This Glittering World

by T. Greenwood

  “Hey,” Sara said.

  Ben looked up at Sara, who was standing with her purse slung over her shoulder. Her face looked a little green.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to the little girl. “I have to go. Maybe your mom can read it to you again.” But the mother was across the room, feeding the baby now and trying to read a magazine at the same time.

  “You ready?” Ben asked Sara.

  “Uh-huh.”

  They sat in the OB’s office for nearly an hour before the nurse came out and unapologetically told them it was their turn. She led them down a long hallway to a small room. She weighed Sara, took her blood pressure and temperature, told her to change into a paper gown. Then she left.

  Sara started to pull off her clothes, and something about this made Ben feel embarrassed. He’d seen Sara undress a zillion times, but in this bright light, in this cold room, she seemed so vulnerable. Exposed. She quickly hurried out of her scrubs, slipping into the crinkly gown. Then she slipped off her panties and folded them into a tiny triangle. She handed Ben her pile of clothes. “Can you set those over there?” she asked, gesturing to the chair where her purse was.

  She sat on the edge of the table, wringing her hands.

  “Are you nervous?” he asked.

  “A little,” she said.

  They’d gone onto babycenter.com and calculated how far along she was. If they were right, she was about seven weeks now. The due date calculator said the baby would arrive around the first week of July.

  “I feel really sick,” Sara said. “Can you get the crackers from my purse? There’s a packet of saltines in there.”

  Ben riffled through Sara’s enormous bag, finally locating the column of crackers. He handed her the whole thing, and she took out one cracker, nibbling the corner of it and handing the package back to him. She closed her eyes and swallowed.

  “Do you want me to get you some water?’ Ben asked.

  She shook her head. “No, I’m okay.”

  It was another twenty minutes before the doctor came in, also without explanation or apology. He was a large man with pale skin and pale thinning hair and a pale smatter of freckles.

  “Well,” he said. “You’re going to have a baby.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Ben snapped, and Sara shot him a look.

  He looked at the clipboard with the information Sara had filled out in the waiting room and said, “Okeydokey. It looks here like you’re about seven weeks along. I think we’ll do an internal ultrasound today, just to make sure everything’s going smoothly and to confirm a due date. And then we’ll get some blood work ordered and you’ll be all set.”

  Sara nodded. He called the nurse back in and they all squeezed into the room.

  “So, you work for Hugh?” he asked as Sara lay down on the table, putting her feet in the stirrups.

  Sara smiled. “Uh-huh.”

  “Here, scooch your bottom down to the end of the table here.”

  Sara obeyed.

  “Hugh and I were in med school together at U of A,” he said. “I always tell him, if not for me he’d go out of business.” He chuckled.

  Sara raised her eyebrow.

  “All of his patients are mine first,” he said.

  Sara smiled and looked at Ben.

  “Okay, let’s see what we’ve got here,” he said.

  The monitor by the table showed a grainy black-and-white image. The doctor tried to navigate, to explain, but it looked like it could just as easily have been tracking airplanes or submarines as it did the baby inside Sara.

  The doctor wiggled the probe around, and Sara winced. Sara reached for Ben’s hand.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I just wanted to be able to show you this,” he said, gesturing to the monitor with his other hand. “See that little fluttering thing there?”

  Ben leaned over Sara, peering closely at the blob on the screen.

  “That’s the baby’s heart.”

  Sara and he stared at the screen, at the tiny flutter, and Sara squeezed Ben’s hand. When he looked at her, he could see her cheeks were wet with tears.

  Ben didn’t tell anyone about the baby. Not Hippo, not Ned.

  He wasn’t ready yet. He knew that as soon as he said the words, it would become real. At home it was all they talked about. Melanie and Sara were always at the kitchen table, poring over pregnancy magazines and baby name books. Sara’s mother called at least once a day now, offering advice and comfort. The TV was always tuned into episodes of TLC’s A Baby Story, and the giant bottle of prenatal pills on the dining room table was like a monument to gestation.

