Short Story

I wrote this short story for my creative writing class. I dunno what made me think of it...lol. And...after hearing my peer's thoughts, I want to take it further, expand on it, sooooo...we shall see! (I was obviously limited since it's a short story assignment. but i'm content with how it turned out, everyone read it the way i wanted and the questions they had left would be answered in a novel)

(The title i had i dislike...so...lol...for now...Untitled)


Her hands pressed uncertainly against her swollen belly. Her breath was coming in short, labored gasps. A stray tear made its way down her cheek and the saltiness burned her sensitive lips. Denise turned her gaze back to her husband, Mark. Her husband of 16 years; 16 difficult, childless years. The baby kicked her hands from inside, adding to her inward pain. Mark watched her closely, almost wondering if she was in labor, but knowing that this was quite different.
She turned to him slowly, her eyes searching his desperately for answers. “You lost your job?” He nodded. She dug her nails into the fabric of her shirt, angry with his curt reply. “So what are you going to do?”
He shrugged, but noting the fire in her eyes he said, “I suppose I’ll have to start looking for a new one.”
“You SUPPOSE?” She laughed bitterly. “Mark, this baby could come any day now, and we still don’t have a crib or anything!”
“I have to pay the rent before I buy a crib.”
“Which is why you need a job. You can’t go about this casually, we need money.”
“I don’t see you working,” he snapped back at her.
“I’m sick.”
“You’re pregnant.”
“And before that?” Mark grimaced. She knew he blamed himself for everything that had happened in their lives, and now he had gotten her pregnant when she was already at her weakest. Her hands started to shake now, and her head pounded to the beat of foreign drums. She got up awkwardly from the couch.
“Where are you going?” Mark demanded; as if he hadn’t been the one avoiding conversation before.
“I need Advil,” she muttered as she made her way to the tiny kitchen. Opening the medicine cabinet, her eyes fell instinctively to the dusty baby bottles in the corner. How long had they been sitting there, waiting for a baby to come? Ten years? More? Denise had lost track of the years it had been since her first failed pregnancy, it was just as well. She couldn’t live every day thinking of how old her non-existent children would be. After the first failure, Mark and she had still been confident that they could build the family they had always dreamed of. But the second was much harder. Denise recalled the pain of those days when she lost her babies as she downed the painkillers. One, the first baby hadn’t made it past a week. Two, their second barely made it to three months. The new baby kicked again, repeatedly, as if it disliked its mother’s painful memories. She smoothed her hands over her belly. It’ll be different this time, she told herself. She knew the statistics were not in her favor, but she had to hope.
Denise and Mark did not say anything to one another the rest of the night, instead sitting stiffly on opposite ends of the couch, mindlessly watching the evening news. As Denise curled up in their bed that night, she felt Mark roll over and run his hand along her side, and around her protruding stomach. The intimacy of the act startled her. He had done this with the first two pregnancies, but for 8 months he had not shown affection for this new baby. She put her hand on top of his, and they both jumped when the baby kicked. Denise rolled over to her other side and looked at her husband’s face. She smiled, feeling that finally he too was going to believe that this would work.
“Deni,” her heart swelled further at the old pet name. He propped himself up on an elbow and looked at her. His eyebrows were pulled into a sharp v over his eyes, contradicting her good feelings. “I just don’t think we should get our hopes up again.”
Denise didn’t know what to think. Her eyes welled up again with tears, and her hands clenched into angry fists. Mark watched as her face grew redder and redder as she held her breath, waiting for her hormones to calm down. Slowly, she exhaled, and rose from the bed in a trance. Mark sat up and watched her move about the room, aimlessly touching things, looking at random objects like the lamp with sympathy.
“Deni-”
“Don’t Mark,” she interrupted, startling him as she came out of her daze. She looked weary as she stood before him at the foot of the bed, her extra, extra, extra large t-shirt covering her to just above her knees, her brown hair in limp ringlets stuck to her sweaty face. Her eyes were wild as her mind raced through a book full of things she wanted to say to him right then. But what good would it do? After sixteen years of marriage, they might as well have been strangers. They had tried to keep their marriage together despite the hardships, the loss of the babies, but that didn’t mean they had had a good marriage. Now Denise felt, as she looked into the eyes of her husband, that she hardly knew the man before her, let alone the woman she had become.
“I have to go,” she said suddenly, surprising them both. But she knew it was true. It was time she left. Her mother’s words echoed back to her, “You need a more supportive environment. You come here whenever Mark gets to be too much for you!” She moved with purpose now, gathering a minimal amount of clothes and necessities into a small duffel bag, and changing into street clothes for the short journey.
“Don’t do this, you’re overreacting,” Mark said from his spot on the bed.
“I’m not playing around Mark,” Denise turned to him, her sickly pale face set in determination. “All you’ve done these last eight months is feel sorry for yourself for getting me pregnant, and make me feel guilty for suffering in your presence.” She could see that her words were cutting too close, but it was time she said something, and hurting him felt good. “We’ve held on to this marriage long enough. We can’t force ourselves to make it work.” The weight of what she was saying hit her too, and once more she felt herself giving in to her emotions. Between tears she whispered, “I’m sorry Mark,” and walked out of the apartment without a second thought.

