“Nope—still here.” I slip into that tired quiet tone I only ever use with her because I know she won’t leave. There was a time I tried to make her. In our early teens, I’d push her so hard, with my words, with my actions, I’d swear she’d never come back. Yet there she was.Hereshe was. Clementine always came back because she’d never leave in the first place.
“Have you called any of those counselors I sent over?” Her voice is careful, like she’s talking to one of her horses who needs breaking in.
“I don’t need a shrink, Clem,” I sigh into the phone, flopping down on Grant’s guest bed, the milky white duvet almost creamy.
“Sloane, you went through?—”
“I’m fine.” I cut her off, brushing my hand over the marshmallowy texture of the blanket. “Look, can I call you back? I’m actually painting right now.” For a second I think she can hear the lie because if anyone could it’s her and maybe she can but wants so badly to think that I’m better that she lets herself believe it because I can hear the smile in her voice, the way it hitches slightly with relief.
“Painting? That’s great! That’s really good, Sloane.”
“Yup,” I mumble, letting my face fall to the shredded canvas annoyed at my impulsivity and the realization that I’ll have to stretch another.
“Okay. I’ll stop mama birding you but answer your damn phone. I’m not Evie, you can’t just ghost me.” I roll my eyes but feel a familiar smirk tug at my lips. “I love you, I’ll call you tomorrow,” she says definitively and I can almost see the tiny nod she makes when she’s making a silent promise to herself.
“Love you, too, Clemmie.” I click the call button and rest my hand on my stomach. A new habit that's been hard to break.
This past summer
“I can’t believe that asshole isn’t taking you.” Clementine’s fingers wrap around the wheel, her dark waves cascading across her long tanned arms as she merges onto the highway.
“He’s going to pick me up,” I say out the car window and I can hear the thrum of my own voice, the sensation like speaking underwater. I pull the sleeves of my navy blue UCLA sweatshirt over my fingertips, letting my forehead press against the passenger side window. I feel Clem’s hand on my arm, rubbing it a little too harshly, like someone who learned empathy from watching others. I can tell she doesn’t know how to act in this situation, which goes against every fiber of her being as someone who knows how to act in every situation.
“You sure about this?” she asks, her voice a ghost in the space between us. I can feel her dark assessing eyes on me, calculating, thinking through every version of what happens next, like if she can sift through her thoughts fast enough, look close enough, she’ll find a jagged edge to grab, to catch me. This isn’t that, though. This isn’t some crisis to solve or a story we can laugh about later. This, right now—it’s just this. My head against a cold window pane watching the blur of theinterstate, ordinary, unremarkable, mundane and yet, there’s an unmovable weight to it. Like the snapping of blinds in a too bright room, sunshine in an attic filled with dust you can suddenly see, a microwave you watch until the seconds run out because you need something to end. That’s what this is, just an ordinary moment stretched thin around something I can’t take back. I finally nod, shutting my eyes, letting the steady hum of the car absorb me, letting it bring me back to him.
“I don’t want this with you.” His voice is like wet paint, familiar and slippery. His gaze narrows, zeroing in on the hand on my belly, the one I’ve been unable to keep away since looking down at that stupid stick. I wonder if this is just an instinct, something ancient and hardwired in our anatomy. Or maybe it’s a way for me to remember that I’m real, this is real. My face feels prickly and hot and I get that sensation you get right before you cry, like water up your nose or thickness in your throat. I let my eyes fixate on something on the floor, an Orange peel, just barely in view, brown with rot and curling inward.
“Sloane, we’re here.”
I look up, the Hospital sign glows through the windshield, not like a beacon, not a symbol or warning, just what it is. Words on a building.
“Are you sure you don’t need me to come in there? I can cancel my interview. Seriously, it’s just graduate school,” Clem smiles, a joke that doesn’t meet her eyes, that familiar sad smile, the one begging to carry the weight of this. She’d clean up every messy part of me if it meant she could make sure I’m okay. She loves me. She may be the only one who ever really has. The thought has me biting the inside of my cheek, trying to hold the feeling in its place, keep it from rising. Because I want to be alone. Maybe it’s guilt, the craving to feel all of this. Every slow second.
“He’ll be here Clem, I’m fine.” I nod and I see theworry flash in her eyes, the recognition that the typical Sloane performance has slipped, that she’s leaving me at intermission.
“I love you, Sloane.” She squeezes my arm again, but this time it isn’t rehearsed.
The automatic doors open immediately after I get out of the car and I want to run to catch them, the space between me and them long and awkward and wrong. A few men and a woman are holding large picket signs to the left. They’re graphic but also not displaying any sort of realistic imagery, just mutilated fully developed fetuses and murder written in bold red letters. I try to force myself to care about their message. Try to make myself see their point of view. As I approach, a woman in scrubs comes out to greet me, wrapping a long warm arm around my shoulders.
“Ignore them,” she grits out, her jaw furiously clenched as she grimaces at the small crowd.
Normally I’d laugh, try to deflate the situation but that feels wrong, too—everything feels wrong. I think of Evie, how badly she wanted us. Imagine how she must have whispered that hope into the dark like a spell that might finally take, baby names etched in her heart that never reached her lips and for a second, I do feel bad. Not about the decision I’m making but for all of the women who break themselves trying to be what the world wants and never quite fitting. Who ache for something that never takes. Sometimes I wonder if being a woman is just grief in a million directions, longing for something that never comes, mourning what you choose to lose. Evie prayed for a child for years while I walk into this building to let one go and somehow we both feel like we failed.
“What’s your name, sweetie?” The nurse asks, leading me to reception where she goes behind one of the gleaming computers, bathed in the blue light. I see the way her eyescrinkle at the edges, her lips slightly chapped. I wish I had the energy to make her life easier.
“Sloane.” She nods at my response typing something into her keyboard.
“Okay, honey. I got you all checked in and you’ll be called back in just a bit to run some tests before the procedure. Do you have someone who can drive you home today?” Her eyes meet mine and she must read something because she continues. “You’ll need to have someone driving you due to the sedation. It’s very mild, but still—you’ll be groggy.”
I roll my lips together.
“Yeah, sorry. I have someone coming, they're just a little late.”
She gives me a tight lipped smile that registers something I don’t before nodding to the chairs behind me. I take a seat, the blue plastic cold and hard as I flip through an STD pamphlet, carefully reading about each disease like I’m here for a quiz and not an abortion.
“Sloane Fielder,” a kind voice comes through the door to my left, and I grab my bag, following a young brunette woman in light purple scrubs to one of the many patient rooms. She shuts the door, staring down at my chart. “How many pregnancies have you had?”
“One,” I say, forcing myself to meet her eyes as I settle on the crinkly paper. They’re brown, just brown and heavy. I wonder the toll it takes on her, having to deal with women at peak emotional exhaustion.
