Aphasiac

April 29, 2006.
A perfect spring day.
The fog was so thick that he felt blinded. Lost.

It had reached the few remaining pills beneath the vanity now. It being blood. Still warm. Already dead seven minutes. Thick and red. The air smelled like death. Like victory to the girl lying against the tiles, her naked stomach deeply inscribed upon with the blade of a kitchen knife. The pills were beginning to dissolve. Her slender arms were flung pointlessly above her head, palms up, reaching for the knife. It lay about a foot from her outstretched fingers. Just beyond her reach. There would be no more death tonight. It had sliced her stomach before she had collapsed. It had sliced her stomach deep enough to kill both she and the child she carried. A cold and brutal and intimate work of art.

He had no thoughts when he found her. Three years earlier he might have vomited or wept, today he only stepped over her body to turn off the tap. He greeted her, got no reply and didn't care. Size eleven, Oxford dress shoes traced a bloody trail to his office where the police found and arrested him minutes later.

April 29, 2006.
A perfect spring day.
The sun was shinning brightly.
The only fog was within his mind. He had misplaced himself. 




Part I

there are angels in the flowers I saw heaven in their eyes
-”In Our Heads”

CHAPTER ONE

Nelson Residence
Crestwater Court
West Columbia, South Carolina
October 29, 1996

The room was spotless. The linoleum was practically sparkling. It was what she did to fill her time in the day. Clean the house. Every day the same as if she liked the routine. She didn't. Everything seemed to have its place in her world. Everything except herself. She felt very far away from any place of belonging.
She stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She looked thin. Her eyes sunken, almost disappearing into the shadows of her face. Her skin was pale and pasty. Her slim fingers drummed against the stark whiteness of the vanity. The tap was dripping. David was supposed to fix that weeks ago. Drops like thunder. A kind of mockery that made her want to scream.
She watched as the second hand crawled along its course on that gold watch her mother had given her on her twentieth birthday. Too big for her slender wrist. Too gold against the white countertop. One minute. It was counting. Fifty-eight. Regimented. Fifty-seven. Like a soldier. Fifty-six. One minute and she'd know. Fifty-five. One minute. Fifty-four. It was so many hours away.

Paula and David Nelson had been trying to have a baby for almost two years. Their friends said it was probably because she'd been on the pill for so long. A specialist had recommended fertility drugs but, together, they had decided against it. They didn't want to risk the potential difficulties of multiple births or mutations.
She stood there against the sink, arms tense, veins straining at her brow, breathing deep and deliberate breathes to maintain some measure of control over her emotions. Her inner struggle was obvious. This was it. This was the last time. It had to be. She couldn’t keep hating herself each time she got her period. She couldn’t keep trying to stifle the sinking feelings of inadequacy she lived with daily. She couldn’t keep popping all those anti-depressants her shrink had prescribed. She just couldn’t. She couldn’t survive any more of it and she wasn’t sure her marriage could either. David had brought home a lot of literature about adoption. Let a child grow in your heart rather than under it. They said it was just as easy to love a child from another woman’s womb as from your own. There were many beautiful stories and testimonials meant to bring the reader to tears. A loving option. It always seemed like propaganda to her. A pro-lifer’s way of promotion. But that’s where they would turn if they had to. She would be a mother and she would know how in one minute.
Paula brushed a piece of hair off her face that had fallen out of her dark ponytail. Twenty-seven, still looking like a high-school student. She was tiny, standing no more than five-three and at one-hundred-and-fifteen pounds she was the envy of her friends.
She frowned at her face, void of make-up. She looked exhausted. Small, dark bags had formed underneath her eyes. Her usually bright face was pale. She had woken at five a.m. to vomit in the toilet. Again. David had been strongly against Paula going to get the test. He said it was too early to tell. She would only be setting herself up for more disappointment. Paula didn't care. She bought the test.
She picked the box out of the garbage and stared at the smiling baby on the front. She let her fingers trace the delicate outline of his innocence. His beauty. For a moment she almost believed he was hers. Her own to love and hold. Forever. He wasn't. She felt a bit of hatred for the woman he would call mommy one day.
She had found the test at the back of the drug store on a shelf near the ovulation testing kits. The beautiful infant had smiled at her from the pink box. $9.99. A bit farther down the aisle, near the condoms, she found another test. This package featured no smiling baby, just brick red lettering against a mauve background. $6.99. Both were products of San Diego-based Quidel Corporation and the contents were identical except for the packaging. Paula bought the $9.99 one. She was buying hope.
Her watch beeped, interrupting a collage of thoughts. Her minute was up. She looked at the results and began to cry.


