s Friday afternoon and there’s a lot of traffic so they ride on the sidewalk. Terry bikes ahead, looking back every so often to make sure she’s okay. She’s not good on a bike. All of the cars make her nervous.
They stop at a crosswalk and wait for the man to light up.