The Crash

Chapter 25

25

Tegan has requested a tuna sandwich to eat.

I mix the canned tuna with a little bit of mayonnaise by candlelight. Tuna has mercury that could be harmful to a developing fetus, but I suppose a small amount would be okay. Not that she cares very much if she’s chugging whiskey while driving.

Tegan Werner claimed she was married, but I suspect she lied. She doesn’t have a wedding band after all. And when I asked her, she hesitated a bit too long. And she’s so young .

I don’t think she’s married. I think she’s one month away from becoming a single mother. A single mother who carries around a full flask in her purse. Who drives recklessly into a blizzard. A liar.

I flinch at the memory of her complaint about being “ridiculously fertile.” Every time a woman complains to me about how fertile she is, a blood vessel in my temple comes closer to popping. Poor me—I’m too fertile, I’ve got too much money in the bank, and every time I eat a slice of chocolate cake, I lose two pounds!

Lucky me—I don’t have a problem with being too fertile. In fact, Hank and I have spent every penny we had to have a child, and what do we have to show for it? Absolutely nothing.

It all took me by surprise. My mother warned me that it took her a long time to conceive me. More than ten years, and she couldn’t get pregnant again after. But even with my irregular periods, I couldn’t imagine that I would have trouble. So much so that I was shocked when my first pregnancy test came back negative.

Now it’s eight years, three bank-shattering IVF cycles, and one failed adoption later. And it’s still just Hank and me and an empty spare bedroom upstairs.

I go back to the pantry, candle in hand, to grab some crackers to supplement the sandwich, and I notice something I stuffed in the back, behind the cans of Spam and creamed corn and a useless container of prenatal vitamins. Something I hadn’t thought about in a long time—not since I stuck it back there in the first place.

It’s a teddy bear.

It’s a brown bear with his lips sewn into a perpetual smile, clutching a heart in his hands. Hank bought it for me. Or I should say he bought it for our baby. There was one month early on when my period was late and I thought I was pregnant, and in his excitement, he jumped the gun. I left it in the bookcase in the living room, but then when it became increasingly clear that a baby wouldn’t be in our future, I stuck it in the back of the pantry. I couldn’t quite bring myself to throw it away.

I stare at the bear for a moment, my heart pounding. Then I give my head a shake to clear it. There’s no point in dwelling on that now.

After the tuna and mayonnaise mixture is complete, I spread it over two slices of whole wheat bread and stick them together to make a sandwich. As an afterthought, I pick up a knife and slice the sandwich into halves.

I hear a crash from the living room, then the sound of Hank swearing. He must have stumbled on a table or chair, like he often does when the power goes out. He’s too large for most spaces, and our living space is small to begin with. My fingers linger on the handle of the knife, still thinking about that teddy bear in the pantry that Hank bought me all those years ago. Someday, Tegan will probably give a teddy bear like that one to her baby. And the baby will smile and gurgle happily. She might suck on one of the bear’s soft ears. The way I always imagined my child would.

“Polly?”

I spin around, instinctively raising the blade of the knife. My husband is standing behind me, and when he sees the knife in my hand, he takes a step back and raises both hands in the air. “Whoa, Polly! Jesus.”

I lower the knife and drop it on the kitchen table. Thankfully, it’s too dark for him to see how much my hands are shaking. “You startled me.”

“Sorry.”

“I heard a crash in the living room.”

“Oh.” He rubs his elbow and winces. “Bashed myself knocking over the end table. Really smarts.”

“Do you want some ice?”

“The whole house feels like it’s made of ice,” he points out. He looks down at the sandwich on the counter. “What are you doing?”

“I’m making a sandwich for Tegan.”

“Okay.” That crease is between his eyebrows again. He’s worried about me being around a pregnant woman. He doesn’t say so, but ever since The Incident, he’s been waiting for me to crack again. “Do you want me to bring it down to her?”

I shake my head. “No, you were right. She’s terrified of you.”

Hank clutches his chest like he’s offended, but if he had any interest in being less scary, he could shave off the beard for starters—or at least trim it. He wasn’t nearly as frightening when I first met him, back when he was in his early twenties and the beard was short and neatly groomed. He was working at an auto shop, and I was a nursing student with a shot transmission and no money in the bank.

I frantically explained the car situation to Hank, pleading with him to see if he would charge me on some sort of payment plan, although it wasn’t his auto shop back then. He told me he would see what he could do, and when I returned a couple of days later to get my car, he told me he had fixed it free of charge. I tried to at least offer him something for the parts, but he wouldn’t take it.

When I first met him, I had thought he was cute, and I expected him to ask for my phone number, but he didn’t. I didn’t know back then how shy he was around women—I couldn’t fathom that a guy that big could be intimidated by the likes of me . But I couldn’t walk out of there without showing him how grateful I was, so I offered to take him out to dinner as a thank-you. I still remember the way his eyes lit up.

There’s a lot that I regret in my life. But I don’t regret asking Hank to dinner that night.

Although sometimes I wonder if he regrets saying yes.