Liberty Builders
Hampton Parkway,
Columbia, South Carolina

David slammed his briefcase onto the desk. A few papers that had been carelessly forgotten blew off and fell to the floor. He ignored them. Someone else would take the time to pick them up. Not him. He was no janitor. Maybe his secretary would take care of it. He sighed audibly, the noise lost in the large room with its potted trees and expensive throw cushions dotting the leather sofa. He was frustrated. As an executive of a prominent building company he had enough problems at work without the added stress of a depressed wife who spent her days mourning her inadequacies as a woman.
He slumped into his chair, his eyes going to a recent picture of himself and Paula. He picked it up and touched the glass in front of his wife’s face. Beautiful Paula. The love of his life. The argument from earlier was still fresh in his mind. He'd had his heart broken too many times, having to watch Paula walk around the house in tears every month. It wasn't fair but life never was. He had learned to accept things as they were. Why couldn't she? Why couldn't she just be happy with the two of them? Many other couples had learned to enjoy life without children of their own. Surely they could too.
David hated all those tears. He hated Paula's depression. He hated the way it made him feel. As if he was only half a man. He felt like it was his fault she couldn't get pregnant. Like he was to blame but he knew he wasn't. The doctor had done tests. He was very capable.
This morning had been different. Paula did have a very regular cycle and she was almost a month late and she did vomit, but there was no way. It could be stress. It could be the depression that was slowly eating away at her health. It could be her medication. She wanted the test. She said she had to know. David said it would be a waste of money. He knew it and he knew that she knew it but Paula was stubborn.
He sighed and set the picture back in its place. In time Paula would learn to deal with it. This he believed. It was the only way he knew how to cope with those incessant days of crying. Days that seemed to come closer and closer together. It wasn't like her biological clock was running out. She was only twenty-seven.
The phone rang. His day had begun. David snatched it off its cradle. “Yeah,” he barked into the receiver. He was impatient and didn't want to deal with anything right then. He thought he shouldn't have to. Not with all that was beating through his head at that moment.
“Hey, Dave, it's Sam from stock.” The old man’s voice scratched against David’s ear thanks to years of smoking foul smelling cigarettes.
“You're getting an early start on your complaining aren't you, Sam?” David was glad it was Sam. If it had to be anyone, that's who he'd pick. Good old Sam. David liked to tease the old man. A long-time employee. A dependable old coot. He could picture him leaning against that dust on the wall, picking his few remaining teeth with some sliver of wood he had picked up off the floor. He didn’t have much of a mind for sanitation but he brought a sense of comic relief to the hectic schedule each day brought.
Sam hawked back a big one and David could hear the splat as his spittle landed on the concrete floor. “Nah,” Sam said in answer to David’s question, “just calling to say good morning and to let you know we've got a bit of a problem.” Sam sniffed into the receiver. It sounded like a snort in David's ear.
Of course there was a problem. There was always a problem. “Well, good morning, what is it?” Of course David was expected to make it all go away. Make things good again. Clean up the mess.
“When's the next shipment coming in?” Sam asked.
“Thursday,” David replied.
“What's today?”
“Tuesday.”
Sam whistled. “You know the Jerry-Lee project we got going? That's taking almost everything we got down here. Jeremy ain't too happy. He's in charge of that new one: the department store downtown and we've got no where close to enough stuff to keep up both 'til Thursday.”
“Uh-huh, is that all?” David asked.
“Well, yeah, but can you do something?”
David sighed. “Tell Jeremy to let the store sit until Friday and get caught up on his paperwork. He's way behind”
“Oh, Dave, I don't know,” Sam said. “Jeremy'll be rippin'.”
“If he has a problem with it tell him to come and see me about it.” David hung up and leaned back in his chair, waiting for Jeremy to come storming through his door. He was there in less than two minutes.
Jeremy's face was red and his breath came in short gasps. He was angry. “If you think you can just put my project on the back burner while the other guys get all the credit you'd better think again! You have no right...”
“I have every right,” David interrupted. He stood. Though not a tall man he appeared strong and in control. “You seem to forget who's in charge of this operation.”
“You don't have to rub my face into it. You were promoted. I wasn't.” Jeremy seemed to loose some of the fight in his eyes. He wiped his nose on a shirtsleeve.
“Jeremy, we used to be friends,” David said. “What happened to that?”
Jeremy made a wide sweep of the office with his hands, taking in all that should have been his: leather furniture, a desk, a computer, a couch, a personal coffee maker, a big screen television, a beautiful view through a wall of glass. “This is what happened to it. All of this. You're better than me now. You're bigger.” Jeremy’s eyes flashed with jealousy.
“I'm still the same person, Jeremy,” David said. “I didn't fight you for this position, it was fair and you can't do anything but listen to me. I'm sorry I have to put the Jerry-Lee project before yours but it's worth an awful lot more money than any department store. You're a reasonable man and you know you're working on a flexible contract. This Jerry-Lee thing is straight and narrow. I want to see your paperwork caught up and on my desk by Thursday morning.”
David sat, turned on his computer and entered his password. The hum of the machine signaled the end of the conversation. He didn't have the time to waste arguing about petty issues that made no difference in the big scheme of things.
Jeremy stopped in the doorway. He didn't turn around to speak. “I used to have so much respect for you, Dave, but now you're nothing to me. I hope you know that.”
David glanced up. “Jeremy, I'm your friend,” he said as if that old fact would bring things back together again.
Jeremy slammed the door. The painting on the wall beside it rattled on its nail.
David let his head drop into his hands. The control and composure that had seemed so evident moments before slipped away. He raked shaking fingers through his hair. He knew Jeremy would do his paper work and probably call him in a week to play cards but the words still stung. Wearily he rubbed his temples as he tried to focus on the numbers filling the screen. Reluctantly he began the day’s work.
After an eternal five minutes of staring at the computer, doing nothing with all the data crowding it, he pushed back his chair. No use pushing himself to work if he couldn't concentrate. He filled a mug from the coffee maker his secretary diligently turned on every morning. It was steaming hot. He added one cream and three sugars, took a sip, made a face, and added more sugar. He liked things sweet.
Just as he sat down the phone rang again.
“David?” It was more bad news. Paula was crying. An 'I told you so' formed on his tongue but he held it back. Why make things worse than they already were?
“Are you okay?” he asked, knowing she wasn’t. He just figured it was the polite thing to do. Show concern. Pretend he didn't warn her against the test. Play the part of the sensitive husband.
“David!” Her voice was stronger this time but she was crying so much that she couldn't talk.
“Maybe we should look into fertility drugs again,” he said. “They may have some new stuff that's safer than when we last checked. I can stop by the doctors tonight and pick up some new pamphlets.”
“No,” Paula choked, coughed, then David could hear her blowing her nose. “David, I'm pregnant, we're going to have a baby.” She didn't say anything else.
David didn't know what to say. “You're sure? You did everything right?”
Paula started laughing. Laughing and crying all at once.


