Page 43 - WTP Vol. XI #2

sprinklers, 401ks, grocery budgeting, the hard plastic of kid’s desks against her ass during parent-teacher conferences, discounted train tickets, McDonald’s PlayPlaces, penciling in growth spurts on the wall, lamps running on timers to deter intruders.
The Paul of her mind—the Paul of the spontaneous finals week McDonald’s deliveries, the weekly movie dates and the nightly phone calls—would understand.
The Paul of this life had taken the news as well as he could take it: in silence, on the phone, followed by
an abrupt “I have to go.” Then, a call three-and-a-half days later asking her what she wanted him to do. She was a spliced comma on her bedroom rug for eighty- one hours waiting for him.
~
Paul’s just bought a new aftershave, Musk Green, that comes out of a gold can, but maybe he needs a new razor. God knows he’s always using the same one shave after shave, cursing at each nick and lecturing to his eggs and coffee about it. The five-pack is fifteen dollars. The ten-pack is twenty-six dollars, but it’s red, and Paul hates the color red. If he doesn’t use all of it, she can finish it—but he hates when she uses his things, likes to accuse her of taking what he was just about to use. She hasn’t touched his toothpaste tubes even though they’ve been collecting dust in their bathroom junk drawer for two years. He’s used hers for as long as she can remember.
~
She had committed to BU to be closer to Paul and finished 1L with a steadily expanding abdomen. Her water broke during her con law final and Christie, a blonde, strictly lecture friend, drove her to the hospi- tal and stayed with her through a nine-hour labor.
Paul wanted to name their daughter Annie-Kelly, after both his grandmothers.
“I just pushed her out with Christie next to me. We’re not fucking naming her Annie-Kelly.”
She was still unemployed. She bundled Rose into a hand-me-down fleece jacket from Paul’s niece and carried her to lecture. She brought cold, congealed leftover pasta for lunch. She compared monthly tickets for the T to weekly ones. But still, every night, Paul’s brow crumpled into thick arches as she strug- gled to change Rose’s diaper.
Her mother gingerly lifted a vomit-matted bib during an unannounced visit. “How much are you spending on tuition per semester?”
“Half of it is loans. The other half is—Paul’s covering it. For now.”
“Paul? Even with the loans, I’m sure your cost of at- tendance is more than your husband earns in a year.”
“I’m getting my degree.”
“Well, sure, I know it’s been your dream for a long time to get your JD and, I don’t know, bang a gavel or something, but you have to face facts. Dreams don’t pay the bills. Dreams don’t fill your children’s bellies.” Her mother’s eyes roved over a sleeping Rose.
“What do you know about paying the bills?” She curled and uncurled her fist around the corner of her countertop.
Her mother shrugged. “What I did for you is more important than what your father did to pay down our mortgage. A good life needs resources that can’t be found inside a cubicle.”
Everything after that hazed together as if she had never walked out of the CVS where she had swapped a crisp ten-dollar bill for a dented Clearblue box. Processing her withdrawal at the registrar’s office and waiving her deposit. Smiling through Paul’s
first Valentine’s Day gift post-Rose, a pack of pastel necklaces from Claire’s that she put on their daugh- ter while he beamed clumsily. Becoming a paralegal at Reigel & Reigel and trying not to stare at the law partner just five years her senior—and then, giving that up, too.
Ten-dollar bills, she knew, had a relatively short lifes- pan: 5.3 years. As she watched her mother brush a
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