Pathology

James stirred from his makeshift bed on the shabby empire sofa in the living room, as the thump of a car door penetrated his consciousness. He’d tried to stay awake, but it had been a long day and evening. His son Jimmy was sleeping, finally, in his bedroom in the back. Jimmy hadn’t really expected his mother to be there to kiss him good night. Just another delaying tactic, along with the cup of water and the glowing light in the hallway that he’d mostly outgrown.

Muffled words and giggling burrowed into James’ awareness. He swung his long legs from over the scrolled arm of the couch and rubbed his eyes. He lumbered to the front door and pulled it open, stepping onto the spacious porch.

After picking up Jimmy from the sitter at the end of the workday, James had installed new porch railings. Jimmy’s floppy brown hair fell in his eyes as he rolled his dump truck back and forth over the concrete floor of the gallery while his dad secured the new boards, satisfying thuds emitting from the hammer.

James stood on the porch and stared at his wife, her head bobbing on her slender neck, her slim torso wrapped in the arms of her carpool buddy. Sean released Brenda when he spotted James over her shoulder. Tottering, she stumbled back into Sean’s arms. James hastened down the brick steps to the lawn. “I’ll take over from here. Good night, Sean.”

Sean swayed down the walkway to his car parked on the curb. A few streetlights illuminated pinpoints of the neighborhood; the chug-chugging of Sean’s car engine disrupted the silence. James watched until the dilapidated Corolla turned the corner.

James had encouraged Brenda to go to med school, promising to take care of everything else while she did. Medical school was her goal before she met him, before she became pregnant and they married, in that order. James figured their marital troubles began when her residency started, every shift ending with an extended jaunt at Joe’s Bar next door to Tulane Hospital. Though she was older than the average intern, Brenda’s initial aloofness and eventual willingness to please intrigued and attracted both her fellow residents and their superiors.

Gripping the skinny trunk of the crape myrtle, Brenda bent under its green canopy and vomited in the mulch at its base. Delicate hot-pink blossoms floated downward, settling on her head and shoulders. James thought of the times he’d held her hair away from her face when she’d overindulged. Now his hands hung at his side. She’d pulled her long, curly hair into a ponytail this morning, but tendrils had escaped from their mooring since then.

The night before, after their son had gone to sleep, James had pulled out a chair at the refinished mission table for Brenda. He handed her a cup of tea and sat across from her. Breezes drifted through the screen of the unshuttered picture window. Male crickets called to the females, and the patrons of Mick’s Pub laughed and slammed car doors a couple of blocks away. James told Brenda if she remained in a surgical residency that would be the end of their marriage. He’d met some of those confident, but arrogant, surgeons she worked with, and he envisioned Brenda becoming one of them. He thought of her as a chameleon, taking on the colors of those around her.

Brenda traced with her index finger the fleur-de-lis etched in gold on the side of her black mug. “I guess I could switch to pediatrics. Or pathology.” She gazed at him, disturbance brewing in her brown eyes; his atypical seriousness must’ve frightened her. James knew dealing with anxious parents of little patients wouldn’t appeal to her, but he kept quiet: that choice could be her own.

The surgeon who’d performed the c-section for Jimmy’s birth had cut Brenda vertically instead of with the requested bikini cut. James reiterated their wishes before Brenda’s local was administered, but stayed silent after the doctor made the first incision. James seethed inwardly while the physician, behind his surgical mask, bragged about his golf game to the female nurses. One night, months later, James found Brenda curled up on their bed, crying about the scar. He held her until her sobs subsided and then snaked his tongue down the scar, starting under her navel and wending slowly to its end at the top of her pubic bone.

The front windows of their raised bungalow seemed to watch James as he walked Brenda up the porch steps. “Was just saying goodbye to everyone, James,” she mumbled. “That’s all.” She staggered into their bedroom and flopped sideways across the bed. He pulled off her shoes: he’d just changed the sheets yesterday.

As he curled up on the sofa in the front room again, James thought of tomorrow’s plan to paint the porch rails a bright white with green trim. Jimmy would play alongside him as he worked, and they’d talk about front loaders and power shovels.