It's all about motherhood. END

There is an apartment on the West Side of Chicago that is almost always dark; inside it, Clint lives, and Meg exists.

. . .

In the kitchen, the fridge seems to be exclusively the domain of the American alcoholic, as Clint is constantly rummaging through it for something cold to satiate his drunken hotness; more cold beers, cold pop, cold cuts, cold butter, cold peanut butter, cold fresh fruit, cold fruit preserves, cold everything, delicacies that the European mind could never fathom.  This has left the pantry and other less interesting things entirely to Meg; though her life has been reduced to corners, she can still make some things expressly hers.

The napkins she’s purchased have embossing and are seasonally themed, now it’s snowmen in tophats with intricate buckles and evergreens behind them; in a few months, it will be floral spring designs; and after that, Meg will have found napkins with summer brightly stamped into them, and she’ll use those to wipe formula or breast milk from the corners of her child’s mouth or to dry its tears.  There are soaps next to each sink in the apartment with delicate aromas, the nice kinds of soap from Bath & Body Works.  They smell like some far-off place doused in sunlight with pretty-sounding names; Peleliu or Anguilla, something she can’t pronounce, but that doesn’t matter because she’s picked it.

Where Clint inevitably reduces an area to filth and disarray, tracking ice melt through the carpeted interior and spilling anything that can be spilled, Meg is close behind, tidying up.  Often, the apartment is cleaned and put in order at night; by morning, Meg finds cups hidden and stacked on top of one another, and they must soak in hot water because the residue has glued them together.  Plates are layered one on top of another; damp paper towels are strewn across the floor like ticker tape.

She may very well tidy the objects and labor away at that continually, but the walls are yellowed with cigarette smoke, and so the exact cleanliness she seeks is elusive.  The staining is smelled before it is seen, so even in the dark, the squalor is inexorable.  Smoking on the balcony was the sole concession that Clint made when Meg found out she was pregnant, and she knows better than to ever say it, but smoking outside made more sense anyway.

. . .

She’s sitting in front of an unassembled cradle, trying to make sense of the instructions.  The house is quiet, and then there is a knock at the door.

ENDING

There is a time to embrace, and there is a time to refrain from embracing, and so when Clint appears in the doorway, Ethan allows himself only to smile.  “Clint, I’m here to speak to Meg,” he says.

Clint briefly looks at Ethan and turns towards the darkness of the hallway.  “Meg, one of your friends is here,” he calls, then shuffles away into the dark.  There is an exchange of low voices that Ethan cannot distinguish, and then a figure emerges from the shadow.  It’s a woman.  She’s just about as tall as Ethan.  Her face is round and uncertain as she looks at the young man who came calling.

“Hello,” she says.

“Hi, Meg,” Ethan replies, smiling.  His grip tightens around the neck of the bottle that he holds in front of him.  Meg looks down, and her smile fades.

“I’m so sorry, you must be a friend of Clint, come in, come in.  Where are my manners?” she says and then steps aside.  Ethan steps out of the hallway and into the apartment.  “It’s so kind of you to have dropped by, but we had to cancel the party.  That’s what you’re here for, right?”

“Yeah, sure,” Ethan says.  “I love a good party.”

“We had to cancel it, but I’m sure he’ll be happy you stopped by anyway.  What’s your name, I’m awful sorry I have to ask – bet I’ll recognize it, I’m the one that sent out those invitations, afterall”

“I’m Ethan.”

Meg’s face lights up, “Ethan Cruze,  how wonderful it is to put a face to the name!”

“No.  Stackable.  Ethan Stackable.”

She furrows her brow and hums in thought, working through some of the names quietly to herself to jog her memory: Edgar, Milton, Ian, but can’t seem to think of any other Ethan’s.

“Ethan Stackable, huh,” she says.

“That’s what I said.”

“Well, I’m sorry Ethan Stackable, I just don’t recognize the name, but I’m sure Clint will be awfully glad you stopped by!  He doesn’t talk about his old friends too much, but I really like hearing about all of you guys.”

