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A Miracle
by David Meyer

Christine went into the narrow kitchen and put her cereal bowl on top of the dirty dishes already stacked in the sink: the frying pan from last night’s uneaten dinner; the nearly clean plates it hadn’t been served on; the delicate long-stemmed wine glasses, only one of which had been used. She had scraped the fish into the trash last night but there was still a vague stink of low tide coming from the plates and utensils, and she went to open the window by the stove to get some air. It was warm outside for this late in the fall. Windy too, with clouds flying past in the narrow bit of sky she could see above the neighbors’ building. Remnants of the breeze reached into the apartment and brought out goosebumps on her bare legs. She put her head outside and closed her eyes and felt the wind gust through her hair, imagining she could feel sunlight on her face though in reality there was only shadow beneath the brick wall across the way. She opened her eyes again and the clouds above were passing so quickly it almost scared her. Like they were leaving. Like they were hurrying away somewhere never to come back. Like she would never see them again.

Suddenly lonely, Christine put her hands under her sweatshirt and felt her abdomen for the child, but had no luck. Still too small. It couldn’t be much more than a month old and she didn’t feel any different than usual and couldn’t even imagine what it was that was inside her at that moment. Not a life, that was for sure. If it was she wouldn’t have had those glasses of wine the night before. She glanced guiltily at the half-filled bottle that still stood on the counter between the stove and the window. She had needed a drink, though, and besides, for how many millennia had women been drinking when they were pregnant without thinking it was bad and the whole human race had made it this far. She had probably already been drunk without knowing ten times since she had got pregnant; two glasses when the kid was still a tadpole wouldn’t kill him. She tried to laugh at herself but couldn’t. The thought, wouldn’t kill him, floated in the air around her in the room, mixing with the stink of the fish, making her nauseous.

Jon had suggested that last night -- he had wanted her to have an abortion. She had cooked him a special meal just to tell him the news, had bought wine and candles, left work early to chop and marinate and sauté, and he had come home just to change before going out -- had told her he had had plans all week, he didn’t have time for a surprise dinner. She should have let him go without telling him, but standing in the middle of their tiny living room in her favorite black dress while he pushed past to go to the bedroom and find a clean pair of socks she had felt insulted and rejected just when she should have been celebrating; when she should have been happy. And so she had shot the sharpest arrow in her quiver, she had blurted out “Hon, I’m pregnant,” and he had freaked out. What had she expected? He had been shocked, had yelled and shouted, said he wasn’t going to be a father. When she had insisted that she would have it, he had said, “yeah, you will, alone,” and stormed out and not come back.

In the silence he left in his wake, Christine had stared at the door, willing it to open, willing him to come back, but it hadn’t, he hadn’t. And now it occurred to her that maybe she would never see him again. It wouldn’t be a shock, he had left before during the two years they’d lived together. He had moved in once for two weeks with a waitress from the diner down the block; one time he hadn’t even called, he hadn’t even packed, he had just started sleeping at his friend’s house. She had thought he had been murdered or hit by a bus, she had called emergency rooms and his parents and had only found out he was still alive when he’d sent her a text message saying as much. “Hi C, Im ok, dnt worry. J.”

And maybe he wouldn’t come back this time, maybe he would blow away with the clouds, maybe everything was over for her. She would come home from work one day to find all his things gone from the apartment and the key on the table. She would be left alone. How could she have a kid?

Standing in the cramped kitchen, surrounded by the smell of fish which the breeze from the window did little to abate, Christine didn’t know what to do. The whole issue was opaque to her, like trying to see the bottom of a full bowl of oatmeal. She didn’t want to be a mother, but the idea of an abortion made her stomach turn. But would she even be able to afford to have a baby alone? She didn’t know if her job offered maternal leave. There was adoption, but to go through nine months of pregnancy and then labor and then give it away? It felt a little like turning back when she was in sight of her destination. What was she going to do?

Tea was what she needed. Tea and then to change out of the old boxers she was wearing. She needed to be warm.

Christine filled the kettle and put it to rest on the back right burner of the stove while she tried to light the front-right, turning the knob and flicking the lighter close to the stove, each time pulling her hand away quickly in case it lit. After four tries it still hadn’t taken and she paused to turn the gas off and let it dissipate some before trying again. The faint rotten egg smell mixed with the fish and she had to leave the kitchen for a second to catch her breath. Maybe it was morning sickness. She ran her fingers through her unwashed hair as she stood barefoot in the hallway. What was she going to do?

