Wouldn’t You Like To Know
Zachary Wooldridge
He stood there, in front of the bandages on the end-cap display, aisle A-18. The yellow-tinged fluorescent lighting whirred faintly, something one wouldn’t be able to pick up even if they tried, not with this clatter of voices. But its presence was there, soft background noise becoming an unmemorable soundtrack to the scene that would remain in the far reaches of his memory, resurfacing on the most sporadic of occasions like an old sprain that aches with the coming rain, for years to come.
She was standing, if it could be called standing. Her shoulders were slumped, but occasionally she would correct her poor posture and straighten herself with a false-confidence. She was standing down aisle A-18 and he slyly maneuvered to appear busy, falsely comparing brands of gauze, pretending to answer text messages, all so he could catch the rare glimpse of an unguarded soul.
The pregnancy tests lined the fifth four foot section of aisle A-18, the assortment of boxes pink and white like a Christmastime candy cane. With her right arm stretched across her back, she clutched at her elbow as her left hand reached skeptically out to grab a box. She scanned the back and promptly put it back as she dashed away from the fifth four foot section of aisle A-18.
He continued to pretend that he needed bandages. If he had truly needed to patch someone up in this moment, they would have bled out by now. He wondered who she had been, and his mind, a loom and string composed of neurons and electrical pulses, began to weave a story.
She adjusted her dark hair, pushing it back behind her ear, examining her reflection and complexion in the mirror by the door. The night had been rough, she had tried to hide the slight bags that had formed under her eyes, but they still showed despite the hour or so spent in front of the bathroom mirror.
“Oh well.” she thought as she slung her purse, monogrammed A.D.C. for Abigail Denise Carter, over her shoulders. It wasn’t full, but her body was tired and didn’t want to hold itself up, let alone a purse. And as she opened the door of her moderately sized apartment, decorated in typical East-Coast-Daddy’s-girl fashion, the beams of the sun pounded her retinas and she quickly donned her sunglasses.
“Fuck,” she muttered, the faint smell of vodka and tobacco still lingering on her breath, “I’m too hungover for this shit.”
Her ratty tennis shoes pounded the grey concrete, amidst the stains of oil and slushies as the smell of asphalt permeated the sweltering summer-
As he began to drop the façade and continue with his true shopping, she reappeared. He glimpsed the full of her face, which had been partially hidden by her long dark hair, for not even a second and he now saw the underlying fear in her eyes and the inexperience on her face.
She was a girl of no more than 18, possibly 19 years old. No more than two years older than his daughter. And no longer did he mistake the dark circles around her eyes for lack of sleep, for there was only one spot of greyish-hued flesh and it was tinged green just below the skin’s surface.
She turned without noticing him, what reason did she have to? He was just one of many bodies moving about this godforsaken Walmart Supercenter on a hot Saturday afternoon late July. He was nothing more than another fish in the school, and he could tell her mind was too occupied with other notions, notions more severe than some man lingering around at the end of aisle A-18, for her to even care.
“YOU WHAT?” the large man shouted, his thick mustache pulling back along with his scowling roar and his grey flecked hair thinning. Veins had begun to pop out around his neck and his face was red like Dorothy’s ruby slippers.
“I’m pregnant,” she mumbled meekly, her eyes cast down and to the side, afraid to look her father in the eye.
“Rebecca,” her mother added. Rebecca felt shame as her mother drew out her name as a long, painful sigh. She sounded so full of shame, so full of disappointment. Her throat tightened as everything around her became blurry behind the tears. Her mother walked over to embrace her sobbing daughter. “We still love you, honey.”
She felt her body collapse into her mother as the tears streamed down her face, down past her chin, and slowly drip from her jaw. Thoughts raced, her scholarships, her education, her future. One night had changed it all so quickly.
Her father huffed, his face still red with rage. “And you’re positive about this?” he growled, his voice beginning to crack from the stress his vocal chords had been put through in his previous shouting.
“I missed my period.” she replied.
“But you haven’t taken a pregnancy test?” he asked, with a certain degree of condescension coloring his baritone voice.
“Jonathan,” her mother responded to her husband in the way that only wives can, picking up on the belittling tone and chastising him for it. She redirected her words to her daughter, still shaking. “Have you taken a test, Becca?”
“N-no,” she said between sobs, wiping her eyes on the sleeves of her long-sleeved tee. Her mother grasped her hand.
“Go put your shoes on, we’ll run to the store and-”
“No.” Jonathan said flatly, cutting off his wife. He knew they were in for a row as soon as their daughter, his little girl, his little girl who was possibly having a little girl or boy of her own, left the house. He felt his hand clench into a fist. “No. If she wants to sleep around like a grownup, she can go buy her own pregnancy test like a grownup.”