  But at the bar, there was no baby. There was nothing but dirty glasses and peanut shells and a jukebox Johnny Cash all filtered through the dim amber light of the bar. Time stood still: afternoon passing into evening acquiescing to the pitch-black darkness of twoA.M., each evening the same as the last.

  He tried not to think about Shadi.

  At home, this was easy. The world at home was pastel pink and baby blue; it was pages torn from catalogues with strollers and car seats and cribs. It was Sara, slowly beginning to crawl out of the first trimester nausea and exhaustion into the warm rosy glow of pregnancy. Her appetite was restored, her whole body starting to soften and yield.

  He hadn’t tried to contact the owner of the Mustang again; that had been stupid. He hadn’t been thinking. He needed to just put it out of his mind. That was also easy at home. But here, at the bar, every Navajo face reminded him of Ricky. Every young rez kid shooting pool. Every asshole making racial slurs.

  After Thanksgiving, it seemed that winter had decided to stick around. There was another storm that weekend that brought in six more inches of snow. Hippo was in heaven. The mountain had opened early, and he asked Ben to cover some of his weekday shifts so he could ski before the snowbirds flew up from Phoenix on Friday afternoon.

  Ben had been grateful not only for the extra cash but also for the time away from home. It was hard to focus on school when he was working so much, but his heart had left the classroom since Rob took away his spring classes, and he was just biding his time now until the semester’s end. His students sensed his lack of commitment and had responded in kind with a steadily increasing number of absences. He didn’t even bother taking attendance anymore. But since word got out about his little episode, not a single kid had dared to send a single text message during class. They all looked at him with a mixture of terror and excited expectation. If he’d done this earlier in his career (to someone less likely to bring charges against him), he imagined teaching might have been a less aggravating experience all these years.

  Weekday shifts were slow, just the regulars and a few college kids ditching class. He clocked out at fourP.M. as Ned was coming in to take over.

  “Dude, what happened to your truck?” Ned said as he tied his apron around his waist and lifted the gate to come behind the bar.

  “Huh?” Ben asked. He was cashing in his tips, closing the drawer.

  “Your truck. Looks like somebody keyed it.”

  Ben went outside without even bothering to put on his coat and sure enough, all along the side of the truck, from the cab to the tailgate, was a nail-size scratch through the clear coat and into the primer.

  “Shit!” Ben said. “Goddamnit.”

  “You got some enemies?” Ned asked. A few of the bar patrons had come out to see what the ruckus was about.

  “I do now,” Ben said. “Listen, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Ben got in his truck and turned the key. Nothing. He tried again, and the engine groaned but wouldn’t turn over. For a minute he wondered if somebody had fucked with his battery too. Then he remembered that it had been snowing, dim, when he drove to work. He checked and realized he had, as expected, left the lights on. He hit the steering wheel with his hand. He had planned to get in the car and drive around town until he found that asshole Mark Fitch and his goddamn blue Mustang. It had to be him. Why the hell did he tell him what kind of truck he
was driving? But he was stuck. Snow coming down. He looked around to see if somebody might be able to give him a jump, but the street was deserted. Ned had walked to work from his place on Aspen Avenue and didn’t have a car. Ben was shit out of luck. He’d have to call Sara, either that or walk home. Goddamn.

  He looked at his watch. Sara wouldn’t be out of work for another hour. He figured he might as well grab a beer at Beaver Street Brewery and then call her for a ride. He closed and locked the truck, took one last look at the horrific scar, and then started walking down the street.

  He had to wait at the tracks for a train to pass. It was cold out, the sun obscured by heavy clouds. He stood behind the bar at the railroad crossing, waiting for the train, feeling the rumble of it, the power of it emanating through the soles of his boots all the way up his body.

  The whistle was deafening. It’s funny how accustomed he’d gotten to the trains. He hardly noticed them anymore unless they were holding him up. Like now. When the last car had passed, he jogged across the tracks and stopped.

