Read Recreationally

Behind Us

T/W: abortion, implied domestic abuse

- Inspired by "Flexion" from"Like a House On Fire" by Cate Kennedy -

This one is just a draft; this isn't the final version. The final version was slightly longer and has a better ending.

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The day started as any day normally would; Mrs Slovak looked out the kitchen widow above the sink at her husband, Frank, as he rode the tractor around the field. The wheels seemed to hit the lumps and bumps on the ground full-pelt, trampling everything in it's path. Like a horse that had already bolted, making it impossible to take hold of the reins.

He's going to do himself an injury on that thing someday, she thought to herself.

As her eyes followed her husband being flung around the back of the tractor, completely unrestrained, she couldn't help but feel sick. Something inside of her felt as though it was lurching forward unsteadily, like the tractor tearing through the field. The overwhelming queasiness only seemed to increase with each tiny collision beneath the might of the rubber wheels.

Suddenly, she leaned over the sink as she began to heave and retch. It was unlike Mrs Slovak to get sick; you couldn't go to any doctor in this town unless you wanted your ailment muttered about during school pick-ups or anywhere that warranted small-talk.

"Yup, that's Frank's wife over there. The quiet one. Never even leaves the farm, most days," she would often overhear, whispered about in hushed tones between the aisles of the only grocery store in town.

As she regained composure, she took a fleeting glance at the wall-mounted analogue clock, and figured it was about 7:15am.

Normally she might've dismissed it.

You just ate something off she would tell herself.

You'll feel fine tomorrow.

But today was different. This was the third time this week that she had gotten sick at this exact hour of morning, and she began to feel the same way she did when dark, grey clouds would gather in the sky, threatening to soil everything left outside in the rain.

***

"Good morning, Mrs Slovak!" The young girl behind the counter chirped enthusiastically.

Mrs Slovak, still feeling nauseous from the car ride to the pharmacy, adjusted her slouching posture and tried her hardest to muster a smile.

"Hello, Jenny," She said as she walked towards the counter, immediately overwhelmed by the seemingly endless expanse of shelves filled with boxes and boxes.

"Is Frank okay?" She asked, with innocent concern. Mrs Slovak sighed, remembering that Frank often sent her to pick up his prescriptions for him.

"You know I can't stand that girl who works behind the counter. Always chatting, always poking her nose into everyone's business," he would complain to her whenever she protested. His words rang through her mind when she was asked about him.

"Frank is fine, I'm actually picking something up for me," Mrs Slovak explained, trying to avert her eyes from the girl's curious gaze.

"Sure! What seems to be the problem-"

Mrs Slovak cut her off, eager to end this conversation before giving away too much, by gesturing vaguely towards the shelf of pregnancy tests behind her.

"I'll just take one of those, thanks"

***

"I just don't understand why you didn't just tell me," He snarled down at her as she sat on the edge of the bed, trying her hardest not to cry. For once she just wanted to feel like she was in control, like she was making her own decisions about what she wanted to do. She wanted somebody to care about how she was feeling. But it didn't matter who was in control; the rain would pour down anyway, soiling everything left outside. Whenever she would fight with Frank for all those years, about the most seemingly insignificant things, she always felt like she was ready to fold up his clothes neatly, put them all in a big suitcase and tell him enough was enough. But this time was different. She was scared. She didn't want to do any of this alone. She just wanted someone to tell her that whatever she chose to do, it was going to be okay.

"I was going to tell you, I planned to-"

"But I had to hear it from the goddamn pharmacist first?" His increasing volume startled her, and she began to uncontrollably sob. This is what she was afraid of. The moment she walked into that pharmacy she knew that her life would never be the same again. The whispers and the dirty looks and all of the rumours would be because of this one mistake she made. Immortalised, forever. And the worst part of all of it, worse than having to live in constant shame and ridicule, was that Frank inevitably found out.

All it took was one card sent to the house, addressed to Mr and Mrs Slovak.

"Congratulations!" It read in big, puffy glitter letters. Curiosity got the better of him, enticing him to open the card completely and read the words, "Dear Mr and Mrs Slovak on your recent pregnancy!"

Frank was enraged.

Of course she went around sprouting it all over town before she told me He thought to himself as he slammed the card down on the table and stormed into their room.

He never tried to understand what she was going through. He never understood how much she worried when the sky started darkening, or how hard she worked to make sure that his things would never get rained on.

But it was a lie. She wasn't planning on telling Frank anything. On the ride home from the pharmacy, once the fear and panic had subsided, she thought of the whole plan. The clinic was only a few minutes away. She could make it there and back before Frank got home. She might call her sister, who lived interstate. She could come down for the weekend and drive her, if she wasn't busy. She definitely couldn't call her born-again Christian mother, who would've complained about the commute anyway, and she definitely couldn't ask anyone in town. All of her friends were really just Frank's friends from work or the pub or the other rare places Frank would bother talking to people.

His expression seemed to soften when he noticed her panicked weeping. When he stopped for just a moment, all he could hear were her hiccupping breaths and the sounds of her devastated sobs. He couldn't help but feel almost as broken as she was.

He finally sat down beside her on the edge of the bed in silence. She was almost shocked at the kind gesture. She was used to Frank's sudden outbursts, but she wasn't used to having moments where he tried to understand how she felt. As she felt herself calm down, her breathing becoming more even and the pulling, tense feeling all around her subsiding, she didn't look at him. Her eyes fixed straight ahead on the beige bedroom wall, her head tilted slightly. She was stiff and unmoving, like a porcelain doll sitting on the shelf that is only meant to be looked at and never played with.

"I'm going to drive you away from here. Far away. Nowhere close to here. Somewhere where nobody will recognise us. And we're going to get this taken care of. Okay?" He told her. Normally, she might have thought; Classic frank; laying down the law to me even though I already thought of it first.

But she felt tired, and much too weak and vulnerable to fight with him.

"Okay," she responded, her eyes still fixed straight ahead.

***

The procedure was basically like any other procedure; waiting around in a sterile, grey waiting room, Frank complaining about the smell or the volume of the tiny TV in the corner of the room or whatever it was, while his wife was completely on autopilot. The whole ride to the clinic, she had been building the procedure up in her head, making it seem like the way it did on TV and movies; this big, traumatic event that ends up scarring someone for life, and sometimes, it so much that they can't even go through with it.

But it wasn't anything like it, really. It was as if she kept waiting, and nothing happened. As if she kept thinking that the clouds in the sky were darkening and darkening and getting heavier and heavier, until she realised that the rain wasn't coming at all.

And that was that. It was over. And all of the sudden she found herself back in the backseat of Frank's car again, on the same long, dirt road that brought them there in the first place.

The rain had passed. And everything was okay. But something still felt tense. Every time Frank would take his eyes off the road for just one moment to glance at her, she would instinctively look out the window- never meeting his gaze.

And even though she wouldn't look at him, his words ran through her mind over and over and over again.

"We're putting this behind us,"

The End