“That’s so bad.” He thought to himself. “Angry father? Consoling mother? How stereotypical could I have made that?” Sometimes he chastised himself for the poor quality of his fantasies on the lives of strangers. “Would I act like that if Danielle came home-” he shuddered at the concept and dismissed it. His little girl wouldn’t do that.
She moved, and his eyes caught it briefly. It was a single, sweeping movement that resulted in a pink box, pregnancy test within, being removed from the wall of the fifth four foot section of aisle A-18, and she began her movement down the aisle towards where he had been pretending to exam bandages and the sort of other items one might need when mending a wound.
As she blew past him, he felt the ever-so-slight breeze caused by her movement and caught a whiff of the shampoo that had been used to wash her long dark hair. He saw her face more clearly now and realized that perhaps she was not as young as he had hypothesized, as she seemed to carry herself not like a girl but instead like a woman. Now he ventured to guess twenty-one or twenty-two. Yes, he was sure of it this time.
He watched her march through the store towards checkout and away from aisle A-18, her long dark hair swishing with the movement of her body, and then she turned and claimed a self-checkout station for herself. He gripped the handle of his cart, and with a great sigh and a slight heave, he continued towards the groceries for orange juice. If he forgot anything again, he’d probably have to sleep on the couch for the second time this week. But at least then he wouldn’t have to deal with her profuse sweating and her leg-stubble poking him in the sticky night air of late July.
She stood at the door staring at the knob, and breathed in deep before exhaling just as deeply. She stepped into the small one bedroom apartment, the small electrical fans trying their hardest in vain to cause a change in temperature between the interior and the exterior. As she wiped the sweat from her brow and grabbed an elastic hair tie that she had forgotten on the way to the store, she heard a flush come from the bathroom and the door swung open.
She stared at the lanky, shaggy haired fellow in a faux-vintage graphic tee and boxers as he smiled at her while ducking his hand below his waistband and into his boxers to adjust his genitals. Her mind was hazy and too heavy to be exasperated over the fact that she didn’t hear him wash his hands.
“D’you get it?” he asked, a mild-exuberance breaking through his poorly maintained and calculated “not-too-excited” voice. But she knew him, she knew he would be eagerly awaiting her ‘good news.’
“Yup!” she replied, her voice masked with an eagerness that was more convincing than his faux-aloofness. He approached her and kissed her gently, and she could feel a small smile still on his lips. Sometimes he still made her feel special.
“That black eye’s getting better! You think you’re ready to brave another round of kickball with my family? Maybe they’ll stop calling you Ball-Face-Grace if you do.”
“We’ll see,” Grace replied, forcing a small giggle. He brushed her hair back, and gazed into her eyes. Her stomach was churning as she saw how he looked at her.
“Well get in there and let’s see!” he said, the cool attitude having been dropped in favor of genuine excitement.
She smiled a fake smile, a smile so fake that he should have been able to see right through it. But he was blinded by his racing mind, fantasies of starting a family being crafted by an imagination that was dashing about like lab-rats high on cocaine for the purposes of science. She could tell in his bright and excited eyes, eyes that were surrounded by hair, dark circles from late shifts, and three days of growth on his face, that he was already imagining being there in the delivery room.
Grace trudged into the bathroom, the carpet crunching beneath her feet all the way, closing the door behind her.
“Do I even have to piss on this?” she thought. She opened the box up, the material making a familiar ripping sound as the glue that held it shut pulled up strips of paper. Grace pulled the small object from within and held it in her hand, staring at it for a few seconds.
“It won’t make any difference.”
She dropped her pants and positioned herself just right, positioned the test just right, and breathed in.
She breathed out.
Five minutes. That’s how long she had to wait. Or rather, that’s how much longer Chuck had to wait outside the bathroom door. Carelessly tossing the test in the garbage already, she sat and fiddled with her phone.
Four minutes. She scrolled through Facebook and liked a few pictures, mostly out of a sense of social obligation. She really didn’t think Sharon’s two-year-old covered in spaghetti sauce was all the cute or impressive.
Two minutes. She was getting tired of this. She began prepping herself for the act. She should win an Academy Award. She needed crocodile tears, and she began to think of the time when she was five and her cat decided her guinea pig would make a fine snack.
Time was up. As she gripped the door knob, it flew open and she saw Chuck standing there smiling enthusiastically at the thought of starting a family. But as he saw her Oscar-winning tears, he changed his expression to one of comfort. And as Grace collapsed into his arms and felt his hands pat her back, she wondered how many more times she would do this before she told him what the doctor had told her a month ago.
