Losers Weepers

by Nicole Williams

  Jesse still hadn’t touched his meal. In fact, I didn’t think he’d even acknowledged it had arrived yet.

  “It’s not like a person with this kind of thing is strongly discouraged from getting pregnant, but it puts me into a higher-risk category,” she said.

  Jesse cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders. “No, but the doctor advised you have surgery to fix the problem before getting pregnant. That’s why we were quadrupling up on birth control, but now . . .” His voice caught for a moment, and then he continued. “They can’t operate on her while she’s pregnant. They can’t guarantee Rowen and the baby will make it through this safely . . . they can’t do anything. It feels like all we’re doing is waiting to see what happens, going back and forth between celebrating over a miracle and biting our nails at a possible tragedy.”

  I exhaled and shook my head. Dangling precariously on the ledge of hope and fear was a concept I was all too familiar with after this past week.

  Rowen turned in her seat to face Jesse. She waited for him to look at her, and when he finally did, she pressed her hand into his chest and leaned closer. “I’m going to be fine. The baby’s going to be fine.” She nodded as if she were waiting for him to nod along with her.

  He couldn’t though. He knew no amount of nodding would guarantee his wife and child’s safety. Jesse might have been an optimist to an unfathomable degree, but he didn’t skew reality with false hope. The numbers, the statistics didn’t lie—I knew that.

  Rowen stayed turned in her seat but looked over at us. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

  Rowen wasn’t my sister or my girlfriend or even a lifelong friend, but the surge of panic I felt from realizing her life was in danger indicated otherwise. What would the world look like without Rowen Sterling-Walker ruffling its feathers? Bland. And boring. And monochromatic at best.

  “Are you saying Rowen could die? Your unborn baby could die?” I pointed at her stomach as I directed my questions at Jesse.

  “Garth!” Josie snapped.

  “What? From the sound of him and the look of him, Jesse’s planning for a couple of funerals at the same time he’s having to confront being a dad. Don’t expect me to offer up a simple congrats and move on to discussing what we’ve all got planned for the Fourth of July weekend, because I can’t do that, Joze. I can’t just pretend something isn’t happening when it clearly is. I can’t just sweep something under the rug . . .”

  It was her brow rising higher and higher with every sentence that finally got my attention. That brow threw my words back in my face, accusing me of being a hypocrite. I knew she was right. With myself, I was happy to sweep what was going on under the rug to collect with the rest of the dust bunnies, but when it came to the people I cared about, I wanted answers. I wanted to weigh the options.

  I leaned across the table toward him, ignoring Josie’s warning look. “What are we talking about here, Jess? What number did the doc give you guys?”

  Jesse’s eyes closed, his forehead creasing so deeply it shifted his hat down on his head. “He gave us a number a hell of a lot higher than I would have liked to hear.”

  I cursed under my breath, unable to keep from looking at Rowen as if she were drifting away from us, and all I could do was watch it happen. Josie had stopped bouncing in her seat with excitement. The entire table had been sucked dry of excitement and filled with the heaviness of uncertainty. Rowen was slouched in her seat, her hands covering her stomach, and looking a bit scared herself. The dread and panic on Jesse’s face had only increased in severity, and Josie looked as though she was about two seconds from bawling.

  “Rowen’s right,” I said, nodding at her. “Everything’s going to be okay, so we can spend the next six or however many months freaking out and getting our panties in a twist about something that’s not going to happen, or we can raise our glasses filled with soda, make a toast, and celebrate the little Sterling-Walker.” I lifted my Coke, returning Rowen’s smile as it formed.

  Her Sprite joined mine in the air a few moments later. Josie’s glass came next, and finally, after having to swat his arm across the table, Jesse’s joined our trio of cups.

  “Cheers,” I said as we clinked glasses. “And congrats. That fetus is one lucky little munchkin to wind up with you two as its parents.” A laugh slipped past Rowen’s mouth and slowly spread around the table. “If there’s anything we can do for you guys, let us know. However, I won’t be the back-up labor coach for you, Jess, so you better make sure you stay close when your wife’s due. It would leave me permanently scarred, and I’m damaged enough as it is.”

