Free Year of Lesser by David Bergen

he opens his mouth and Loraine must brave a barrage, a storm. He wallops away at his mother, at himself.
    Like this morning, he is buttering his toast and Loraine is by the kitchen window watching for the school bus. She turns to ask him if he has his bag, his lunch.
    “Why don’t you go puke,” he says.
    Loraine’s hands grip the countertop, the small of her back presses its edge. There is a hardness in her throat. “I’m finished with morning sickness. The first three months are the worst.”
    “Oh, the worst. Now we’re waiting for the best. I’m so excited.” He flaps his hands, mocking her.
    “Your bus is here.” Loraine can see it standing at the edge of the drive way. It’s like a big bright yellow box on a black background. A painting. She calls out goodbye but Chris doesn’t respond. She watches him run, his laces loose, his jacket flapping. Then he’s swallowed by the doors; a mouth of a bird.
    Loraine washes the dishes, then puts on a heavy coat—it was her husband’s—and goes out to the barn to gather eggs. She’s in the refrigerator room when the phone rings. She picks it up and talks but there’s no response. She says hello again and then there’s a quiet giggle and a voice breathy and loose that says, “Bitch,” and then a click. Loraine holds her breath. The baby’s fluttering and giving her goose bumps.
    This baby. She wonders why she wanted it. She knows who phoned and she feels sorry for the woman. Johnny sometimes talks about Charlene, not in a bad way, just little details, like her habits, and bodily things. Loraine will ask, point-blank, about Charlene: how often does she shave, does Johnny like hairy armpits, does Charlene have nice breasts, whose are nicer, what about weight, is Charlene heavy, and does Johnny like lots to hang on to. Johnny doesn’t seem to mind answering these questions. Often they’re in bed talking like this and Johnny will touch Loraine all over. “I like you ,” he’ll say.
    But Johnny hasn’t been around lately. And Loraine thinks maybe he won’t be. When he gets into this baptism and Bible stuff he becomes more faithful and stays close to Charlene. That’s all right, good for Charlene but, still, Loraine misses Johnny. She tries to understand how Chris might perceive all this. That’s what frightens Loraine. Obviously, she’s in the wrong; she has stolen another woman’s husband and, according to Chris, the man wasn’t worth stealing. But, it’s more than that; Chris is just discovering his own sexuality and it must be troubling for him to know his mother sleeps with Johnny.
    She talks to him one night. “You know, what Johnny and I are doingisn’t wrong. It’s terrible that Charlene gets hurt but if I love Johnny and he loves me, it’s not wrong for us to be having sex.”
    “Did I say it was?” Chris says. “I mean, just because you’re a slut doesn’t make it wrong. Right? Everybody says that, ‘Your mom’s a slut.’”
    “They do not.”
    “They think it.”
    “No, Chris. You think it. Look at me. Am I a slut? A whore?”
    “Yeah, whatever.”
    “No, not whatever. I was wrong, okay. I shouldn’t be pregnant. But I am. What do you want? An abortion?”
    No answer. Glum face and angry ears.
    “You have no idea,” Loraine says.
    “You talk too much,” Chris throws back. They are in his bedroom, Chris lying in bed, Loraine on a stool beside him. Her neck is hot and red; she stops talking. She gets up and walks out on him, softly shutting the door, wanting to slam it. She creeps back in later when he is sleeping and stands looking at him. Lingers over him, bends to listen to him breathe. His bare legs are outside the blanket. They are getting hairy. She touches him lightly: hair, eyes, elbow, knee, mouth, hand, thumb, lips. She kisses him and smells his cheek, a mixture of Vaseline and soap. He has tiny scrapes on his arms as if someone has poked at him with a sharp object. His nails are bitten, his hair long, eyelashes