Returning to the kitchen a minute later, Christine’s next light was a success and a few thin blue tongues of flame poured out from the lip of the burner. She reached for the kettle to put it on the stove but behind her down the hall the door opened and a gust of wind stronger than any yet pushed its way in through the small kitchen window, blowing out the feeble blue flame and upsetting the bottle of wine onto the counter where it rolled onto the floor.

“Fuck,” Christine muttered, dropping the kettle and bending over quickly to pick up the wine before it all poured out. Righting the bottle on the counter, she went to close the window and had just slammed it shut when she heard Jon’s voice behind her.

“Hon?” He was right behind her in the hallway but Christine didn’t turn. She didn’t want to see his face. Whatever she was going to go through, whether she kept the kid or not, maybe it would be easier alone, without him, without someone who could hurt her so easily, who could withdraw his support on a whim and send her into a breakdown. She kept her hands on the window frame and stared hard at the brick building across the way.

“Can we talk?” Jon said, as if it was really a question, and Christine turned.

“What.” Jon was a mess, his jeans stained with a yellow substance, his blue button-down shirt wrinkled, his brown hair greasy and matted on his forehead. He looked like he had slept in a dumpster.

“You’re standing in wine.” Jon pointed at her feet as if this was the one thing he had to talk about. Christine was indeed standing in wine, her bare feet turning pink from it, a small incarnadine spot of liquid between her parted legs.

“Let me get you a towel,” he said, and turned to go down the hallway towards the bathroom.

Christine wiped her feet with one of the filthy dishcloths from the counter and then tossed it on the pile of dishes before going out in the hallway to follow him. The shape of his head retreating in front of her was infuriating: calm, cool, and collected when the world was ending, when he had left her the night before.

“What do you want to talk about?”

Jon made no sign he heard her and kept walking past the bathroom into their bedroom without turning to look even, taking a few steps in to the cramped room to give her space to stand without having to push past him when he finally did turn around.

Christine didn’t enter, though. She crossed her arms and waited.

Jon looked around himself strangely, scanning all the furniture and wall hangings with a faintly amused grin on his face as if he was seeing them all for the first time and finding them to be exactly what he had always dreamed of, as if it was the perfect wrinkled orange tapestry hanging above the bed, the perfect stained blue sheets covering the mattress, as if he hadn’t been complaining to her about their apartment ever since he had moved in two years before. With the same uncharacteristic grin, like he had finally got some joke he’d heard years before, he at last looked Christine in the eyes.

“I’m sorry for last night.”

He was being honest but Christine didn’t care. At the sight of him, her mind had started working again, like mist crystallizing on a spec of dust to fall as rain. She was seeing things clearly now, coming to conclusions, answering questions.

This was typical Jon. The same shit he’d been doing for six years, and the same shit he’d keep doing forever. They were twenty-six now though, old enough to be parents, and he was still acting like he had acted at twenty. She didn’t care what he was about to say, didn’t care how honest his eyes looked. She wanted to kill him. She couldn’t believe she had even considered having a child with him. He was a teenager still. He had said a lot of stupid things last night but he had been right about one -- she would have the baby alone.

“I was scared, I was shocked by what you said and I left and that was wrong of me, I’m sorry, I just got caught up in the moment and lost my cool.”

There was a pause then and Christine watched Jon squirm, shifting his weight awkwardly foot to foot, the calm veneer which had covered him since he walked in the door finally beginning to peel. Her silence stretched on and she barely blinked as she stared at him. Just when he looked like he was ready to say something else and was opening his mouth to speak, she interrupted.

“Why didn’t you come back last night? Where were you?”

“Nowhere,” he pleaded, then when she scoffed he qualified the statement, “I mean I wasn’t anywhere in particular. I went out with Scott and Dan like I said I was going to and we went out to Grassroots and then met up with some people Scott works with at another place around the corner. It was the usual, the same thing we do every night. We sat around and got drunk and then around four they all headed home and I got on the subway to come back here.”

“Then why was I the only one in the apartment last night?”

“Because...I don’t know how to tell you this so you’ll believe it, I know it’s not your thing, and you know it’s not my thing either and so I hope you’ll just listen to me...A miracle happened.”

