Ars Botanica by Tim Taranto
Author:Tim Taranto
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781945883033
Publisher: Curbside Splendor Publishing
Published: 2017-06-23T04:00:00+00:00
It was 4:00 p.m. when she got home from her appointment, and I noticed a change right away. I watched as she dumped her bag on the kitchen chair, slid her shoes off one at a time. She acted like she was performing some dance in a daze, her whole body seemed to be cast in shadow. She mechanically fished a bobby pin from her pocket, filled a glass with water. I stood in the doorway. I wasn’t even sure she noticed me until she walked up, slumped her head on my shoulder, and took me by the hand and led me to her bed.
“I have to take the second pill tomorrow,” she said.
“Okay,” I said.
“The ultrasound technician asked me if I wanted to know if it was twins,” she said, and pulled the covers over her head.
“Was it?” I asked.
“No,” she said, her voice muffled. “There was this crazy old man, though,” she continued, lifting the blanket from her head. “He tried to block me from entering the parking lot. He stood in front of my car, but then finally moved. As soon as I got out, he shoved this Xeroxed picture of an aborted fetus in my face. He kept saying, ‘Do you see this? Isn’t she beautiful?’”
“I’m going to find him, and I’m going to fucking kill him,” I said. “I’m going to find him and beat the fucking life out of him.”
“Stop,” she said, gently. “You know he wouldn’t be there doing what he’s doing if he didn’t believe in it.”
“That’s fine. I’m still going to break his fucking neck.”
“Yes, you’re very strong,” she said. “But please, please, just stop talking like that.”
Neither of us said anything for several minutes. I got up and found some drawing paper and good pens. I started drawing and then she did, too. I drew these cartoony phantoms and pterodactyls and she began drawing tiny cell-like circles.
“You want Indian, don’t you?” I asked.
She nodded.
I phoned in an order for chana saag and bharta and garlic naan and biked out to pick it up. When I left she was making these tiny crenellations like teeth on the edge of her paper, rows and rows, filling the page. I was biking back, with our dinner swinging from our handlebars, when someone shouted hello to me. It was the couple that lived on our street; we’d become friendly with them and even expressed abstract plans about meeting up for dinner sometime. They were our age, and they had an infant son with Down syndrome. The last time we spotted them pushing their stroller down the next block, she suggested we turn at the corner. “I just don’t want to talk to them right now,” she said. I pretended not to hear them, and I biked fast past them on my way back home.
When I returned with our food, she was still drawing teeth. Without looking up, she said, “What am I supposed to learn from this?”
Halfway through The Fellowship of the Ring, her phone chimed.
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