Becoming

Kassie Foster

This would be the last time they would ever be alone, together, in this car. Sure, they would drive to other places in the future, just the two of them. But the presence of their new other—a car seat, stale Cheerios, enigmatic stickiness, worry—would be a constant third wheel. “I’m scared,” she whispers, smashing his fingers in her fist with each bout of pain from her swollen stomach. “We shouldn’t have done this. Can we go back?”

“Physically and metaphorically, no,” he replies gently. “We should’ve thought of that a long time ago. But we’ll figure it out.”

She hates that phrase, we’ll figure it out. It’s a mantra for people who have no real plan. If her insides weren’t threatening to tear her in two, she might have offered her usual rant about the uselessness of such a statement in desperate situations. Instead, she panics. “This is different now, we’ll never be us again, we’ll always be us.” She gesticulates wildly into the ether, and most furiously toward the back seat. “This is dying, we are dying, I am dying!” She is sobbing now, watching Baltimore fly by her passenger-side window and thinking of all the places she never went to, whether she ever wanted to go to them, or not.

“We are being very dramatic,” he says, eliciting a dagger stare from the frantic right side of the car. “And we are breathing.” She takes a few deep breaths, but only out of the need to soothe the searing pain in her core, not because he suggested breathing. “Things will change, we will change, but we will—”

“DO. NOT. SAY. IT,” she huffs between winces.

“I’m scared, too, and I know you don’t want to hear that right now.” She nods emphatically. He continues, “And I know I’m not saying the right thing.” He pauses, and she waits silently while he searches for better words. “I’m going to screw up a lot, we both are, but it’s going to be OK. And if it’s not OK sometimes, that’s OK, too. For now, this.” He presses play on his phone, and a voice singing “Don’t you want to get it out?” launches from the car speakers. How long has he had this cued up? She laughs so hard, she cries again and very nearly pees herself. When the music ends she grabs his hand gently, trying to be OK with not being OK.