End of the Beginning

They buried their boy in a shallow ditch at the foot of a white cherry. The August sun heaved its warm sigh over the breeze. Lilac aster threaded through virginia creepers coiling around the tree. The ridges of its bark were thick with algae, and its white petals drifted to the ground. The tree stood aglow, bathed in a brilliance that spilled onto its surroundings. The woman gave her prayer and the man offered his own. Then the couple sat together in silence on the grass.

Six weeks earlier, she had barricaded herself in his closet, preparing to swallow a bottle of pills. The door was held fast by a heavy safe braced against her extended leg, as she sprawled on black donation bags of unwanted clothes. Through the window she watched the blue sky melt into mauve horizon. For fear and lack of water, she took her tablets slowly, one by one like olives. All the man could muster to console her were sterile platitudes. Desperate, he phoned a crisis team and made it known they were on their way.

“I can call them off whenever you want. But you’ve got to come out and talk.”

The woman beaded sweat and pressed her ear up to the door. The man paced from wall to wall, breathing hard and ruffling his hair. She timed her moment, then sped through the house and down the street. The man chased her, but she cried out to two nearby police officers watching over construction. “He won’t stop following me,” she told them. He froze, and then said to the officers slowly: “She’s not in her right mind.” The burly cops noticed the woman’s wild dilation and unkempt hair. They turned into the woman, one on each side and their truck against her back. They squinted against the sun and questioned her, hands tucked through their vest straps. When she tried to continue down the road they blocked the way. She shoved one. He grabbed onto her arm and detained her. An ambulance arrived. Officers and EMTs lifted her onto a stretcher. She gnashed and sobbed out a curse at them all as the ambulance doors locked shut and the vehicle rolled off around a corner. A cop informed the man—

“They’re taking her to McLean.”

Days dragged by in that asylum cell, where facemasked staff spoke in terse tones and issued pills. She swallowed them and stared at the walls and ceiling. Through her doorglass, disturbed patients peered and muttered.

The man stayed with relatives like a refugee. Spent his days running miles through the woods until his chest burned and his legs cramped, but he trotted on till dark. On his treks he passed pokeweeds lush with toxic berries shimmering in dew. He passed splintered oaks dipping their limbs in the river where green leaves breached the surface and sprouted. He clung to an image of his lover getting help, while she lay in her cell unmoored from time, drifting further from the world.

The day she was released, he parked in the alley outside her redbrick ward. He cleared off the seat, practiced his lines, and fidgeted with his phone. When she came out, escorted, he gave her a tender hug and asked how she was. She was quiet. He had expected her to lash out, but instead she nestled into him like a weary doe. As they rode away, he expressed his decision to break things off. But in protest, she told him she needed him, loved him. He gripped the wheel hard and tightened his lips, eyes fixed on the road. She begged him, quavering—

“Please… don’t be like this.”

He pulled the car over and paced down the sidewalk. She followed, arms outstretched for embrace, but he held up his palm and signaled her back. They argued in circles then returned to the car. He stared straight ahead and demanded: “Be quiet.” They drove into town while she tried to reach him, her face streaked with tears and mucus. He panicked, pulled over again, and stormed off like a toddler in tantrum. She chased him down. When she caught up and he turned, his face was flushed and wet. He collapsed into her and she into him, and they stood there like that for a while.

Back in his bed, they tangled together and clung to each other till dawn. Soon after, she fell ill, and two piss tests confirmed what they already knew—she was pregnant. As she glared at the lines on the test he scanned her eyes closely, massaging her neck with his hand. He felt in his soul that wherever she cast her decision he’d follow. A second went by. Then she laughed: “Obviously we can’t keep it.” He cracked a quick smirk then his face went blank. Another moment passed.

“Ok.”

She scheduled the appointment. He drove her to a clinic. He cared for her while she lay fevered and hurting, bringing her soup and a vomitbag. She passed the embryo into the toilet. Without flushing, she glanced down at the bloody bowl, at the one-inch infant curled in eternal rest. She called in the man to see what they’d done, teased out a giggle, then trembled and wept in his chest as he clutched her and invoked his grandmother’s God.

He scrubbed the bathroom and made her lemon tea. Then they buried their seed at a yoshino cherry off a trail they would walk on when spring was in bloom. Robins and crickets sang a late summer hymn. A train passed nearby behind a row of firs—a train the man took to the city sometimes. He imagined how he’d look on from there in remembrance. Then he brushed aside petals and dug out a mound with a stick and then swaddled his baby in dirt. They planted him naked, unboxed, to dissolve into earth. Some ritual words and minutes of silence, then they finished their service and moved along.

She went on to honor her goals, far away in a different place. He stamped out his own with stoic ideals which he branded maturity. But beneath the veneer, as time took its tax, they grew jaded and wise with solace at least that no child of theirs meanders this world to suffer as they do.