“I’m so glad you came dear,” her mother said the next morning, setting a steaming cup of coffee before her. Denise smiled sheepishly. Her arrival the night before had been very unexpected, and after having cried to her mother for a few hours, and then getting some much needed rest, she felt as if it were time she went back to Mark. Her mother pulled back a chair and joined her at the small breakfast table. The window across from the table looked out on a tidy garden with blooming flowers and buzzing bees, the kind of garden Denise had dreamed of planting with her own children some day. Her far-off look did not escape her mother’s all-knowing eye.
“It’s never too late, baby,” she reached across the smooth oak surface and stroked her daughter’s hand lovingly. “I had given up hope of ever having children by the time I was pregnant with you.” Denise stared back at her mother.
“It’s not the same,” she whispered. It wasn’t that Denise had given up, it was that she was resigned to the fact that first, as the doctor’s told her and Mark, they should not try to get pregnant again, and then that she would not be able to have more children even if they tried. Her eyes fell to her belly where the baby squirmed in annoyance. Sometimes she swore the fetus was already getting a mind of its own.
“Just because it isn’t the same doesn’t mean I don’t understand, or that your situation is as hopeless as it seems,” her mother smiled lovingly, doing her best to soothe Denise’s long-held wounds.
“I’m too old for this,” Denise gestured to her stomach. Indeed, women having children at her age were often warned of the conditions their children could suffer from. She wasn’t old, but she should have been past the age of child-bearing. “And Mark and I-” she didn’t know how to finish.
“You and Mark have hung on long enough dear,” Denise’s mother leaned back in her chair, the morning light making her grey hair glisten like silver strands across her face. “No one would have blamed you two for getting a divorce before, and no one would blame you now. Plenty of couples fall apart after the loss of a child and you-”
“Have lost two,” she finished the statement she had heard all too often from friends and family. They both admired, and pitied her and Mark’s determination to keep their marriage going after the babies had died. Now that she was pregnant again, they were holding their breath, waiting for the impending divorce.
Her mother’s face hardened for a moment, but softened immediately, she preferred to remain joyful after too many years of pain. “You are always welcome here you know. I could set up a nursery in the quest room and you could sleep in your old room. It’ll be just like your college years, but with a baby.” Her eyes glistened with the prospect of having her only daughter living at home again.
Denise shook her head. “What if the baby doesn’t make it?” A bit of Mark’s pessimism had found its way into her. She was weary with hoping, and found herself sinking into a lonely pit of helplessness.
“Denise Nicole, if you ever let that’s man’s thoughts bring you down,” her mother muttered something under her breath and rose from the table, shuffling off to the kitchen to wash something. Denise’s eyes followed her mother out of the room, and her gaze hung on the empty doorway long after she had passed through. She knew her mother had never approved of her marriage to Mark. Of all people, she had been the one the most supportive of the idea of a divorce. But Denise had never let that thought cross her mind, until now. She sat alone at the small table, her coffee getting cold before her, the baby still inside her, and thought of how she had tried to make their relationship work, and how she must have failed. Were they really happy? And if this baby died too, would life continue on the same way, would they be able to keep picking up the pieces, hiding their brokenness from one another? A squirm from inside her, and she thought of another possibility; what if the baby did live? What if they started a family now? Could Mark pull himself together and get a job? Would they suddenly be the happy family they dreamed of being? Or would it be too hard for them at their age to run after a little one, to deal with the pressures of parenthood as they approached middle-age? Denise couldn’t imagine having to move in with her mother after all these years.
She fingered her wedding band mindlessly, trying to remember the last intimate moment she and Mark had shared. Since she found out she was pregnant this time, she couldn’t remember feeling close to Mark even once. He had been cold and distant, more so than she was accustomed to. No doubt, the fear of another failed pregnancy had taken its toll on him too, and his reaction to it was to close himself off from her, to distance himself from this thing that may not be. But Denise could not distance herself from the situation as he could. This baby was as much a part of her as the other two had been, and her maternal instinct told her to hold on to the hope that things would work out this time.
Denise wandered into the kitchen, where her mother was finishing scrubbing dishes, her mood very much alleviated. Denise leaned against the counters and watched her mother’s hands busy at work. Her hands were lined and withered with age, but Denise could remember a time when those hands were the strongest things that held her and the softest that soothed her. After she met and married Mark, he had been her stronghold, her comfort. They had been there for each other even after the loss of their two children, but the fear of losing a third was tearing them apart day by day. And if the baby didn’t make it? If their marriage didn’t end, any connection and intimacy they had ever had surely would.
“Mom,” Denise turned to look straight into her mother’s eyes. “I need to go home.” Her mother did not return her gaze, but Denise could see her eyes furrow at her words.
She took a deep breath. “I know you think he isn’t being supportive of me, but the truth is, I haven’t been very supportive of him either.” Her mother stopped and turned to her now. “I never even thought that he might be just as afraid as I am. I thought he was just being rude, or selfish, but the truth is, I haven’t been there for him like I should have. I’m his wife, and this is our baby, we can’t abandon each other.”
Denise’s mother laid her hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. “I’m proud of you baby. I don’t know how you and Mark have made it this far, but if you pull together, whatever happens, you’ll make it together.”
Denise smiled, for the time those words rang true. But when she arrived at her and Mark’s apartment, she worried that he might not agree. That would be the only thing that could tear them apart at this point.

----------------------------------------------------
Silence greeted her as she opened the door to the apartment. The lights were on in the living room, so she yelled Mark’s name a few times trying to locate him. “In here!” His voice came from down the hall. Denise paused in the doorway. The only room down that way was the abandoned nursery, and neither of them had been in there for years. Her heart pounded as she walked the few feet to the room. She gasped as she stood in the doorway to the nursery. The window was open and fresh air poured in, ruffling the lacy curtains her mother had made during the first pregnancy. Music played from a radio sitting in a corner, and next to the radio stood a crib. Denise surveyed the room for Mark. He was standing on the other side of the room, a brush and bucket in his hands. He smiled at her stunned expression and turned to the freshly painted wall behind him. “You wanted it in green, right?”
“Mark, I’m so sorry. I never-” but he didn’t give her a chance to finish. He laid down his bucket and brush, wiped his hands, gathered her in his arms, and silenced her with a kiss.