  Standing in front of Macy’s Coffeehouse was Shadi. She looked up, as if sensing him, and raised her hand reflexively in a hello.

  He slowed his pace down, trying to slow his heart. Every step was agonizing. He tried to be cool. He tried to relax. His mind was racing with what he could say to her. With all the possible ways to say, I’m sorry.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, reaching for his hands, tilting her head and smiling at him.

  They stood there like this, studying each other’s faces until Ben realized what he was doing and quickly let go.

  He shook his head. “No. I’m sorry. This shouldn’t have happened. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “Can I get you a cup of coffee?” she asked, gesturing to the door.

  He thought quickly about the alternative: her walking away, her leaving, and he nodded. Despite everything, he said, “Yeah. Of course. “And he put his hand on her back, his fingers thrilling at the touch of her soft coat, and followed her into the warm coffee shop.

  Inside, it smelled like baked goods and incense. It was another local hippie hangout, and Ben rarely came here unless he needed to pick up the carrot muffins that Sara had been craving lately. They were whole grain, flax-flecked, fibrous wonders, all health benefits of which were negated by the Pillsbury cream cheese frosting she smothered them with.

  “Let’s sit here,” Shadi said, motioning to a table in an out-of-the-way corner. No one would see them here. This was a far cry from the picture window at Café Espress.

  They ordered coffees and sat looking at each other again, each as if looking at a ghost.

  “I didn’t mean to be such a coward,” he said. “Leaving a note. It was wrong. I should have come to see you.”

  She shook her head again. “You told me about her. You told me you had a fiancée. I should have listened. I shouldn’t have … we shouldn’t have.”

  He knew she was right. He shouldn’t have slept with her, but he wasn’t sorry for that. He had no regrets about sleeping with her. His true regret was that he’d fled. That he hadn’t simply stayed.

  “When is the baby due?” Shadi asked.

  The mention of the baby felt like a brick being thrust into his chest. It nearly knocked the wind out of him.

  “July,” he said and looked hard into her eyes. She smiled, but her eyes were sad. “We saw the heart beating.”

  She brushed her hair out of her eyes and shook her head slowly. And then she reached across the table and touched his face.

  He closed his eyes.

  “You aren’t happy,” she said.

  “No.” It felt like such a relief to admit this. To tell someone.

  The waitress came over with the sandwich he’d ordered. Shadi withdrew her hand as if his skin had burned her. He glanced at his watch. Sara would be out of work in five minutes. He would need to call her now, before she left, if he wanted her to get him.

  He watched Shadi as she picked small pieces of her muffin off and put them in her mouth. He looked at his watch again, though only a few seconds had passed.

  “You should go,” she said.

  He thought about his truck, about that thin white wound.

  “I saw the Mustang,” he whispered. “It belongs to some guy named Mark Fitch. Long story short, I think he knows I’m looking for him.”

  Shadi’s eyes opened wide and she grabbed his wrist.

  “I’ll keep looking,” he said and then left because he knew that if she touched him again he wouldn’t ever leave. “And I’ll be in touch.”

  Sara picked him up on the corner by Jack’s. It was snowing again, and the Camry was coated in several inches of snow. He hopped in next to her and stared straight ahead through the windshield. He couldn’t look at her; he worried that if he did, she’d know everything.

  “I’m thinking Caroline,” she said softly.

  “What?” he asked. His mother’s name was Caroline. But everyone called her Caddy.

  “After your mother?” she said, and squeezed his hand. “If it’s a girl. We could call her Caddy for short.”

  In his office at school after his last class, he graded the stack of papers he’d collected that morning. He thought about marking them all B and calling it a day, but he still had finals to deal with. He wouldn’t be done with everything until close to Christmas.

  He’d been working for a couple of hours, when he started getting antsy. His office didn’t have any windows. He was starting to feel closed in, caged. He figured he’d take a break and stretch his legs, go see if anybody was hanging around in the break room. Maybe he could find somebody to go grab a bite with. He hadn’t had lunch yet and his stomach was starting to rumble.

