"The Fourth Trimester" by Johnny Ostentatious

Samantha Marr sat in the restaurant Au Arret on Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The Philadelphia Art Museum was visible from here, even though it was over a mile away.

At Samantha’s table were two of her sorority sisters, Kim Patterson and Linda Viola.

“I’d like to present a toast,” Kim said, raising her wineglass. “To the two best friends I ever had.”

“Here, here,” Linda said, sipping her wine.

“Ten years after college, and we’re still all able to balance our hectic lives to make time for these occasional get-togethers.”

They clinked glasses. Clink, clink, clink.

“What’s wrong?” Linda asked, mouth and nose visually blurred by the wineglass she gulped from.

“Oh, nothing,” Samantha said. “I thought I heard something.” She glanced at the kitchen.

“Well, drink up,” Linda said. “there’s nothing like going on a shopping spree with a little buzz on.”

Samantha gave Linda a polite smile, the same smile she gave men on first dates.

“So,” Kim said to Samantha, “how’s the bank treating you?”

“Pretty well. I just received a promotion.”

“Congratulations!”

“You go, girl!” Linda said.

Samantha said, “I’m now vice-president of northeastern operations.”

“Wow,” Kim said, “impressive title. More responsibilities?”

“Some. I still have to work eighty-hour weeks, but I’m delegating more.”

“You the man!” Linda said, finishing off the wine.

“Oh,” Kim said to Samantha, “did I tell you? Tanner’s been accepted at Whitman Academy.”

“That’s great!” Samantha said.

“Whitman Academy?” Linda slurred slightly. “What’s that?”

“It’s an exclusive school in Olde City,” Kim explained. “The public-relations woman said M. Night Shyamalan went there.”

“Shylama what?” Linda asked.

“He directed The Sixth Sense and The Village.”

Linda scrunched up her face. “I didn’t like The Village. It was so gay.”

Samantha said to Kim, “Will Tanner be starting in the first grade?”

Kim nodded. “His placement tests have him in advanced classes. Scott and I are so proud of our little Tanner.”

Samantha smiled. She was so happy for Ki—

Samantha froze. She thought she heard something. Wait, there it was again.

Maaooouuuuu. . . .

Samantha clutched the end of the tablecloth, under the table, above her knee.

“Sam, are you all right?” Kim touched Samantha’s elbow. “You’re pale as a ghost.”

“Yeah,” Linda said loudly, “you’re whiter than Clay Aiken.”

“I’m. . . .” Samantha put a hand to her face—thumb on chin, index finger on temple and palm over mouth. Perspiration formed on her philtrum. The sounds of the restaurant intensified: spoons clanging on soup bowls, chairs moving across the floor and a dozen conversations merging into one cacophonous wave.

Samantha gained composure when a waitress whizzed past the table with a plateful of steaming garlic bread. Its smell was powerful enough to wake Alexander Hamilton from his grave.

“I’m fine,” Samantha said. “I think I’ve had too much wine.”

“Oooo,” Linda piped in, “more for me.”

Kim held Samantha’s hand. “You sure you’re OK?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“OK.” Kim let go of Samantha’s hand. Samantha wondered if her friend felt how sweaty her palm was. She had to. How could you not.

The waiter, who looked like a young Jon Stewart, dropped off a new bottle of wine.

“About time,” Linda said. She filled their wineglasses. When reaching for Samantha’s glass, Linda said, “Know what you looked like a minute ago when you were all pale?”

Samantha looked at her own lap and shook her head.

“Like you had morning sickness or something.”

“Linda!” Kim said, sitting up ramrod straight.

“What?”

“I swear, sometimes I think you suffer from a recurring bout of foot-in-mouth disease.”

“What,” Linda said, “what? What I say?”

Kim gave Linda the kind of look a teacher gives an ignorant child.

“Oh,” Linda said.

“No more for you.” Kim grabbed the wine and ice bucket and placed it between herself and Samantha.

“What’s the big deal, anyway?” Linda said. “That was over ten years ago.”