  Josie wiped at her eyes, but a tear still ran down her cheeks and around her smile. “Congratulations. I’m so thrilled for you both. Garth’s right—let’s hold on to hope instead of letting fear drive us, okay? Besides, we’ve got important things to discuss. Like the theme colors of your baby shower I’m going to throw this fall.” Josie winked at Rowen before throwing out dates and something about shower games.

  That was when I tuned out. “Go figure I’d be the one to shed light on a situation when you were sitting at the table.”

  Jesse opened his eyes, staring at his plate without really seeing it. My words hadn’t mollified him as much as they had they girls.

  “Rowen’s going to be fine, Jess. Come on. You have to know that.” I lowered my voice and leaned across the table. “There’s no fucking way you or me will let anything take her or your baby away from this world, you hear me? That’s not going to happen, so you stop thinking it right now.”

  He stared at his plate for another minute before looking up. “I can’t lose her. She’s my whole world. I can’t lose her.”

  I could so empathize with the look on his face right then. It was the same look I’d carry everywhere if Josie were in Rowen’s position. “You’re not going to.”

  I waited for that light in his eyes to tell me he was on board, for that flicker of defiance to follow my lead, but it never came. Jesse was going to worry until he got to hold his baby and kiss his wife on the forehead. He wasn’t going to find his peaceful place until he had his family in his arms at the end of all this.

  Josie’s hand weaved through mine again. She was still busy talking with Rowen, and no one around the table seemed interested in the expensive steaks in front of them. Except the pregnant woman. She was nibbling daintily at hers, probably because her stomach had staged a revolt for the past three months, from the sound of it.

  “I can’t believe this. I’m so, so excited I don’t know how I’m going to make it until November,” Josie said.

  “The end of November,” Rowen added, which made Josie groan.

  “When can you find out what it is?”

  Rowen finished chewing and swallowed. “It’s a baby, Josie. We already know what it is.”

  Across the table, I detected a hint of a smile threatening to ruin Jesse’s somber expression.

  “Your humor has gotten worse since getting knocked up, you know that?” Josie flicked a sugar packet at Rowen, laughing.

  Faster than a speeding bullet (no joke) Jesse’s hand snapped in front of Rowen and snagged the sugar packet from the air.

  Rowen thanked him with a cheek pat. “My hero.”

  “Come on though. When are you going to find out the sex of the baby? Five months? Six? I can’t remember when they can tell for sure.” Josie propped her elbows up onto the table and leaned into it like she was enraptured.

  I might not have felt like her about all topics of a baby nature, but it was nice having the conversation—said or unsaid—shift away from me and what had happened and what would happen.

  “We’ll find out the moment after it’s ripped out of my stomach like an alien, oozing in placenta gunk and funk.” Rowen grinned at me when I let out a loud grumble.

  “Good thing I’m not trying to eat here, Rowen,” I said, shoving my steak even farther away. “Because it would be projectile-ing all over the place right now.”

  “You’re
really not going to find out until you have it?” Josie asked.

  Rowen shrugged. “We’re really not. We like surprises.”

  “Some surprises,” Jesse inserted, taking a bite of steak from Rowen’s fork when she lifted it to his mouth.

  “What’s the deal with the ripping it from your stomach thing? Don’t they do that only after trying the”—Josie glanced at me and saw the scrunched-up look on my face—“after trying the more natural way?”

  I let out the breath I’d been holding, thankful the v-word hadn’t just been dropped at the dinner table. I didn’t know what it was about pregnancy or the delivery process that made me so squeamish, but I couldn’t seem to overhear information about it without feeling close to trembling. Maybe it was because I could never really understand it since my body wasn’t carrying the same kind of equipment, or maybe it was because I was totally out of control of the entire process, other than the very start, and I thrived off control. Or maybe it was for some other reason I had yet to identify, but either way, I wanted to drill my fingers into my ears and drown out the gunk and funk details.