“Oh shut up.”

“Honest, let me explain.” Jon had both his arms out in front of him, palms facing Christine as though trying to keep her from losing her temper, and he was still speaking in the same measured tone, his calm returning now that he was talking and getting into his story.

“I was drunk. Really drunk.”

“Some miracle.”

Jon paused and looked at Christine like a teacher whose patience was about to run out and she actually felt bad for making light of his story somehow. He seemed so sincere.

“I was drunk. Really drunk. I had been thinking of what you said all night -- thinking that you’re pregnant, that we’re going to be parents, but I was so drunk it didn’t really mean anything to me, I didn’t really think of anything, ya know? And I was going to come home, honest, I was just gonna come back and curl up next to you and apologize and figured we’d figure it all out in the morning, that something would make sense then because nothing made sense last night. And so I got on the F train, but I was so drunk, the rocking back and forth and the screeching cars -- you know how it is through the tunnel -- I wanted to vomit, but then all of a sudden, I just passed out with my feet up on the seat in front of me, I passed out and didn’t wake up until Coney Island when the guy cleaning the trains poked me with his broom. It was like six or something at that point, maybe like an hour and a half since I got on the train, an hour tops since I passed out totally drunk off my ass, but all of a sudden I wasn’t drunk at all. When he poked me and I woke up in Coney Island and it was dawn and the sky was just starting to get light, I was as sober as I have ever been in my life -- honest. After two, three pitchers of beer each with Scott and Dan, I should have taken hours to sober up, I should still be drunk now even, but there I was on Coney Island as sober as the day I was born.”

Jon paused and stared into Christine’s eyes as if to make sure she was listening and trusting him. She stared back and felt her anger begin to wane; felt herself listening to him, believing his story. He looked like a drifter, standing there before her in his day-old clothes, his blue eyes bloodshot, and yet he seemed totally rested, totally calm. The whole story, his whole manner, it wasn’t his usual way, something had changed. She didn’t believe in miracles, but there was no denying that something was different. Christine reluctantly slid down into one of the overstuffed navy blue armchairs next to the bed and listened intently to the rest of the story.

“And that’s really what it was, I can’t explain it enough. I went out of the station and I walked along the boardwalk to the beach and I sat in the sand and watched the sunrise over the sound and I was reborn. I thought back over our conversation and over the whole night out, and I realized -- it’s not what I want anymore. Those guys, the drinking, the going out late, the loud bars, the stupid conversations -- I’m done with it. It’s dead to me. I’m in a new phase now, a new part of my life. I couldn’t be drunk now if I wanted to, alcohol doesn’t affect me. I’m a different person, a new person, I was born this morning on the F train somewhere between East Broadway and Coney Island and the new me, the new life, it’s ready for you and it’s ready to be a father and it’s ready for everything, for all of this, for the future.”

Jon paused again, though this time differently, this time as if girding himself for something. Christine didn’t want to interrupt anymore. She listened in silence, nodding, sensing something important was coming.

“And so around nine, after like three hours on the beach just soaking up the sun and breathing the air and feeling the water and the sand and just loving the world, I bought a bagel at some deli near there and then got back on the train to come back here but then I had another idea.”

“Do you smell something?” Christine sniffed the air.

“It might be me, I did sleep on the F train last night.”

“Rotten eggs?”

“Sounds about right. Sorry, I haven’t had a chance to shower, but I promise, this is more important.”

“Okay,” Christine said and he went on.

“So I had another idea on my way back, and I got off at Seventh Avenue and I went and I waited outside the jewelry shop at Fifth until it opened at ten and I bought you this.”

Jon took a little black box out of his pocket then and got down on one knee in front of Christine. Opening the box to reveal a thin simple golden ring he went on, “I know it’s not ideal, it’s just something small, I didn’t really have the chance to shop around, but we can exchange it for another they said when I explained them the whole thing. I just know now what I want, I know who I am and where I am, and my life begins today, my whole life begins today, and I want to spend it with you, my whole future with you. You’re everything to me, Christine, I have no doubts in my heart about it, and I will never leave again. Will you marry me?”