Zachary Wooldridge
He stood there, in front of the bandages on the end-cap display, aisle A-18. The yellow-tinged fluorescent lighting whirred faintly, something one wouldn’t be able to pick up even if they tried, not with this clatter of voices. But its presence was there, soft background noise becoming an unmemorable soundtrack to the scene that would remain in the far reaches of his memory, resurfacing on the most sporadic of occasions like an old sprain that aches with the coming rain, for years to come.
She was standing, if it could be called standing. Her shoulders were slumped, but occasionally she would correct her poor posture and straighten herself with a false-confidence. She was standing down aisle A-18 and he slyly maneuvered to appear busy, falsely comparing brands of gauze, pretending to answer text messages, all so he could catch the rare glimpse of an unguarded soul.
The pregnancy tests lined the fifth four foot section of aisle A-18, the assortment of boxes pink and white like a Christmastime candy cane. With her right arm stretched across her back, she clutched at her elbow as her left hand reached skeptically out to grab a box. She scanned the back and promptly put it back as she dashed away from the fifth four foot section of aisle A-18.
He continued to pretend that he needed bandages. If he had truly needed to patch someone up in this moment, they would have bled out by now. He wondered who she had been, and his mind, a loom and string composed of neurons and electrical pulses, began to weave a story.
She adjusted her dark hair, pushing it back behind her ear, examining her reflection and complexion in the mirror by the door. The night had been rough, she had tried to hide the slight bags that had formed under her eyes, but they still showed despite the hour or so spent in front of the bathroom mirror.
“Oh well.” she thought as she slung her purse, monogrammed A.D.C. for Abigail Denise Carter, over her shoulders. It wasn’t full, but her body was tired and didn’t want to hold itself up, let alone a purse. And as she opened the door of her moderately sized apartment, decorated in typical East-Coast-Daddy’s-girl fashion, the beams of the sun pounded her retinas and she quickly donned her sunglasses.
“Fuck,” she muttered, the faint smell of vodka and tobacco still lingering on her breath, “I’m too hungover for this shit.”
Her ratty tennis shoes pounded the grey concrete, amidst the stains of oil and slushies as the smell of asphalt permeated the sweltering summer-
As he began to drop the façade and continue with his true shopping, she reappeared. He glimpsed the full of her face, which had been partially hidden by her long dark hair, for not even a second and he now saw the underlying fear in her eyes and the inexperience on her face.
She was a girl of no more than 18, possibly 19 years old. No more than two years older than his daughter. And no longer did he mistake the dark circles around her eyes for lack of sleep, for there was only one spot of greyish-hued flesh and it was tinged green just below the skin’s surface.
She turned without noticing him, what reason did she have to? He was just one of many bodies moving about this godforsaken Walmart Supercenter on a hot Saturday afternoon late July. He was nothing more than another fish in the school, and he could tell her mind was too occupied with other notions, notions more severe than some man lingering around at the end of aisle A-18, for her to even care.
“YOU WHAT?” the large man shouted, his thick mustache pulling back along with his scowling roar and his grey flecked hair thinning. Veins had begun to pop out around his neck and his face was red like Dorothy’s ruby slippers.
“I’m pregnant,” she mumbled meekly, her eyes cast down and to the side, afraid to look her father in the eye.
“Rebecca,” her mother added. Rebecca felt shame as her mother drew out her name as a long, painful sigh. She sounded so full of shame, so full of disappointment. Her throat tightened as everything around her became blurry behind the tears. Her mother walked over to embrace her sobbing daughter. “We still love you, honey.”
She felt her body collapse into her mother as the tears streamed down her face, down past her chin, and slowly drip from her jaw. Thoughts raced, her scholarships, her education, her future. One night had changed it all so quickly.
Her father huffed, his face still red with rage. “And you’re positive about this?” he growled, his voice beginning to crack from the stress his vocal chords had been put through in his previous shouting.
“I missed my period.” she replied.
“But you haven’t taken a pregnancy test?” he asked, with a certain degree of condescension coloring his baritone voice.
“Jonathan,” her mother responded to her husband in the way that only wives can, picking up on the belittling tone and chastising him for it. She redirected her words to her daughter, still shaking. “Have you taken a test, Becca?”
“N-no,” she said between sobs, wiping her eyes on the sleeves of her long-sleeved tee. Her mother grasped her hand.
“Go put your shoes on, we’ll run to the store and-”
“No.” Jonathan said flatly, cutting off his wife. He knew they were in for a row as soon as their daughter, his little girl, his little girl who was possibly having a little girl or boy of her own, left the house. He felt his hand clench into a fist. “No. If she wants to sleep around like a grownup, she can go buy her own pregnancy test like a grownup.”