Nelson Residence

Paula was in a place she'd never been before. She didn't know what to do with all these feelings. This new joy. This elation. She felt sixteen again. She felt renewed. She had almost forgotten the depression that had weighed so heavy on her narrow shoulders only an hour before.
She lifted her T-shirt and stared, as if she could see through her skin, to the wonder that was, even now, growing there. She rubbed a hand over her stomach, thinking she could send some form of an embrace to the unborn child she carried. She glanced in the hall mirror, surprised at the gleam in her suddenly not so sullen eyes. Her stomach was flat and firm. She caught her reflection grinning, finding some delight in knowing that the world was oblivious to the miracle she now held in her womb. Give them a few months and she'd be able to knock them over with a little bump from that belly. She'd be a whale of a little woman.
She couldn't wait.

The scent of lemon cleaner filled David's nostrils when he arrived home that night. He found Paula up to her neck in bubbles in the claw foot tub he had painstakingly removed from his grandmother’s house, refinished and installed in their newly renovated bathroom. Music played quietly from the CD player and candles lined the windowsill, giving the room a glowing ambiance of romance. “Got room for one more?” he asked over the jazzy drone of Harry Connick Jr.
Paula opened her eyes and smiled at her husband. She was radiant. There was not a trace of the depressed woman he had kissed goodbye that morning. This was the Paula he had fallen in love with. Her face was slightly flushed from the warm bath water and some of her hair had fallen from the clip on top of her head and now curled damply around her neck and collarbone. “I didn’t hear you come in,” she said.
“Too involved with Harry?” David teased, pulling his shirt off and letting it fall in a crumpled heap beside his wife’s bathrobe.
“I guess. He’s very relaxing. I was almost asleep.” She moved forward in the tub so David could slip in behind her. “It’s been a long time since I’ve just relaxed,” she said.
“I know, honey. It’s definitely time.” He kissed her head as she leaned back against his chest.
“I can’t remember that last time we did this,” she said into the steam rising around them.
“Neither can I,” David replied.
“Doesn’t that make you sad?” she asked.
“This had been a sad house for a very long time,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Paula said softly.
“So am I.”
Paula leaned forward and David took a cloth and started washing her back. “Have you made an appointment with the doctor yet?” he asked. “You should have a real test done just to be sure.”
“I’ll call tomorrow.” She shivered as the cloth tickled her side slightly. David was so gentle. She had forgotten how tender he could be. All the passion seemed to get lost when the focus was on getting pregnant and not simply enjoying each other. She turned and took the cloth from his fingers then straddled a leg on either side of him so he could pull her close. She breathed in his scent. Funny how she had gone so long without noticing it.
He cupped her face. “You are going to be a beautiful mother, Paula Nelson.”
When he kissed her it felt like the first time again. Exciting, terrifying and passionate. Paula gave herself over to him completely, melting in his strong embrace, vowing to herself that she could never let anything come between them again.