She would have jumped and said yes but for the last words about never leaving again. She had heard them before, many times. When he had stormed out after almost every argument they’d ever had. When he came back after that fling with the waitress. Suddenly the whole scene, him down on his knees in his stinky dirty clothes, her in her boxers and sweatshirt in the armchair, it all just seemed contrived and she couldn’t handle and didn’t trust it. It just seemed so typical. Like it was a trick, like he was just setting her up to get hurt again. Her old anger wouldn’t quite come though; maybe somewhere inside she actually believed in the miracle. Still, she wouldn’t say yes.

“Babe, you say that but you don’t know it, you can’t mean it.”

“What do you mean?” He seemed genuinely surprised by her answer.

“You’ve said that before, you know, you’ve told me you’d never leave before and you’ve always left again. You mean it every time and then you always do it again, and I don’t know what happened to you on the F train but spontaneous sobriety isn’t a miracle in my book and it isn’t enough for me to stake my future on or the future of my child.”

“Our child.”

“My child, Jon -- it became my child when you walked out last night.”

Jon took a deep breath.

“What happened last night, it was more than just spontaneous sobriety. Peace has entered my heart. Grace maybe, I don’t know, I never really went to church, I don’t even know if it was God who did it or Jesus or what, I didn’t have a vision, I didn’t see a light, I just woke up sober -- in mind, in body, in everything, and I know that I will be sober forever and hon, I want to be sober with you and nobody else. I want to marry you and have a wedding and invite everyone we know and I want to celebrate anniversaries and send Christmas cards with both our names on it and have the same last name and everything.”

“I don’t know Jon.”

“If you don’t know then look at me, listen to me, because I do, and I’m being honest here, one hundred percent. I didn’t even know what honest meant before this morning, but now I do and now it’s my life, it’s everything in me, it’s how I see the world, it’s you, it’s love, it’s everything. I love you, Christine, marry me and I will never disappoint you.”

And she couldn’t hate him anymore. He was dirty, he was disheveled, he smelled like rotten eggs, but he had come back to her, he had always come back before, and he had come back to her again. She started to cry and put her hand out and he slid on the ring and she mumbled, “yes,” and they both stood up and he put his arms around her.

“We’re gonna be parents,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said with a joy that Christine had never heard in his voice before. They kissed and Jon slid his hands around and under her sweatshirt to rest on her abdomen.

Christine thought maybe she could feel the baby then, but no, she couldn’t, it was just love.

They kept kissing and Jon slid his hands around her back and pulled her close against his body. He slid off her blue sweatshirt, she started unbuttoning his wrinkled button-down, unable to wait to get him undressed, her fiancé, the father of her child, and to make love to him no matter how much he smelled like rotten eggs. In a second they were both naked and standing still, holding each other tight, their bodies pressed together, his head bent low to reach hers, their lips open, tongues entwined. Jon pulled her with him and they fell down onto the bed and no longer needing any protection they laughed and told each other how much they were in love, trying to outdo one another with compliments.

“I love you so much.”

“I love you so so much.”

“I love you more.”

“I love you more than anyone has ever loved anything.”

Afterwards they didn’t let go of each other, sliding instead so they were on their sides facing one another, each looking into the other’s eyes. His hands slid again back to her belly and she put her own hands on top of them. They didn’t talk anymore, they were beyond words. They kissed gently, lying above the covers, the sun finally reaching into their apartment, drenching the room and warming them like a blanket, lighting up their pale white bodies as if they were glowing.

In a few minutes, Jon nodded off and Christine was left running her hands drowsily through his hair and thinking about how unexpected this all had been and how happy she was, suddenly knowing in her heart that it had in fact been a miracle. There was no other explanation. She mumbled a prayer of thanks, though it ended in a gurgle of laughter at just how bad Jon smelled. It would be a funny detail to remember and tell their daughter (she knew it was a girl somehow). He smelled just like rotten eggs. No doubt about it.

Fighting back a wave of nausea, Christine fell asleep too, and it was lying there naked together: Mother, Daughter, and Father, that they breathed their last breaths as the gas from the running stove at last filled the apartment.

David Meyer's work has been rejected by journals on four continents: The Dublin Quarterly representing Europe, The Istanbul Literature Review for Asia, Etchings in Australia, and a long and distinguished list of American journals including Story Quarterly, Tin House, and many others.  He is currently completing his second novel, which will be looking for rejections by agents some time this fall.  You can contact him here.