  “With my heart thing,” Rowen said, stabbing at her salad with her fork, “they don’t want to put the added stress of natural labor on my heart. They’re going to schedule a Caesarean before I go into natural labor to save me the stress of it.”

  Josie’s nose wrinkled. “And cutting you open and scarring your bikini area for life is how they’re planning to lessen your stress?”

  Rowen smiled. “I know, right? Bastards.”

  Jesse scooted closer to his wife, clamped his hands down on either side of her small stomach, and shushed the table. “The baby’s hearing is developing now. It can hear you. This is a friendly reminder to keep your curses to yourself when our baby’s within hearing range. I don’t want my daughter or son’s first word to be shit.”

  “Why are you looking at me, Jess? It was your wife who just dropped that foul word.” I’d been minding my P’s and Q’s. For the most part.

  “Because you, old friend, are the worst offender in that department.” Jesse’s hands stayed around Rowen’s stomach for a few more seconds before they moved away.

  I guessed he thought his baby’s virgin ears were safe again, at least for the next few minutes, after broadcasting his warning. He was right though. With a baby on the way, who’d turn into a toddler, who’d become a child . . . I would have to start watching what I said around whom. I’d have to install a filter so I didn’t tarnish the little Sterling-Walker before he or she could crawl.

  “Well, it sounds like they’ve thought everything out and are doing everything they can to make sure you have a safe and healthy pregnancy and delivery, right?” Josie picked right up where they’d left off. “It seems like you’re in good hands.”

  Rowen dropped her hand onto Jesse’s shoulder and squeezed it. “I am in good hands.”

  Josie took a long drink of her soda and drained it. Probably because she was parched from talking at a hundred words a minute since she’d heard the word baby. “So how many of these things do you guys want to have?”

  “It depends on how this one goes,” Rowen answered.

  “One,” Jesse said at the same time.

  Josie rolled her eyes. “One? That’s just cruel. You need to have at least, like, four, or you could be like me and want to have a dozen.” Her eyes lit up as she continued. Knowing her, she was envisioning each of her imaginary children’s little faces and naming them on the spot. “I want to be literally crawling over children to get to the oven to make dinner every night. I want to be hoarse and exhausted and frazzled every night when I crawl into bed. I want to be bursting at the seams with dirty laundry and dishes and tile floors.” Josie was grinning as wide as I’d ever seen her—and she’d grinned a lot in her life. “Yeah, I’m definitely having a dozen.”

  Rowen shook her head. “I do not envy the condition of your lady parts after that dozenth child practically flies out of your womb. And I won’t envy the boxes of tissues you’ll tear through whipping snotty noses.”

  Josie just waved her off, twisting to face me and bouncing with excitement all over again. “Can we have a dozen, Garth? Can we literally have so many kids I’ll have to chauffeur them to 4-H and soccer practice in a bus? Can we please have so many children people will start dropping birth control pills into my drinks everywhere I go to keep away the threat of an army of Blacks taking over the world?” Her hands wrapped around my arm as she looked at me with something in her eyes that registered even higher on the happiness scale than joy.

  To Josie, family—both blood and otherwise—was paramount in her life. I supposed the expansion of that family would be just as important to her. If Josie wanted a dozen children, she deserved a dozen. She had more than enough love and kindness and that streak of adventure to spread. She had so much of herself to give that she could have had a hundred kids and still had a surplus.

  There was a problem with what she was asking though. Or at least a problem with whom she was asking. I couldn’t give her those dozen babies. At least not in the way a man and woman were intended to create a baby, and even if I could be convinced to have my little Garths medically transplanted inside her so we could “conceive” together, how could I keep up with one child while confined to a wheelchair, let alone a dozen? How could I support a family when I could barely think of ways to support myself?

