Good People

when i have writers block i set a timer for 30 minutes and write fanfiction about stock photos

Well, it hadn’t been the house he wanted. Or the block for that matter. Owen’s father always told him to aim for the worst house in the nicest neighborhood, that’s the one that’ll appreciate the most in value while saving your wallet in the short term. But in her third month of pregnancy, Tessa started having visions – of the walls caving in, the insides thick with mold and still water. She would wake up and hear the swing of a phantom kitchen cabinet creaking open then shut, which happened because the floor was built slanted.

The realtor had walked them through a series of “fixer-uppers” that fit their budget. An impossibly routed bathroom placed between the kitchen and dining room, foundations that “could use a facelift.” Owen had always considered himself handy, in that he’d installed floating shelves once and liked the idea of a garage. Across the table, he’d place a hand over hers and talk about stripping rooms down to the studs and building them back in her image, whatever image she had in mind. But the state of Tessa’s mind had become a political thing and, though she’d never say it aloud, she felt more like the host of a parasite than an expecting mother. She suspected the baby had something to do with the visions.

She told Owen that the baby didn’t like any of those houses. If there was anything she appreciated about this incubation period, it was how much she could get away with. By conjuring the future baby – which surely had no independent mind or preferences, only the ability to remote control her hormones – any request became that of a helpless infant rather than a particular woman. The baby doesn’t like burnt bacon. The baby doesn’t like the fan on low. The baby doesn’t like that house on Maple Street. The baby might build itself an accessory limb or dent its head if we move into that house on Maple Street, I’m afraid.

So Owen, who’d been promised that the burdens of family life make the rewards that much sweeter, took his money out of the S&P 500 and told Tessa that a great aunt had died. This was the kind of thing that happened to good people, Tessa thought as she went to bed that evening. Good people from good families who think ahead and set resources to the side for their progeny. Nevermind the fact that Tessa had grown up in a double-wide trailer with parents who pissed away their paychecks on malt liquor and had died, the way bad people do, in a self-induced car crash that injured no one but a brick half-wall by the gas station. The beautiful thing about marriage, she knew, is that you could become a good family through sheer will and some paperwork. She imagined Owen’s great aunt passing somewhere beautiful, and with her last breath, wishing for a kitchen with a farmhouse sink.