“That’s so bad.” He thought to himself. “Angry father? Consoling mother? How stereotypical could I have made that?” Sometimes he chastised himself for the poor quality of his fantasies on the lives of strangers. “Would I act like that if Danielle came home-” he shuddered at the concept and dismissed it. His little girl wouldn’t do that.
She moved, and his eyes caught it briefly. It was a single, sweeping movement that resulted in a pink box, pregnancy test within, being removed from the wall of the fifth four foot section of aisle A-18, and she began her movement down the aisle towards where he had been pretending to exam bandages and the sort of other items one might need when mending a wound.
As she blew past him, he felt the ever-so-slight breeze caused by her movement and caught a whiff of the shampoo that had been used to wash her long dark hair. He saw her face more clearly now and realized that perhaps she was not as young as he had hypothesized, as she seemed to carry herself not like a girl but instead like a woman. Now he ventured to guess twenty-one or twenty-two. Yes, he was sure of it this time.
He watched her march through the store towards checkout and away from aisle A-18, her long dark hair swishing with the movement of her body, and then she turned and claimed a self-checkout station for herself. He gripped the handle of his cart, and with a great sigh and a slight heave, he continued towards the groceries for orange juice. If he forgot anything again, he’d probably have to sleep on the couch for the second time this week. But at least then he wouldn’t have to deal with her profuse sweating and her leg-stubble poking him in the sticky night air of late July.
She stood at the door staring at the knob, and breathed in deep before exhaling just as deeply. She stepped into the small one bedroom apartment, the small electrical fans trying their hardest in vain to cause a change in temperature between the interior and the exterior. As she wiped the sweat from her brow and grabbed an elastic hair tie that she had forgotten on the way to the store, she heard a flush come from the bathroom and the door swung open.
She stared at the lanky, shaggy haired fellow in a faux-vintage graphic tee and boxers as he smiled at her while ducking his hand below his waistband and into his boxers to adjust his genitals. Her mind was hazy and too heavy to be exasperated over the fact that she didn’t hear him wash his hands.
“D’you get it?” he asked, a mild-exuberance breaking through his poorly maintained and calculated “not-too-excited” voice. But she knew him, she knew he would be eagerly awaiting her ‘good news.’
“Yup!” she replied, her voice masked with an eagerness that was more convincing than his faux-aloofness. He approached her and kissed her gently, and she could feel a small smile still on his lips. Sometimes he still made her feel special.
“That black eye’s getting better! You think you’re ready to brave another round of kickball with my family? Maybe they’ll stop calling you Ball-Face-Grace if you do.”
“We’ll see,” Grace replied, forcing a small giggle. He brushed her hair back, and gazed into her eyes. Her stomach was churning as she saw how he looked at her.
“Well get in there and let’s see!” he said, the cool attitude having been dropped in favor of genuine excitement.
She smiled a fake smile, a smile so fake that he should have been able to see right through it. But he was blinded by his racing mind, fantasies of starting a family being crafted by an imagination that was dashing about like lab-rats high on cocaine for the purposes of science. She could tell in his bright and excited eyes, eyes that were surrounded by hair, dark circles from late shifts, and three days of growth on his face, that he was already imagining being there in the delivery room.
Grace trudged into the bathroom, the carpet crunching beneath her feet all the way, closing the door behind her.
“Do I even have to piss on this?” she thought. She opened the box up, the material making a familiar ripping sound as the glue that held it shut pulled up strips of paper. Grace pulled the small object from within and held it in her hand, staring at it for a few seconds.
“It won’t make any difference.”
She dropped her pants and positioned herself just right, positioned the test just right, and breathed in.
She breathed out.
Five minutes. That’s how long she had to wait. Or rather, that’s how much longer Chuck had to wait outside the bathroom door. Carelessly tossing the test in the garbage already, she sat and fiddled with her phone.
Four minutes. She scrolled through Facebook and liked a few pictures, mostly out of a sense of social obligation. She really didn’t think Sharon’s two-year-old covered in spaghetti sauce was all the cute or impressive.
Two minutes. She was getting tired of this. She began prepping herself for the act. She should win an Academy Award. She needed crocodile tears, and she began to think of the time when she was five and her cat decided her guinea pig would make a fine snack.
Time was up. As she gripped the door knob, it flew open and she saw Chuck standing there smiling enthusiastically at the thought of starting a family. But as he saw her Oscar-winning tears, he changed his expression to one of comfort. And as Grace collapsed into his arms and felt his hands pat her back, she wondered how many more times she would do this before she told him what the doctor had told her a month ago.