Come Up and See Me Sometime. Erika Krouse

keeping it, this one.” She nodded, as if it were merely a matter of will.

      “But David? He’s ridiculous.” I threw my sandwich down on the plate. It made a flat sound.

      Mona looked away. “Knock it off, Stephanie.”

      “You don’t even like him that much. You make fun of the way he breathes, for God’s sake.” I mimicked her impression, this whistling, grunting thing that he does. She does it better.

      “He’s going to be my husband.” The word was designed to stop all debate. I tried one more time.

      “But the abortion …”

      Mona held up her hand at the word. “Don’t want to think about that. It was a mistake.”

      “You were so sure at the time.”

      Neither of us talked for a while. I ate my tired roast beef sandwich, the meat dyeing the mayonnaise pink. Mona played with the napkin scraps on the table. I wiped my mouth over and over, for lack of anything else to do. Mona poked a hole in the crust of her grilled cheese sandwich.

      “Mona,” I finally said. “You don’t even like children. You call them ‘yard apes.’”

      “Well. I just got … so damn lonely, Stephanie. Besides, Jesus.” She looked up. “You can’t just walk through life like you’re a casual observer. I mean, you act like everything is a rational choice all the time, like there’s this layer of cellophane between you and the world. You have to engage. Engage.”

      I snapped, “I am engaged.”

      “It’s human. Everyone needs a family. You can adopt.”

      “As a single mom? In debt?”

      “You have choices. You can find a way to fill in that part of your life.”

      “My life is good. It’s already complete.”

      But here’s what I didn’t tell her: compare it to the sand dunes by the full moon, when the absence of light in the shadows is absolute, nonnegotiable. Floating upright and alone on top of the world. The way it feels to walk on such a surface.

      WE LOST touch, Mona and I. I missed her wedding with David. The invitation came on a cream-colored piece of cardboard with the words, “It’s a Wedding!” embossed on the front. I had to leave town for a business trip that weekend. I sent a gift, something they had registered for—spoons.

      Not much changed for me—some dates, a promotion, a new haircut. My grandmother died, I got a dog, and then a cat. The cat hated the dog. The dog liked the cat. That was pretty much my life.

      It had been almost two years since I had seen her last when Mona called me at work to invite me to a housewarming party. I scribbled down her new address and said carefully that I’d love to come. Equally carefully, she said that she, David, and their one-year-old baby were looking forward to seeing me.

      I drove to her house, a silty number in the worst neighborhood in town. There were bars on the downstairs windows. It was directly in front of a city park where I’d heard you could get a great deal on crack, if you didn’t care about quality. There was a liquor store next door, pocked with dirt. In front, a drunk man was talking to a woman in vinyl shorts and red high heels.

      When I arrived, the sun had just set behind the mountains. David opened the door, kissed my cheek and led me inside. The walls were covered in cracked green wallpaper, and I said, “How wonderfully retro!” He showed me the garage, which had a workbench and tools all set up on hooks. David looked a little fatter, but healthy and so happy. He couldn’t think of anything to ask me besides, “Like my garage?” I laughed, “Yes!” We stared at each other, delighted.

      In the center of a group of women, Mona was carrying a big baby in her arms. It drooled on her shirt, and she rubbed at the silk with a cocktail napkin, saying irritably, “Oh, Christ.” When she saw me, she smiled and held up the baby like it was an Oscar. We hugged, one-armed. Then she told me the baby’s name, which I immediately forgot.

      It squirmed in Mona’s arms. I leaned down and said, “Hello.” It rattled a fat chew-toy in my face, then rubbed it gently against my cheek. The toy left a viscous smear of saliva and some kind of slime, maybe Gerber’s Candied Yams or mucus. The baby announced, “Buh buh buh” above the party babble. Mona said, “Buh buh buh” back, almost sarcastically. Then, “Hold her, will you? I’m starving.”

      Suddenly, it was in my arms. A real baby. Wiggly. Soft. Yet scratchy.

      Mona pushed past her guests and headed toward the kitchen. I wrapped one arm around the baby’s sweaty back and cupped its head with my other hand. “Huh,” I said, jogging it onto my shoulder.

      I remembered something I had read once, that they’re supposed to have a soft spot in their skulls, so I started touching its head. Lightly at first, then pressing harder and harder. Nothing, just scalp. It wrapped its tiny hand, which looked like an imitation of a hand, around my hair, which looked real. It started chewing on the hair. I worried about the chemicals in shampoo and conditioner, and the toxins in hair spray. And the smoke from cigarettes, so I walked toward the open sliding glass door, away from the perfume and the microscopic mites that cling to upholstery.

      A woman in the party had started to sing “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” a capella; it was a little performance. Everyone gathered around and someone switched off the stereo. The woman had a voice that was horrible in that trained kind of way. I stared, fascinated. The baby did, too. I felt the baby’s body grow taut as it took a deep breath. Then it started to scream.

      Mona was somewhere else. Guests looked at us, irritated. I started toward David, but he waved his hand at me—away, away. He mouthed outside, and I nodded, just like I was his wife.

      I stepped out the sliding glass doors to the shabby backyard. It was long and skinny, running along the house like a moat in front of the shrubs that distinguished the border of the park. I started walking back and forth along the yard in the dusk, my favorite time of day. The baby stopped crying and started pulling my hair again.

      The baby was now talking to my hair, calling it buh-buh-buh with an occasional scream. It pushed against my stomach with its feet, and smashed its other hand against my collarbone. The rattle fell from its damp grasp and rolled into the dirt. My left arm was falling asleep. I bent down to grab the rattle, but couldn’t manage, so I kicked it out of sight.

      That didn’t work. The baby was now looking for the rattle, calling to it with vowels of anguish and despair. I tried walking away, but it held out its hands, squirmed and cried. It wanted down. I placed it carefully on the grass near the door, after looking for bugs and broken glass. It stopped crying and crouched on hands and knees, head rigid. Oh boy, I thought.

      I hurried across the lawn until I found the rattle, which now looked like a speckled pink egg. I thought of other mothers, and how they cleaned off a baby’s pacifier by putting it in their own mouths. I started to put the rattle in my mouth, but just couldn’t. Instead, I wiped it on my skirt, where it left a greasy stain.

      I turned around to pick up the baby again, but it was gone. Impossible, I thought. I hurried a few steps back to where it had been, but instead of a baby, I saw only a patch of dying grass in the porch light. There was no baby anywhere on the lawn. It was really gone. Gone.

      I went back inside to where the party was. One woman looked like she had the baby, but it was another baby. Similar to Mona’s baby, but not quite enough. Wearing a purple snuggie, not a green one.

      I peered under the tables and chairs. “Did you lose an earring or something?” a woman asked me.

      “Uh, no, I lost something else.” Nothing between people’s feet, in their arms.

      “What exactly did you lose?” the woman asked.

      It was nowhere in sight—not inside, and not on the lawn. That left only the place where the lawn ended and the park began. It must have crawled that way, toward the crack pipes and