I told him I was going to the store for a gallon of milk. I’d used it all on pancakes, you see. Breakfast foods were his favorite. I think it had something to do with his mother and the way she died. I did go to the store. I didn’t get milk. I got a bag of pistachios, a can of Coke, and a box of tampons. Then I got in the car and I kept driving in some direction away from his house. Our house, it was at one point. It wasn’t about him. This isn’t his story. Nothing was wrong with him, not really. But I didn’t want it anymore, that apple pie life. I wasn’t very good at it, apparently. I thought I was alright, making beautiful cakes and keeping the house clean and staying rosy cheeked and bright eyed. But try as I might, I was unable to produce the 2.5 children necessary to complete our picket fence world. I could feel the eyes of the other women on me at every church social, judging me for the emptiness of my womb. I myself felt no loss or absence. Just embarrassment. Guilt. Always guilt. 

I couldn’t apologize enough to make up for being a half-woman. What else could I do? I never learned to be anything but a wife and a mother. I was never supposed to be anything else. But what do you do when your expected identity is an impossibility? I don’t think I ever wanted anything else. I never knew what else there was to want. I didn’t know I was allowed to want things.

Anyways, I drove for a while, I’m not sure how long. I found a park, and a creek, and I laid down in the grass and ate my chocolate bar and drank my Coke and felt a bit better. I’ll figure out the rest later. As I drifted off to sleep I had one last thought of him. I wonder if he’ll get his pancakes.