Free Girls In White Dresses by Jennifer Close

this making you uncomfortable?” Thea asked him.
    Matt shook his head. “No. No, this is fine.”
    Thea smiled. “Breast-feeding is the most natural thing in the world, Matt. I forgot what it’s like with most people on the outside. At the farm, if Rain is hungry and I’m not around, one of the other lactating mothers will feed her.”
    “What kind of farm does she live on?” Matt whispered to Abby in bed that night. They had shared a joint walking around the farm and now he was giggly. “That’s like Jim Jones shit,” he said. “Lactating mothers … what the hell is that?”
    “So you don’t want to move there with me?” Abby asked, and he laughed.
    “I’d move anywhere with you,” he said, sliding his arms underneath her shirt and around her stomach. He rested his head in her neck and she thought he was sleeping until she felt his shoulders shaking. “But I won’t drink the Kool-Aid,” he managed to get out above his laughter. He lifted his face to look at her. “Even for you, Abby. Even for you, I won’t drink the Kool-Aid from the lactating mothers.”

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    After Matt’s visit, Abby felt herself slipping back in time. It took her hours to pick out which shoes to wear, and when she finally did, she immediately regretted her choice. Her clothes seemed to fit differently, tight in places they never were before, too loose in others, and she pulled at them, trying to figure out why they didn’t look right. “Do I look okay?” she asked more often. She stared at herself in the mirror until Matt grew impatient, telling her she looked fine when he wasn’t looking at her at all.
    Abby couldn’t help what was happening. She needed Matt around all the time, felt confused when he was gone, followed him around the apartment, her toes hitting his heels when he stopped short. “Your wanting,” he said one night, “is overwhelming.” It sounded poetic, but Matt was not a poetic person. One night, she woke up holding a fistful of his shirt. Matt stared at her across the darkness, then shook his shoulders like a dog does when it’s wet, and rolled over to face away from her. She knew he would be gone soon.

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    Three months after Abby woke up holding Matt’s shirt, she arrived alone at her parents’ house. As she pulled into the driveway, she thought, “The neighbors are neglecting their exotic birds.” That was not unusual. Ever since the peacock incident, that sentence came into Abby’s head at the oddest of times. “The neighbors are neglecting their exotic birds,” she wanted to say when there was a lull at a dinner party or a friend told her that she was pregnant. And so she wasn’t surprised that on the night she came home to tell her parents that she wasn’t getting married, it was that thought that ran through her head:
The neighbors are neglecting their exotic birds
.
    It was no stranger than what she had come to tell them: that the wedding was off, that Matt had moved out, and that they would probably not be able to get a refund on anything. She turned off the car and thought about her options. “The neighbors are neglecting their exotic birds,” she said out loud to no one. Her breath made little puffs of white in the winter air, and she sat in the car until it was too cold to bear, and then she walked inside the house.

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    “Mom, I’m not getting married,” Abby said as soon as she walked through the door. Her mother was reading a book on the couch, and she marked her place with her finger before she looked up.
    “What?” she asked.
    “I’m not getting married.” Abby made no move to take off her jacket or move farther into the room.
    “All right, then,” she said. “Why don’t you come on in, and we’ll talk about it?” She put the book down on the couch and stood up. “Would you like some tea?” she asked. Abby nodded.
    Abby’s mom didn’t even look surprised to see her. She’d driven all the way from New York, walked into the house unannounced, and her