Rat Tail
They were thoroughly wrung out but the bleeding was slowing, so they decided to meet up with Cathy Gallagher for lunch. Cathy used to run the laundry room where they worked summers in high school. During those years she wore different Zubaz every day with a baggy t-shirt over a sports bra that pressed her breasts into a single line and she kept her peppery hair short except for a mid-back-length rat tail, and her default expression was thoughtful bulldog. She always had a bear-like pair of high-top white sneakers on and a medium-weight gold chain snaked around her neck and under her shirt. She could fold a couple hundred t-shirts per hour and she taught them how to fold a fitted sheet. They had assumed that maybe she liked women but she was just of a specific Long Island background, and she talked about liking it when her husband pulled her hair, which made them feel kind of ill when they were 15 but now amused them when they remembered it. They liked to meet up with Cathy a couple-few times a year to make declarations and drink chain restaurant cocktails.
“Aw babe, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were going through all that,” she said. “I didn’t know. My oldest, she had to go through all that IVF stuff at the clinic, but she didn’t end up going through all that, like, Gibraltar stuff.”
“Did she get pregnant?”
“Yeah, but not by the clinic. She screwed a guy at work and that was that,” she honked. “Her guy never found out but they broke up later over other stuff. He pays child support. But anyway.”
They were bereft of a response, which happened often but never deterred Cathy Gallagher. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re back now. You want a daiquiri or I don’t know, what is that blue drink they have here?”
“A Curaçao?”
“Yeah that, you want one?”
“Nah thanks, I can’t with the meds I’m on. I’ll have a Diet Coke.”
“Ok, well then I’ll get a gin tonic and it’ll look like a Sprite.” Cathy ordered the drinks and a basket of something fried that left grease stains on the paper liner of the basket it came in.
“So what’s the real story?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you want to have a baby or nah?”
They paused. The soda tasted like rain in the desert, they had no idea how it was done.
“Well after we were well, taken to Gibraltar,”
“Kidnapped?”
“Yeah. After that I was afraid and I told them no, I for sure wouldn’t have any kids, so they should let us go back home, and they did.”
“But?”
“I don’t know. I went to the doctor and they said my follicles were now normal all the sudden and I could probably get pregnant no problem.”
“No way, what?”
“So I’ve been thinking maybe?”
“What does John think?”
“John?”
“I mean, Jason, sorry.”
“I didn’t tell him what the doctor said. He was definitely more into having a baby than I was before and that was why we went for treatment in the first place, but since we’ve been back he’s been spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to sue the fertility clinic, and like, he found this film on YouTube?”
“Oh no, we’re going down that road,” she hooted.
“No, not like that, it was this film they wanted to show us on Gibraltar. The fertility clinic people, I mean, the people who were trying to get us to not have a baby. This is confusing, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, what about YouTube again?”
“This movie that was supposed to persuade us not to have a kid.”
“What was in it?”
“The clinic people acted like they had all these shocking revelations or something but it was all stuff that’s been on the news. I knew about it. It’s not that I didn’t think about it, you know, global warming and more fires and all that. But it wasn’t like, any worse than I thought already.”
“So you’re thinking of having a baby then.”
They looked miserable. “I’m not sure.”