“Forget it. Let’s just move on.” Kim shoved a morsel of salmon in her mouth. “So what do you two think of Dr. Phil?”

“Ooo, yuck,” Linda said. “He looks like a pervert at a karaoke bar.”

Samantha didn’t reply. She hunched over her plate, fighting back tears.

* * *

Eight o’clock that night, Samantha coasted into the driveway of her three-bedroom house in Rittenhouse Square. She usually put her Porsche in the garage, but tonight she didn’t feel like groping around in the glovebox for the garage door’s remote control, so she parked in the driveway.

Samantha lumbered out of the Porsche, shopping bags in tow. After the less-than-festive lunch, she, Kim and Linda had driven down to the Shops at Liberty Place. Things were a little tense at first, but after perusing a few window displays, the mood lightened. Of course, it helped that Linda sobered up slightly. She even apologized for her morning sickness remark. Samantha quickly accepted the apology.

Presently, Samantha stood at her front door. Since it was the second week of January, the temperature wasn’t kind to human skin. Samantha would’ve hugged herself, except her hands held six shopping bags. She placed three of the bags down and lifted her hand to the keypad above the doorbell. She punched in a four-digit code. The little red light on the keypad turned green. The house alarm was suspended for 30 seconds. Samantha unlocked the front door.

The foyer was dark. Samantha turned on the light switch above the painting of the Franklin Mint. She hauled her shopping bags into the living room, dropped them on the coffee table that doubled as a fish tank for her piranha, then collapsed onto the couch. She kicked off her shoes and rubbed her stockinged feet together. She lay like that for a couple minutes until Linda’s remark reverbed inside her head.

It looked like you had morning sickness.

Samantha groaned off the couch and glided into the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator. An unopened bottle of Chianti sat on the top shelf next to a container of leftover shrimp chow mein.

Samantha poured the wine into an eight-ounce glass with a sunflower pattern. She sipped the Chianti while leaning against the kitchen counter.

Linda’s remark probably wouldn’t have upset Samantha so much, except today was the thirteenth anniversary of it. Samantha remembered the abortion in explicit detail. But what she remembered even more were the events leading up to the conception.

* * *

The year was 1991. Samantha was a quarter of the way through her junior year of college. Things were going well. She was on the dean’s list and next semester she would intern once a week at the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. She couldn’t wait.

Currently, Samantha was at the Fall Formal, the college’s biannual dance. Seth Morriss approached.

“Hey, Samantha. How are ya?”

“Fine. Yourself?”

“Not bad, not bad.”

Seth was an underweight city slicker from Northeast Philly. He had hairy hands, buck teeth and a large forehead. Seth was in Samantha’s gym class. He had the coordination of a mime on crack. Nonetheless, he was a nice guy. Eager to please.

“Oh,” Seth said, “did I tell ya? This great album just came in.”

Seth was a DJ at the college radio station.

“It’s by this band called Nirvana. The album’s called Nevermind. It’s fantastic!”

“Really,” Samantha said.

“Yeah, it’s poppy but punk, you know? I’ve listened to it at least once a day since it came in last week.”

Samantha nodded. She didn’t know why Seth always talked to her about music. It never meant much to her. Sure, she would listen to the radio during long car rides, but Seth and the few friends he had lived for music. They collected CDs, went to shows and had profanity-laced debates on which of their beloved obscure bands should be more well-known. They were obsessed about music the way other boys were fanatical about sports. And Samantha couldn’t help but notice that Seth and his friends were binge drinkers. It was almost as if the music and the booze were filling an emotional void.

“Would you like to. . . .” Seth began.

Samantha waited.

Seth cleared his throat. “Would you like to dance?”

“Sure.”

The DJ was playing INXS’s “Never Tear Us Apart”. On the dance floor, Seth’s clammy palms rested on Samantha’s lower back—the top half of her dress was a halter-top.

