The Revolution of Every Day by Cari Luna

Author:Cari Luna [Luna, Cari]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tin House Books

It’s raining when Amelia leaves the clinic, Gerrit bumbling along beside her. Dead gray skies over the looming old buildings on Bleecker. Gerrit’s got the printouts from the ultrasound tucked carefully into his inside coat pocket, and he keeps patting his coat to make sure they’re still there.

“Take it easy the rest of the day,” he says. “I’ll look after the shop on my own.” Like he’s doing her a big favor; like he’s the generous boss giving her an afternoon off.

They walk up Bowery. Puddles swell to erase the street corners; the frayed hems of her jeans drag wet at her boot heels. Behind the smudged windows of restaurant-supply stores, stoves and sinks sit dull and silent. Stainless steel and sharp edges. Cavernous refrigerator cases. Land of lost alien robots. Ageless men with square heads and big shoulders wrestle a greasy old grill from the back of a truck. Their eyes skim right over Amelia.

There is something inside of her that’s better than her, and she feels her body closing in around it like a fist. How can anything good be growing inside her? Amelia, who sometimes forgets her last name. Who sometimes forgets her mother’s face. What’s leaching into the baby from her bones?

“That was something, wasn’t it? I’ve never seen anything like it,” Gerrit says.

“The baby?”

“Yes, the baby. Of course, the baby.”

Of course, the baby.

“We should start thinking about what it will need,” he says. “I can build a crib. We’ll turn my room into a nursery.”

“And where will you sleep?” she says.

He grimaces and feels for the ultrasound printouts again, and she knows he’s thinking he’ll be sleeping with her. Mommy and Daddy snug in the mommydaddy bed, and if they’re going to go through with this charade she guesses that is how it will be. One day after another, playacting until it starts to feel real. Tell a lie long enough and it starts to sound true even in your own head.

She imagines what a miscarriage would be like. Doubled over with cramps, huddled on the toilet. The blood and the tissue in the water. Tears. Less blood than she would have expected. Or maybe more. More, she thinks. And she’d struggle to stand, blood sticky on the insides of her thighs, and she’d try to clean herself with a washcloth and it would come away iron red, the blood still coming. She’d find a pad in the box under the sink, press it into her underpants, then stumble out to the living room. She’d be crying. Half afraid, half relieved. Full of the loss and the pain and the blood.

Maybe Gerrit is there to bundle her up, hail a cab, get her to the hospital. Or maybe Gerrit is gone, off somewhere who knows where and she bangs on Steve’s door, collapses against the doorframe and weeps, and it’s Steve who bundles Amelia up and hails a cab and gets her to the hospital. She’d come home that evening, pale and drawn and weak, and Gerrit would be waiting at the kitchen table, and she’d have to tell him what happened.

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