From one
spring’s end to the end of that which follows it is the measure of their common
grace to be afforded the seasons together only once, so to share one birthday
each, one Christmas, New Year, and Valentine’s Day, this latter coincident with
the cusp of her final trimester where each sequential minute of her sleeping is
hard-won, dependent upon the relaxing qualities of a late bath and the
subsequent application of cooling salve to quiet the cramp grinding in her
calves.
Even
between the sheets, her supplement bulk supported by an assortment of pillows,
she must actively convince herself that the pressure on her bladder is the
simple weight of her womb’s fullness and not its own capacity to be emptied.
Reluctant to surrender any comfort knowing too well the effort of its recoup,
she resigns herself to the possibility of wetting the bedclothes if necessary
over the endeavour of her extrication.
At
her back and behind the buffer pillow, Brother Skunk now wakes into remembering
the new day’s significance. The better to retrieve from beneath the bed his
handmade card, a little black and white photograph upon whose reverse he has
inscribed his heartfelt devotion to her, he turns himself round and over at
which movement she is awake again, awake now with an incredulous exasperation
at having slept such little elapse of the visible clock. She takes her breath
through clamped teeth and shakes her head with a disdain to which Skunk is
oblivious, he tapping her shoulder with the envelope and
Skunk:
How’s the most beautiful woman in the world this morning?
He
feels her weight shift awkward upon the bed as she reaches out to the
nightstand, and before he can comprehend himself to be hearing the crescendo of
the approaching telephone’s dial tone feels the cold hard clunk of its plastic
upon his face, her accompanying response monosyllabic, each word of it blunt
and thick with the tonelessness of absolute exhaustion,
ache1:
Why don’t you call her and ask?