During the song, and for the rest of the night, Seth complimented Samantha and was very attentive to her. She appreciated the attention. Most boys on campus ignored her due to her habit of being assiduous and aggressive in class. She wasn’t timid when asking questions, even if it meant holding the class up a minute after the lecture officially ended. Behavior like that had labeled her the Campus Cunt. She didn’t mind. After college she would have a career. She wouldn’t have to depend on a man for financial support like her mom, whose alimony was so paltry that she had to take public transit everywhere.

After the Formal, there was a party at Samantha’s sorority house. Samantha and Seth eventually wound up in her room, having sex. Samantha forgot how great sex felt. It had been over a year since she had the one-night stand with that surfer while spending the summer down the shore. Before that, it was with her high-school boyfriend, Biff. So that made Seth number three.

At her climax, Samantha bit into Seth’s shoulder. She drew blood but didn’t care—neither die he, apparently. Afterwards, Samantha laughed until the Resident Assistant next door banged on the wall, telling her to “shut the fuck up!”

* * *

Unlike the surfer, Samantha’s sexual encounter with Seth wasn’t a one-night stand. They saw each other exclusively throughout the school year and over the summer. On July fourth, at the fireworks down at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia, Seth said he loved her. Samantha said it back, not really meaning it. While she enjoyed his company, she didn’t think she loved him. Maybe she was incapable of love. Maybe the verbal abuse she received growing up from her father and mother—her father mostly—prevented her from ever loving anyone. Whatever the case, as soon as she told Seth she loved him, she knew there was no turning back. It was the collegiate version of I do.

That night, Samantha and Seth sat on the steps of her mother’s house in South Philly. They chitchatted about everything from the fireworks to the upcoming school year. Eventually, Seth got ready to catch his bus. He told Samantha he loved her again, adding, “You make me so happy.” She didn’t know how to respond to that, so she grinned, hoping it showed flattery instead of shock. It must have because he did something he never did before, something straight out of a Cary Grant movie. Before departing, Seth kissed Samantha on the forehead.

* * *

In October of their senior year, Samantha and Seth went to the Fall Formal as a couple. They cut out early to dash up to a room in the hotel they reserved for the night. The door to their room was barely closed when they began to disrobe. Samantha led Seth over to the Queen-size waterbed and instructed him through the most erotic, passionate lovemaking since their first night together. The festivities didn’t end until six hours later, at 3 A.M.

* * *

A month later, the janitor stumbled over Seth in the library bathroom. Seth was dead from a drug overdose. Samantha found out from Linda Viola in their dorm’s living room. After hearing the news, Samantha vomited on the TV, which was airing the Nirvana video “Drain You”. Samantha’s cafeteria dinner—fishcakes and French fries—dripped down the screen, veiling Kurt Cobain’s peach-fuzz chin.

Over the next week, Samantha did a lot of thinking. She concluded that Seth’s overdose wasn’t suicidal but accidental. He loved her too much to kill himself. But why was he still doing drugs? Maybe he had one of those obsessive-compulsive personalities.

Ten days after the overdose, Samantha started going back to class. She was a bit worried at first because when dating Seth her grade point average had rose from 3.5 to a 4.0. But that concern soon took a backseat.

A week before Thanksgiving, Samantha discovered she was pregnant.

* * *

Samantha gulped down the rest of her Chianti. She quit thinking about Seth and college. If she didn’t quit jogging down memory lane, the visit to the abortion clinic during her senior Christmas break would have crystallized to the minutest detail. And Samantha didn’t want to relive the doctor’s probing fingers, the cold operating table and the blasting air-conditioning that had made her sweat. She had monthly nightmares of it. There was no reason to catapult those memories to her conscious. Keep them where they belonged. In the subterranean depths of her subconscious.

Samantha refilled her glass halfway with Chianti and headed upstairs. She lived alone. Hadn’t dated in over a year.

In her bedroom, she polished off the wine and prepared to take a bath. That’s when she heard it.

Maooouuuu. . . .

The same sound she had heard in the restaurant.

