Free Dear Hearts by Ericka Clay

her
nose."
    "I
bet.  She creeps me out that kid.  She's not
like Wren."  It starts to sprinkle a little, one of those odd sun
showers that freak me out because to me, sun and rain don't mesh.  Mitch
puts on the windshield wipers and it feels like a pulse beating through the
cab.  The details in this moment start to add up: the quiet, Wren's slight
snoring, the fact that we're together and whiskey
isn't stealing the show.  But I can't say it.  I can't tell him how
my fear tastes.  That if he leaves me, I'll be left with empty bottles and
an unused TV.  That I don't know how to do anything without the boy who
used to trace our future in the palm of my hand: two kids, one house and us,
forever and ever.
    But
forever's a pipe dream.
    "So
she doesn't know," he says.
    "Know
what?  Oh and let's throw in a 'who' for good measure."
    "Ronnie. 
You haven't told her...about us trying?"
    "Oh
yeah, she knows.  But she doesn't know about-"
    "The miscarriages."
    "I
hate that word.  Let's go with deaths.  Or
disappointments.   Or tiny little stepping stones
to hell..."
    He's
quiet.  I've done that thing where I've pushed too hard and he doesn't
know what to do with me, which is a scary proposition since I hardly know what
to do with myself.
    "We'll
figure it out.  We have the appointment," he says.  I suck on it
like a lozenge.  The appointment, the "maybe."  
It claws a little and then harder and then I start to say it, "Are you
ch-"
    "Here
we are," he says, pulling into the Gibson's drive behind my GrandAm. 
"I can go ahead and take Wren home so she doesn't wake up," he says.
    "Yeah, alright."   I'm half
out of the truck, half in it and I linger there.  Just say it Elena. 
Just say what you want to say and stop being such a scared little girl. 
But then I think of me at seven when the cutting first started, and I see
Wren's face, clean of worry.  And so I don't say the thing that's weighing
on my every organ because if I do say it, her worry will become an animal that
follows her everywhere, and it will be something far worse than pissing herself
in public.
    "I
love you," I say and suck until I taste the truth in it.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    ELEVEN
    Mitch
     
    The church is up on a hill, and I
keep imagining it rolling down like a stone and pinning me and Aaron where we lay
naked in the unclaimed cemetery.  Not the one owned by St. Bonaventure
with the old outhouse at the side of it where the two rabbits fuck like rabbits
and everybody knows about it by Spring .  But the one with a small cluster of headstones breaking the earth
like teeth.
    "I've
always wanted to fuck in a church," Aaron says, his wine soaked lips
pressed to my ear.
    "There's
still time."  I smile, I can feel it crawling and quaking through my
lips, but happiness isn't a threat.  Three weeks.  It’s been three
weeks since our first meeting at the Franklin Center, three weeks of avoiding
telling Aaron about AA, three weeks of going to bed hours after Elena and only
hitting the sheets when sleep begins to feel like a small and merciful death. 
Three weeks of knowing therapy bills will be added to our growing heap of
payments because Wren’s pediatrician has recently recommended a child
psychologist who specializes in “frequent elimination.”  Sure, my heart's
a mess, but my mind, my mind is the equivalent of a dog yacking up something it
just can't hold down.  
    “I’m
in AA.”  Quiet.  Aaron disconnects his lips from my ear and turns
over onto his belly.  He brought a picnic blanket and it conceals our
bodies here in the small clearing.  I know about this place because it's
one of the stops during the church's annual Haunted Hayride and it's where
Wren, Elena and I stood still in the shadows last Halloween, a family of
vampires waiting for their next feast.
    "Elena?"
he asks.  His eyes are on me now.  I'm a lake, and Aaron’s the
straw.  I imagine