Green Leaves
an excerpt

She cradled the phone on her shoulder while she flipped through the envelopes and ordered a large ham and pineapple pizza. It was Marc’s favorite, and she thought it would be a nice treat. As she was leafing through the junk mail she came to a small pink envelope. Alyssia held that on top of the stack until she was done with the phone call and had hung up. She turned it over; there was no return address, only a label with her name on it. Home printed by the looks of it. She set down the rest of the pile of junk mail and slipped her finger under the flap to open the envelope. A small card lay inside, and she pulled it out. On the front was a baby carriage, and underneath the words, “You’re Invited!” in flowy pink script. She opened the card curiously, and her mouth dropped open. It was a baby shower invitation from an acquaintance of hers, Jeanne. They knew each other from one of Alyssia’s former jobs, Jeanne had come into the yarn shop to pick up a present for her mother about 4 months ago, and that was the last time Alyssia had seen her. The card Alyssia was holding in her hand was an invitation to a baby shower. Alyssia and Jeanne had discussed trying to get pregnant when she had stopped by the shop. Jeanne had just started trying that month, she had told Alyssia. It looked as though they had succeeded. Rather quickly from the looks of things.
Alyssia slumped down with her back against the wall. Jeanne had not known anything about getting pregnant other than having sex a lot. She didn’t know about charting, or temperatures or cervical fluid. She sure as hell didn’t know about an ovulation predictor kit. And yet, she was pregnant, and Alyssia was not. Again. Jeanne also smoked like a chimney, and had a rather pronounced addiction to Doritos. Healthy is not a word that would ever be used to describe Jeanne. But, she was pregnant and Alyssia was not.
Alyssia sat there holding the invitation and running through all the ways that this was not fair. Her anger bubbled up, hot and caustic, and she began to tear the invitation into the tiniest shreds she could manage. When there was nothing more than a ragged pile of confetti on the floor in front of her, she began to cry. She was a failure. She couldn’t even do something this normal, this easy. People got pregnant every day, without trying, without wanting to even. And yet, here she was, a year into this journey, and not pregnant. Never even a blip on the pregnancy test radar. Not even a smudge that she could fool herself into thinking was a second line. Nothing but snowy white blankness.
The doorbell rang and Alyssia fished money out of her pocket. She opened the door from where she sat on the floor and handed it to the concerned looking pizza delivery guy. She held her hand out for the pizza, which he handed her reluctantly, and she pulled it inside and closed the door. All without saying a word. She didn’t think that anything she had to say right now would be coherent, or even intelligible through the sobbing. The best she could do for the pizza guy was to stop sobbing for a couple seconds to pay him. She had given him a nice tip though. And, she supposed, a good story to tell his work mates.
She continued to sit on the floor and cry, occasionally picking up small bits of the invitation and tearing them into even smaller bits. By the time Marc arrived home, her sobs had slowed to hiccups, the waterfall of tears to single drops every little while, and the invitation resembled sand with a few bits of paper thrown in.
“Oh. Alyssia, what’s wrong?” marc said worriedly as he knelt beside her. “Why are you sitting in front of the door?”
“Invitation. Jeanne. Pregnant,” Alyssia said between hiccups.
“Crap. It was me who called earlier. I wanted to warn you about that. Jeanne’s husband told me it was on the way. I thought you were out, so I didn’t leave a message,” he said hugging her.
“I just don’t get it. Why is it working out this way? Why can’t we just get pregnant? I just don’t understand.” This was the first time Alyssia had really told him what was going through her mind about trying to get pregnant. She knew that he was discourage each month, but she felt like her sadness would only make him feel worse. Mostly she had been keeping it to herself. She stayed home and moped when her period started, and hunkered down until it was time to try again, never letting on how crushed she really was each month.
“I don’t understand either, honey. I really don’t.” They sat there on the floor, in the entryway of their house that was perfect for kids, holding each other. They were silent for a long while, both lost in their own thoughts. Finally, Marc spoke.
“Want some pizza?” he said, and they both began to laugh.