Samantha shrugged it off and stepped into the bathroom. She sat on the edge of the tub, legs crossed, and turned on the hot water, except cold water came out.

“Come on.”

Samantha cut the hot water and turned on the cold water. Appropriately enough, cold water poured out. Leaving the cold water on, she turned the hot-water handle back on. She placed her hand under the spigot. Arctic-temperature water gushed out.

“Stupid water company,” Samantha said into her collarbone. She lowered her head and covered her mouth with her hand. Tears brimmed at her eyelashes but didn’t fall. All she wanted was a nice, warm bath. Was that so much to ask for?

Sighing, Samantha unplugged the drain. With a groan, she stood up and left the bathroom. In the hallway, she screamed.

In front of her doorway lay a skeleton the size of an infant. It had a big head, short arms and no hip or legs. It slowly lifted its head up. Samantha tugged on the towel wrapped around her. She didn’t know how, but this infant’s eyeball-less sockets stared at her. Samantha’s legs turned to ground meat. She clutched the bathroom doorway for support.

The infant unlocked its jaw. Even though it had no tongue or vocal chords, a sound emitted:

“Maaooouuuum.”

Samantha’s heart pumped so hard that she swore her earlobes were vibrating.

The infant spoke again, this time more clearly.

“Moooomee.”

It raised a bony hand and its metallic voice spoke once more:

“Mommy. . . .”

“No,” Samantha said, sprinting down the hallway and down the steps. She tripped at the foot of the stairs, her shoulder slamming into the newel, towel unwrapping from her body. A drop of blood dripped down the white newel. She touched her forehead. She was bleeding. How did that happen?

“Mommy. . . .”

Samantha would have to worry about her bleeding forehead later. She grabbed her terrycloth towel off the hardwood floor and scurried on her hands and knees to behind the living-room couch, next to the dining room.

“Mommy. . . .”

Samantha crawled some more, squatting under the dining-room window. The lacy curtain tickled her hip. She brought the bath towel to her chest, wringing it.

“Mommy. . . .”

Oh God, oh God, it was getting closer! Samantha paused. It wasn’t. . . . No, it wasn’t working its way downstairs, was it?

“Got to hide, got to hide,” Samantha muttered. But where?

Her aborted baby came into view. (She realized that now. What else could it be?) It was crawling, following her trail by sniffing, even though it technically had no nose. It crawled using its hands, head bowed; its tail of a spine aiding the crawl by pushing in the motion of a wave.

Samantha dashed into the kitchen, bare feet screeching on the cold tile. She paced for a moment before deciding to hide under the kitchen counter. In this compartment, she usually stored cases of beer, but she hadn’t entertained in a while, so it was empty and large enough to hide in. She slid the door close.

“Mommy. . . .”

Samantha shut her eyes and covered her ears with the bath towel. She sat on her butt, legs pulled in. Her hot breath created condensation on her knees.

“Oh God,” she whispered, “please, God, make it go away. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please, I’ll never ask for anything else as long as I live.”

Samantha opened her eyes. She had trouble seeing at first because of her tears. Once her vision cleared, she gulped.

Outside the compartment was her aborted baby. She saw its outline clearly, even though the cabinet door was similar to a shower door, where objects on the other side looked distorted.

“Mommy?”

Samantha began hyperventilating. She dug her nails into her shins and scrunched her toes to the point of painful charley horses.

“Mommy?”

The aborted baby pressed its nose against the door. Its shadow stretched across the inside of the compartment. Samantha pressed back as far as possible. A frigid pipe touched her shoulder.

The aborted baby removed its nose from the door. It clawed for the circular hole to open the door. It found the hole. Samantha gasped. The baby’s skeletal index finger, smelling of placenta, poked through the hole.

“Mommy,” the aborted baby said, this time with assurance.

It opened the door. Kitchen light spilled in. Samantha blinked.

The aborted baby stood on its tail. Head cocked to the side, its arms waving in excitement.

“Mommy!”

Samantha stopped hyperventilating. She asked:

“What do you want?”