“Edgar was invited?”

Meg nods, “Sure was.  Come on this way, I’ll show you around.  I think Clint must be playing something or another right now, you know him, always loved playing on his Xbox!  Pardon the mess, we’ve sure been busy!”

Ethan is led further into the apartment and given a brief tour of each area they pass: there’s the kitchen, the dining room, over there is her reading nook, here’s the living room, where the glow of a sixty-inch television illuminates a disinterested Clint-shaped silhouette, before they stop at a door.

“And in here,” Meg said.  She opened the door, and they both walked inside.  Her hand reached for a switch.  “Here is the bedroom.”  The switch clicks, and a red-tinted light flicks on, filling the room in a dull crimson.  Just as quickly, she turns it off and throws her face into her hands.  “I’m so, so sorry about that.”

“For what, everyone needs hobbies,” Ethan said.  “You guys are into photography?”

Meg looks up, unsure if that was a joke.  There is a cold sweat running down her back, and the darkness makes it hard to discern his face.  “Sure.”  She steps over to the bedside lamp and flicks it on and takes a breath.  The room fills with warm, yellow light.

“That’s cool.  Clint and I almost lived together, you know, and I was supposed to decorate the place.”  His eyes wander the room and stop on a half-assembled cradle leaning against the wall.  Parts of it are still covered in the manufacturer’s shrink wrap, and pieces of sheared styrofoam litter the carpet.  The instructions are lying beside it, crinkled from being handled so thoroughly.  Clint must be taking a break from putting it together.

“Ah, the baby bed,” Meg says, her voice with a mock annoyance, “That will be the death of me.  You know, they make it so hard to follow those instructions sometimes.”

Ethan looks over, “You’re doing it?” he asks.

“Well, I’m trying,” she smiles.

“Shouldn’t Clint do a thing like that?”

Her smile fades.  “Well, he’s got a lot to worry about, you know, and his back hurts too much sometimes.” She nervously fiddles with a bracelet.  There’s a wooden cross among the beads, and her fingers rotate it around.  Along her forearm is a long dark bruise, like a drop of ink blooming through a glass of water.  The same thing appears on her upper arm, just below the sleeve, and along what little of her neck Ethan can see.

“Oh, these are nothing,” Meg said.  “It’s just from banging around the kitchen.  Clumsy me!” She adjusts her shirt and crosses her arms.  “Do you want anything, water, coffee maybe?”

“No, thank you.”  His speech suddenly feels tight, as if he can only use different forms of politeness.

“Sure, right,” Meg says through a melancholy strain.  She turns away and faces the crib.

There is a great stillness in the room, one that may very well swallow Ethan up if he draws a breath too deeply, so he takes shallow sips at the air through his nose, standing perfectly still, as if at attention.  Each is rapid and incomplete; in and out, in and out, like a heart racing hot in his chest.  Meg has turned and said something, but the words are far from him.  Suddenly, he inhales deeply through his mouth.  

“What, I’m sorry?” he pulls the words from himself.

“Do you want children, Ethan,” Meg says.

“I don’t know.  I mean, I haven’t thought about it, really.”

“They’re a gift from God, you know, or that’s what my family always said.  Do you believe in God, Ethan?”  She looks away and runs her hands over her baby bump.  Ethan makes no reply, so Meg continues.  “I can already feel him kicking.  Makes me think he’s excited to come out.  Not even born, and he’s already grown.”

The bottle in Ethan’s hands felt heavy and pointless; it no longer stirred the drive that had once carried him toward Ian and all the way to Chicago, to Meg.  His eyes regarded it sheepishly and then looked up at Meg.  At this moment, he was dumb, as if before a judge, and everything before was revealed as a hollow, baseless desire.  This whole pursuit had been after what was hardly a dream, but the shadow of a dream.  Something so unclear that even registering the feelings more specifically than felt would be a fool’s errand.

Ethan turns to leave.