  The main office was deserted except for Penny, one of the grad students who came in and helped out in the office a few times a week. She didn’t look up from the computer when he came in.

  “Hey, Penny,” Ben said. “I’m headed to go grab something to eat. Can I bring you back something?”

  “Nah, I’m good,” she said, clicking away on the computer.

  Ben shrugged. He checked the mail room, the break room. Nobody was around. Office doors were closed, up and down the hallway. Even Rob wasn’t milling around, and Rob was always milling around. Jesus. Maybe he was the only one who hadn’t already checked out.

  He went back to his office and grabbed his coat. The stack of papers leered at him from his desk. “I’ll be back,” he said, and then wondered if that was crazy.

  He made his way across campus. By the time he got to the student union, he was starving.

  The faculty may have been mysteriously absent, but students were everywhere. There was hardly any place to sit. Every single table had at least three students and all of their paraphernalia sprawled out across them. Coffee cups and textbooks, notebooks and laptops. With finals just a week away, all of the students who had been partying on weeknights, sleeping in, skipping class to go snowboarding were suddenly studious. Serious. He saw this every semester. There was something magical about the end of the semester; it made students believe in miracles. This is when they went into high gear, cramming in thirteen weeks’ worth of information in the hopes that it would stick. It was when the bargaining, the pleading, the praying began. He’d been guilty of it himself to a certain extent as an undergrad. But he was pretty sure he’d never tried to make a deal with a professor, and already he’d had two kids who’d begged him to drop their lowest quiz grade so they could pass his class. He’d thrown up his hands and said, Why not? He really, truly didn’t care anymore.

  He stood in line at the Sub Connection, studying the illuminated menu.

  There was a group of girls in front of him. They were all wearing flannel pajama bottoms and thick collegiate sweatshirts. Finals wear. Being in Flagstaff had been refreshing after DC. Here you were considered dressed up if you wore a button-down shirt with your jeans and boots.

  He ordered his sandwich and was paying when he heard a loud voi
ce boom above the din of clacking keyboards and muffled music: “Hey, Fitch!”

  Ben spun around, trying to follow the voice, unsure if his ears were playing tricks on him or not.

  Over by the main door, there was a table of guys, all wearing baseball caps and sweatshirts. And standing at the table, fist-bumping each of them, was a guy with blond hair.

  Ben grabbed his food and quickly wound his way through the labyrinth of students and tables, finally making his way to a table near the guys, where a girl in glasses and sweats was clearing away her things.

  “Are you leaving?” Ben asked.

  “Huhh?” she asked, unplugging her iPod earbuds.

  “You leaving?”

  She nodded. “Yep, it’s all you.”

  “Thanks,” Ben said, and waited as she loaded up her backpack before he sat down and unwrapped his sandwich.

  He was close enough to the table to make out a little bit of the conversation, their voices loud but muffled.

  “You going up to the mountain this weekend?” one baseball cap asked the other.

  “Nah, my mom’s coming up from Phoenix.”

  “So?” said another cap.

  “Dude, you’re going to miss the party at Fitch’s on Saturday, then?”

  Fitch.

  “No way,” a new voice, Fitch’s voice, said. “My girlfriend’s getting a keg from work. You totally can’t miss it.”

  Ben looked up from his sandwich.

  The kid, Fitch, was sitting down now. He’d taken off his hat. His hair was the color of sand dipped in vanilla frosting. He recognized him right away as a California transplant. They all had the same hair. The same slow, easy way of talking. The same golden skin all winter long.

  “Where’s Jenny work at again?”

  “Flag Brew. They’ve got a killer IPA,” Fitch said.

  Flagstaff Brewing Company. Jenny was probably the girl he’d seen at Bashas’ driving the Mustang.

  “Dude, you can always come out after your mom goes to bed. She staying at your apartment?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey, give me those fries,” a familiar voice said.