Pathology - Teresa Tumminello Brader
A thump nudged James into consciousness. Resting on the empire sofa inherited from Brenda’s grandma, he’d tried to stay awake, but it’d been a long day—and evening. After work and daycare pickup, he’d gone home to install new porch railings, hammering fresh boards with satisfying thuds, while Jimmy rolled his dump truck over the concrete floor. A chicken roasted in the oven, big enough for dinner and weekend leftovers. At bedtime Jimmy hadn’t really expected his mother to kiss him good-night, just another delaying tactic, along with a cup of water and the hallway nightlight he’d mostly outgrown. James’s brain registered another thump—a car door. He burrowed into the throw pillow.
Giggling forced him awake and he unfolded his long legs, pushed his feet into waiting slippers. He opened his newly stained front door, stepped onto the gallery, and halted at the sight of his wife. Her head bobbed on her slender neck, her torso wrapped in the arms of her carpool buddy. Sean spotted James over her shoulder and released her. Brenda tottered and stumbled back into the man’s arms.
James hastened down the brick steps. “I got this, Sean. Good night.” Brenda grabbed onto the Japanese magnolia in the front yard. Sean swayed to his dilapidated Corolla at the curb. James watched the car pull away, its chug-chugging disrupting the dark silence, until it turned at the corner. Promising to take care of everything, James had encouraged Brenda to go to med school, her goal before she met him, before she became pregnant and they married, in that order. Their troubles began with her residency, every shift ending one block from the hospital at the 24-hour Joe’s Bar. James knew well how Brenda’s initial aloofness and eventual willingness to please would’ve intrigued and attracted her co- workers.
She gripped the skinny tree trunk and vomited into the mulch. A delicate hot-pink blossom landed on her frizzed curls. Unlike other nights when he’d held her long hair away from her face, James’s hands hung idle. Last night, he’d placed a cup of chamomile in front of Brenda at his refinished mission table, sat across from her in one of the mismatched dining chairs. Behind his back, breezes drifted through the window screen. Male crickets called to the females. Laughing patrons of Mick’s Pub slammed car doors. With no preamble, he told her their marriage would end if she remained in a surgical residency. James thought Brenda a chameleon, envisioned her taking on the arrogant colors of a surgeon. She traced the gold fleur-de-lis on her black mug with a sluggish finger. “I could switch to pediatrics. Or pathology.” She looked up and James saw alarm in her normally placid face. He knew dealing with anxious parents of little patients didn’t appeal to her, but that choice was hers.
For Jimmy’s birth, before the local was administered for a c-section, James reiterated to the surgeon their wishes for a bikini cut. The doctor nodded, turned to the nurses to brag about his golf game. James then watched in disbelief, seethed in silence, as the man sliced through Brenda’s skin—vertically. One night, months later, James found Brenda on their bed, crying with abandon, cradling her belly. He held her until her sobs subsided, lifted her gown, and snaked his tongue down the scar, under her navel to the top of her pubic bone.
Beneath the leafless tree, Brenda swiped at her mouth. James took her arm and guided her to the porch steps. “Just saying good bye to everyone,” she mumbled “That’s all.” She staggered into their bedroom and flopped sideways across the bed. James pulled off her shoes. He’d changed the sheets yesterday.
Curling up on the sofa again, James mulled over tomorrow’s game plan: Saturday already. He’d wake at his usual, breakfast with Jimmy: pancakes with blueberry syrup, their favorite; a quick catch with his son to get him ready for tee-ball; and then James would paint his new railings, bright white with green trim. Jimmy would play alongside him, and they’d talk about front loaders and power shovels.
Originally published by Pequin 2008
Teresa Tumminello Brader was born in New Orleans and lives near Lake Pontchartrain; the city, the estuary, and its denizens are the source of much of her inspiration. Her first book, Letting in Air and Light, a work of hybrid memoir/fiction, is forthcoming from Belle Point Press. Her fiction, poetry, reviews, and essays appear in print anthologies and online at MER, Halfway Down the Stairs, Deep South, Lit Pub, oranges journal, and others.