“To crawl back inside of you,” the aborted baby said.

“No!”

“Yesssss.”

It grabbed her by the feet. Samantha scrambled for something to grab onto. Oh my God! It’s so strong!

The aborted baby pulled her legs out of the cabinet and spread them, then began its ascent.

“No!” Samantha said.

She took the bath towel, wrapped the aborted baby in it and threw both in the freezer.

“Mommy,” the aborted baby said loudly, as if the freezer door was open.

Naked, Samantha ran out of the house. The house alarm beeped and wailed. At the driveway, she said, “Shit!” and ran back into the foyer to grab her purse. She heard the refrigerator/freezer rocking back and forth, smashing dishes and wine bottles. Not caring to investigate, she slammed the front door behind her and ran back to the driveway. At her Porsche, she rummaged through her purse for her car keys. She was shaking so much that she kept grabbing her diaphragm. It clung to her perspiring palm. She shook it off and returned to digging for her keys, but she still wasn’t having any luck; it was too dark out.

“Motherfucker!”

Samantha turned her purse upside-down. The contents spilled onto the driveway. She knelt down and found her keys immediately. She tried unlocking the driver door, but she was shaking so much that she couldn’t insert tab A into slot B. She used two hands to perform the job, however, when the key finally made contact with the hole, a loud BANG erupted from inside the house. Samantha jumped.

What was that that? Did the aborted baby rock the refrigerator/freezer so hard that it tipped over? Samantha wasn’t sure, and she wasn’t going to stick around to find out. She knew that in novels the heroine would confront the aborted baby and battle it if necessary, but this was real life and Samantha felt no need to play V.I. Warshawski.

Samantha went to insert the car key fully into the lock. Wait. Where’d the keys go? They weren’t in her hand. She must’ve dropped them again. She bent down and saw the keys lying near her rear driver-side tire. They were in her yard, off the driveway, in a patch of soot-covered snow. She snatched them up (surprisingly, the snow was neither cold nor wet) and unlocked the car door.

The Porsche’s leather seat gave Samantha’s naked skin goosebumps. She didn’t care. Had to get out of here. Go anywhere. Didn’t matter.

The engine turned over. Samantha looked up to make sure she shut the door. Yes.

The house alarm still wailed. On the front porch, the dual security floodlights flashed alternately.

Samantha took the Porsche out of park. She glanced at the front door one more time. It was creaking open.

Samantha hit the gas as if stepping on a robust cockroach. She smelled burning rubber and oil. The Porsche barreled down the driveway. It came to an unexpected stop on the street.

* * *

Samantha stared at her lawyer. He was in his early fifties. His name was Eddie Polec. He had curly, black hair and a mole on the right side of his flat nose. His youngest son had recently been accepted by Harvard. Eddie would have no trouble paying the tuition. He was one of Philadelphia’s busiest lawyers. Most of Eddie’s clients were South Philly mobsters.

“It doesn’t look good, kid,” Eddie said.

“I know,” Samantha said. She was wearing her prison garb. She spoke to Eddie in a room the size of her house’s upstairs bathroom. Yesterday, she sold her house for half of the asking price. She had been in no position to negotiate. Her court date was next week.

“We have limited options,” Eddie said.

Samantha stared at her handcuffed wrists.

“I mean,” Eddie said, “when the police showed up, you were nude, had alcohol on your breath and were incoherent, muttering about an aborted baby.”

“I know,” Samantha mumbled.

Samantha still couldn’t believe that at the moment she was torpedoing in reverse down her driveway, Kim Patterson was coasting by, considering a surprise visit. Kim’s Neon was idling in the street when Samantha’s Porsche rammed into her passenger door, killing upon impact Kim’s only child, Tanner.

Eddie coughed into his manicured hand. “We’re fortunate that Kim Patterson refuses to testify against you. That diminishes the D.A.’s case slightly.”

“What are you saying?”

“The best I can do is life in prison with no parole.”

[[END]]

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