Chapter 5
Arthur opened the door to the apartment just in time to see Wren standing immediately in front of him with a pair of long, sharp kitchen scissors.
She could see the terror in his eyes. He thought she’d snapped.
She knew it. Hatched a plan to kill him off and flee with the life insurance money.
Perform a home vasectomy so he could never put her through all this again.
She played into it on purpose, widening her eyes like a haunted doll and keeping the scissors raised high, à la Michael Myers. “Welcome home, Arthur.”
“What, uh…whatcha doing?” he said uncertainly.
“Arts and crafts. Come here, I’ll show you.” She lowered the blades and grabbed him by the hand, dragging him the rest of the way into the apartment. “Oh, and how’d it go at the school? Did you get a chance to talk to Principal Norman?”
“No, I couldn’t quite pin her down.”
“So I made all those talking points for nothing?” Arthur had told her that Norman was really into comics, the Marvel movies in particular.
Wren took the liberty of making him a few flashcards, mostly featuring Tom Holland (Spider-Man) trivia and details of the short period of time when Tom Hiddleston (Loki) was dating Taylor Swift.
More than enough to get a rousing discussion going.
“I’ll get to it, I promise. I just couldn’t find the right opportunity.”
“Arthur, I say this with love, but have you considered the fact that you might have to make your own opportunities? To get what you want out of this job.”
She could tell by the way his jaw set that perhaps she’d overstepped a tad. But sometimes, she knew, if she didn’t challenge him, he didn’t act. But before the flush in his cheeks could grow any darker, she presented him with the results of her project. “Ta-da.”
On the kitchen table were the remains of a massacre.
Strips and bits of paper lay everywhere, strewn about as if after a bout of snowflake cutting gone horribly wrong.
Wren was not graceful with scissors, no.
She had artistic talent and always had, but no one had ever accused her of being neat and orderly, of taking the smoothest route to her final destination.
As a kid she was scolded constantly for it.
Not content to just grab one color at a time, she’d dump the entire bin of paints out on the table.
The same with markers, which would then roll off the table and become a slipping hazard for others in the household.
She was practically a hoarder when it came to her coloring and drawings, carrying around great stacks of them with her and hiding them all over her uncle’s house.
Drove him absolutely insane. But for whatever reason, she refused to change her ways.
One small act of rebellion and chaos that she clung to, she guessed.
“What are these?” Arthur said, finally dropping his bag and examining her creation. Two mason jars sat on the table, one labeled with a construction paper W in glittery purple, the other with a green A.
“I took the liberty of separating our lists. I cut out each line item and put them into our respective jars. To retain a bit of mystery, I tried to look as little as possible. Hence the mess.”
Arthur picked up one of his old neckties, which lay crumpled on the table.
“Did you blindfold yourself?”
“Like I said, I tried really hard not to peek.”
She realized that the mental image of her sitting in the apartment blindfolded, running around with a giant pair of kitchen scissors, must have been unsettling to Arthur.
And yes, she could have used the morning to knock out some freelance work.
Should have. Arthur must have been thinking it.
Her unemployment had put a drain on their savings, savings they were going to need when they got the bill from the hospital in a few weeks—sure, most of it would technically be covered by Arthur’s insurance, but there would surely be fun, surprise line items along the way.
She’d even heard it costs extra sometimes to actually hold your baby because, hey, America!
But as crazy as it all was, that’s how much this really meant to her.
“So what do we do now?” Arthur picked up his A jar and twirled it around in his hands, examining it like a crystal ball.
“We draw slips. And we try to get as much done as we can before I pop this baby out.”
She scooped hers up, held it close to her chest.
“Can I go first?”
“Should we maybe clean up first or…No, never mind. Go for it.”
Wren’s heart began pounding. This was so exciting!
Like taking the risky path in a choose-your-own-adventure book that would almost certainly lead to your character’s demise but could ultimately unlock the happy ending with a bit of luck.
A goose-bumpy thrill shot through her body.
She dipped her fingers into the jar, felt the rough edges of the papers inside, slid past the top layer, and pressed in deeper.
The pad of her middle finger touched one, and she couldn’t explain it, but it just felt right.
Like this strip of paper was calling to her.
Its face was smooth, its temperature a bit cooler than the others somehow.
Yes, this was it. This was the thing that when she did it, she would feel like herself again.
It would right the course of her entire life, and the rest of her bucket list would fall into place like dominoes.
She would finally become the person she had always wanted to be.
At the end, she would feel completely ready to tackle the greatest challenge of her life: motherhood.
But first, this. She pulled it out, flipped the paper round so she could read it, and paused before she spoke.
“Come on, don’t tease me,” Arthur said. “What does it say?”
She frowned. “You gotta be kidding me.”
“What is it?”
She held it up so he could see. “Climb to the Top of Mount Everest.”
Arthur stifled a laugh. “Shall I check Google Flights for last-minute departures to Nepal?”
“Very funny. God, I was such a basic.” She was disappointed but not ready to give up so easily.
She’d had this stroke of inspiration as a naive kid, back when climbing Everest wasn’t such a commodity.
She’d since seen the lines of people—lines!
—waiting to get a glimpse of the summit.
No, thank you. “No problem. Mount Everest is played out anyway. I heard they’re thinking of putting in a gondola. We can do better.”
She reached back into the jar. No magical intuition this time; she just pinched the first strip of paper she could feel and pulled it out. Whatever it was, it was bound to be at least slightly more practical than summiting the tallest mountain in the world.
“Bungee Jump into an Active Volcano,” she read plainly.
Arthur winced. Wren sank at first, but maybe there was a way…
“Technically…” she began.
“No,” he said.
“If you think about it…”
“Don’t. Don’t even think about it.”
“Well then, I give up! I never would have gotten pregnant if I knew you weren’t allowed to volcano bungee!”
She huffed out of the room. Just needed a minute.
Just needed to sit and collect her thoughts.
In short, they were that this completely sucked.
Why didn’t she think of this a year ago, two years ago?
They had wasted so much time, and now it was too late.
But maybe it didn’t matter. She hadn’t had the money for these things growing up, not in college, not as a young professional just trying to carve out a career and get by, and certainly not now.
She would always wonder what could have been, what she’d missed out on.
What kind of way was that to start their family?
Would she always be bitter and resentful?
She stared down at her belly and gave it a little rub.
Would the baby know someday, be able to tell that her heart was never really in it, that she had settled down before she was really ready?
More plainly, would it screw them up? Thirty years from now, would they be talking about their emotionally distant mother in expensive therapy sessions?
She felt the couch sink next to her. Arthur. He placed a warm arm around her and squeezed gently, calming her immediately. In his other hand, he offered her the jar.
“One more try? There’s got to be something in here we can do.”
“I’m not in the mood. This was all a terrible idea. Too little, too late.” She didn’t want to look at a jar ever again. Peanut butter? Out. Jelly? Good goddamn riddance. She vowed right then and there to not even leave a door ajar for as long as she lived, just out of spite.
Arthur wouldn’t give up so easily, though. He shook the jar playfully in front of her, rattling the pieces of paper inside.
“One more try and we’ll go to bed.”
She rolled her eyes, feigning resistance. In truth, she appreciated him. Her rock in moments like this. She reached back into the jar one more time and felt for a good one, whatever that meant, then pulled it out, unfolded it, and read it.
“Huh,” was all she could say.