sugar in hot water

when she met him two things happened, both confused and indistinguishable from each other-- she felt terribly sorry for him, like there was something lurking inside of him that was so abnormal simple conversation must be terribly trying, and she fell in love with him. she knew she was in love with him because she couldnt remember his name. and even when she did get it right, it took many months for her to be able to say it without preparation.
she remembered being in the kitchen with her roommate, who was generally shirtless, washing a coffee mug when she realized that she was in love with him, and that nothing would feel right until they were together. someone had drunk wine out of the mug the night before and there was a red semicircle around the bottom that she couldnt get at with her sponge. she said, "i think im in love with that guy we met at the pool" and gave up on the stain. her roommate said, "oh. that guy was weird."
she invited him over one night and he liked her music. she said something about a cd and why it was important, something really personal about her family and he nodded and didnt say anything and she thought that meant he got it and he cared.
she knew that she wanted to have sex with him. there was this almost acidic way his room smelled and she loved it. they would lie together on his single bed and listen to sad songs sung by sad men and she thought, "this is love. this is my heart soaring."
she wrote him a poem but he didnt want to read it in front of her. she asked him later what he thought, because her giving that to him was, for her, a greater sacrifice than the actual words, but he said he wanted to think about it more and talk to her later. she remembered, two years later, about how he never did. and she smiled pleasantly because she had grown so much since that moment when she believed him so entirely, so rawly.
he didnt want to have sex with her. he said that having sex was being married, so he wasnt waiting to be married before he had sex, but when he did have sex, it would mean that that was it- he was in it for life. she respected it, she believed it was true and that it would last. and after awhile it became invisible. it was a seam running between the two of them, holding it all together but keeping them separate.

once her period was late. it didnt come at all one month, and then it didnt come at all the next. and she thought she would wait for the third month before she said anything, because, after all, the fear was an impossibility. but she kept thinking of the woman who was so fat her water broke and she had never noticed that she was pregant. and though she wasnt fat, she knew these things could happen. and she kept imaging what the child would look like, what stories he or she would go on to tell about this conception that seemed biologically impossible.
so she told him. in the middle of the night one wednesday they got in her car, her car that she let him use sometimes, and drove around to gas stations trying to find a pregnancy test. hardly anything was open and the ones that were barely had snickers, let alone EPTs. she would pull up and he would get out, sometimes opening the car door before she had fully stopped, walking up to the attendant with both hands in his pockets. she bent down and watched the exchange though she couldnt hear them talking, and she wondered about the people working there, and if they would think of the two kids in the tiny car, right after they pulled away or ever. sometimes she would try to catch the attendant's eye, for the same reason she would catch drivers eyes as she rode in the back of her dad's burgandy buick on highway 280 after a soccer game or a cocktail party that her parents friends wanted her to come to. so that there would be some thread connecting her to a pattern, so that there would be some web that existed other than the one in her mind. so that she could at least pretend that someone else was haunted by faces and embryonic stories that would never unfold, that would never be wide enough to be shared with her.
they finally found a rite aid that was open 24 hours. she asked him to go in and buy it, and he did, with her money, and she thought this is real. this is chivalry. ill remember this, this will be a prototype for the rest of my life. and again, two years later, she ached with growing pains when thinking of her thoughts.
they took the test in the white plastic sack back to his room. they sat on opposite arms of the couch in his living room before she went into the bathroom to pee on a stick. it was dramatic. so dramatic that she wanted to laugh, that it actually was fun. they talked about what would happen either way, but in loose baggy terms because they essentially completely disagreed about what they would do if she was. they talked a little bit about how beautiful their child would be, because thats one thing that made the whole situation feel cinematic and lasting- the romance of this immaculate conception. like their child would have to be as holy as the circumstances surrounding its birth.
she went into the bathroom and peed on the stick. there were two more tests in the packet and that was funny to her- if it came out negative would they really believe it? would they have to try it twice more before the strange idea of it disentegrated in front of them like sugar in hot water?
she waited by herself in the bathroom. she knew she wasnt pregnant. her bones knew that the fear of having a child growing inside of her, attached to her, felt different than this did. years later, when she had had sex and had had reason to be terrified, her bones knew the fear. but then, the brand of his face wash was interesting to her, so much so that she forgot about the two minutes. she looked down at the strip and it was one green line. she looked at the back of the box. one green line= not pregnant. two green lines= pregnant. well, she thought. thats that.
she walked into the living room, where he was still on the arm of the couch listening to sad songs sung by sad men. he was thinking then that he encompassed these sad men and their pathetic longing. he was drowning in the self-pity, in the art of the moment. he knew she wasnt pregnant. he just wanted to do this, as an excersize almost. he wanted to see what shape he would take if placed in this situation. he really liked what he found- he could see himself driving an old toyota truck across the country one day, a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his chapped mouth, thinking of the moment she emerged from the bathroom with an answer as the masculine american landscape framed his profile.

"i'm not pregnant. ok?"

"oh. ok."

"are you sad?"

"sad? yeah. a little. i dont know why."

"maybe its the music."

"the sadness came first."

she thought for a minute about how eerie that sounded.

"alot of things that should have come first havent."

he didnt say anything after that. they lied together in his bed and listened to music, the music of men who were sad.