  I might have been able to father a child with the help of a whole hell of a lot of medical breakthroughs, but that was the easy part. The hard part, the everything-after-the-conception-and-delivery part, I was incapable of doing in a way our children deserved. I didn’t want them to go through school as I had, with free lunches and outdated clothing. I didn’t want them to be embarrassed every time we went anywhere together, with all of the points and stares that came from having a dad in a wheelchair with shrunken, useless legs. I didn’t want to feel helpless when I couldn’t climb up into a treehouse to help my kid down when they were crying and scared of doing it alone. I didn’t want to teach my child how to ride a horse from outside the corral. I didn’t want to be a nuisance or an inconvenience or a source of embarrassment.

  So though I might have been able to father a child in one way, I couldn’t father one in the way that mattered most.

  Lifting my hand, I cupped Josie’s cheek. I didn’t blink once as I stared at her, admiring her as though she was everything I could ever want but couldn’t have if my fate didn’t change.

  “You can have whatever you want, Joze,” I said. What I didn’t say was that it might not be me who gave her everything she wanted. “If you want a dozen kids, then you can have a dozen kids.” I didn’t tell her that she might share those dozen kids with a different man though. “You’d be an amazing mom, you know that?”

  Her eyes didn’t get glassy, and she didn’t sniffle at my words. Instead, her smile tipped higher as she nodded. “You’d be amazing too, you know that?”

  I could only answer her with a nod, because if this wheelchair was a permanent thing, the only way for me to be an amazing dad was to not become one in the first place.

  TWO WEEKS. FOURTEEN days. 336 hours. 20,160 minutes. 1,209,600 seconds.

  I’d felt every last one of those seconds, all 1.2 million of them. Before, two weeks in the summer had passed so quickly I’d been afraid to close my eyes for fear of waking up to find the leaves changing colors, but now, trapped in a wheelchair, those minutes and seconds toyed with me, skewing my sense of time and its passing.

  Jesse and Rowen were back in Seattle, taking care of things and packing up stuff to bring back to Montana for the remainder of the summer and into the fall until little Sterling-Walker came into the world. Jesse wanted her to deliver in Seattle, where they could be surrounded by hospitals, but Rowen wanted to have their baby in Montana. She’d assured him that a hospital in Missoula was just as capable of delivering a baby as any one in Seattle. I didn’t know if Jesse bought into his wife’s thinking, but at any rate, h
e was on board with the plan.

  Josie had been busy helping her parents on the ranch. With both of them aging, the chores had become harder and took more time. Mr. Gibson had a few ranch hands to help him, but none of them were as solid in the saddle or knew as much of the job as Josie, so she’d spent plenty of days from dawn to dusk with the guys, working the cattle.

  Which left me alone with Mrs. Gibson or an empty house. At first, Josie had attempted to stay behind to keep me company, though she’d tried not to make it seem obvious—which had only made it that much more so—but after enduring a few long lectures from me about living her life just as she had before or else I would move out, she’d thrown up her hands in surrender.

  Most days, at least a few times each one, I found myself ruing those words when I found myself rolling down the same quiet hallway or checking the same empty living room.

  At one point in my life, I’d thrived on solitude and its blanket of comfort. I’d preferred it over companionship because, from what I’d learned from my parents, companions eventually bailed. Solitude was my protection. Of course, my friendships with Josie and Jesse had shifted that view somewhat, shifting it again when they’d coupled up in high school, and ultimately shifting it for good in the last couple years. I didn’t seek solitude as I once had. I didn’t prefer it to companionship.

  Being in a wheelchair didn’t give me much of an option though.

  Most of my friends were around my age, which meant they worked hard during the days and played hard after. Doing anything “hard” was beyond my functioning level, so even though I’d been invited to several get-togethers and bonfires on the back forty or out to the honkytonks on a Friday night, I’d passed. Mainly because I didn’t want to lessen anyone else’s night by making them feel obligated to hang at my side, but also because the thought of being around a bunch of rough and rowdy Montana kids—when I’d been the roughest and rowdiest not long ago—was just too damn depressing to even think about, let alone actually experience.