“What’s the light doing on?” Clint says.  He has appeared in the doorway and has had something to drink, some kind of clear spirit; it glistens on his beard from where he missed his mouth.  “Turn it off.”

Meg flinches at his voice and does as she’s told without looking up.

“Where’s dinner?” he says.  “I’m getting hungry.” 

Clint walks over and snatches the bottle from Ethan’s hands and twists it open.  “Thanks,” he says without gratitude.  “I tell her she’s gettin’ big,” Clint says, addressing Ethan, who stares straight ahead.  “And she tells me she’s eating for two now, so I say to her, ‘shit, you’ve always been eating for two.’” He digs a couple of Tramadol pills from his shirt pocket and stuffs them into his mouth and takes a hard swig, closing his eyes as it all goes down.  “Fat bitch.”

Meg rushes out of the bedroom, and Clint follows, chirping after her.  “Ain’t that right, tubby?  Are you acting like you can’t hear me?”

Ethan slinks out after them, unsure of what else to do.

“I’ll give you something to flinch about,” Clint says.  His hand raises and smacks Meg in the back of the head.  “You look at me when I talk to you.  You understand me.”  He strikes her again, but harder.

She nods her head up and down, but doesn’t face him.

Clint grabs her by the back of her neck and jerks her around.

“You look at me when I talk to you.”

Meg continues nodding.  Her lips are trembling, and tears are rolling down her face.

“Does your faggot friend have something to say?”  Clint and Meg both look at Ethan.  Cats got his tongue.

“What kind of piss beer is this anyway?” Clint releases Meg’s neck with a shove and inspects the bottle: “Stone IPA,” he reads, then lets it fall from his hand onto the floor, where the bottom blows out and fractures into several pieces, and foamy beer sprays across the tile.

“Oops.  Meg you gonna clean that up or make dinner, which one you wanna do first,” Clint says to her, “And when's this fruit leaving – when you leaving?”

“I should leave now,” Ethan replies in a whisper.  He looks down at the bottle and the foam spreading around his shoes.

“You gonna start crying too, pussy boy?”  Clint says loudly.  “Can’t even hear you.”  He turns his attention back to Meg.  “Who is this idiot?” he asks her.

Ethan looks up from the bottle and over to Meg.  Her shoulders lift in small, broken breaths.  One hand squeezes the bracelet as she mutters inaudibly.  Clint is saying something and menacing her with his fist; she flinches away until her back meets the wall.  There is wickedness in being meek around the wicked.  Ethan reaches down and picks up part of the broken bottle.  

“Clint,” Ethan says.

Clint turns and replies, “What?”

Ethan squats low and bounds across the kitchen, roadie-running toward Clint.  He springs up and drives the ragged crown of the broken bottle into Clint’s throat, staggering him backward into the countertop.  Clint catches himself on his elbows like he’s propped up along the edge of a pool, and Ethan wrenches the bottle free.  Blood spurts from the punctures and pours down the front of Clint’s shirt in an unbroken stream.  He slides down and lands with a thud against the cabinet doors.

Clint’s legs kick out frantically as he tries to stand, but he keeps slipping back to the floor; the heels of his boots squeak and leave black rubber scuffs across the tile.  Wet sounds gurgle from the wound, and blood sputters out with each groan.  Soon, his hands are clamped around his throat, feverishly trying to do anything.  He looks to Meg, pleading with his eyes.

She is wailing.  The sort of penetrating screams that make the neighbors call the police instead of banging on the walls.  She falls away from the kitchen door and backwards into the living room.  The bedroom door is shut and locked, and even then, it doesn’t cease, it’s only half as loud.

In the kitchen, Clint’s eyes do not plead with Ethan; they only look at him.  The blood loss is immense now, and it pools all around him.  He’s gone pale, but still has a pulse, and with each beat of his slowing heart, a little more blood leaks out.  Ethan slides down across from Clint, and soon it is only the two of them: there is no Meg, no screaming, no apartment.  Ethan doesn’t say anything, only watches.  It takes a long time for a man to die, and even longer when he’s looking back at you.