Shout Her Lovely Name by Natalie Serber Read Free Book Online Page A

into your second trimester. Would you like to call your husband?” It was a challenge, not an offer. Ruby had seen the woman take in her bare ring finger.
    Ruby swallowed and shook her head no. She was salivating uncontrollably. She hated the way the nurse used the capped end of her pen to sweep her bangs aside.
    The nurse continued speaking, her mouth opening and closing, stringing words together.
    Ruby had begun to pace. She clutched her elbows in opposite hands to keep from shaking. She wanted the appointment to be over, to leave the nurse and the room without crying, without tearing the damn uterus off the wall.
    “Your baby has a beating heart,” the nurse offered, calm and clear and definite.
    Now Ruby heard it. A tiny, tiny pulse, like the start of a headache. Yes, she understood all the implications.
    “Do you have a cigarette?” Ruby asked, her voice faltering.
    “Miss Hargrove, surely you must have suspected?” The nurse walked to the window and parted the blinds. She jabbed her pen toward Ira. “Would you like to bring the father in?”
     
    The revolving door cast Ruby out into the courtyard with the mimosa tree and Ira. He took one look at her pale and stricken face, held a fresh cigarette to his glowing cherry, and then passed it off to her as she came to his side.
    “Poor bunny.”
    She inhaled a long, thirsty drag, her hand shaking.
    “Honey, come here.” Ira held his arms wide to encircle her. Ruby stiffened. She felt stringy, dried up, her muscles tough as jerky, and she had to stay that way. Were she to soften, to accept any small kindness, there would be no pulling away from a disastrous plunge.
    “Don’t talk to me,” she whispered. Each time she brought the cigarette to her lips, her hand shook a little less, and when it was sucked down to the butt, she was still.
    “Look, we can find someone to take care of this.”
    “I’m too far gone.”
    “You want to call anybody? We could go back to the bar and you could call him. ” Ira gave a halfhearted operatic flair to the him. They’d been performing the him aria all summer at the Flamingo Pond. When the bar’s phone rang, they’d belt out, It’s him, and then fight over who should answer, each hoping for a particular boy on the other end of the line. Of course it never was Marco. “Is he still in Europe?”
    “Last time I saw him he wouldn’t even stay for breakfast.” Her heart beat against her ribs just as it had the morning she watched Marco pull on his blue jeans, even out his shirttails, and button from the bottom up. She watched from bed, wrapped in sheets that smelled of sex, sour and metallic. “He just got up, and kissed my forehead.” All their partings made her anxious. “Didn’t even tell me he was leaving for Europe.” It was the first time she’d admitted his omission to herself or to anyone else. Until now she’d tried to tell herself she just hadn’t heard him say it, or it had slipped his mind.
    The wind picked up bits of leaves, paper scraps, and fallen petals from the brick courtyard. She watched the debris rise and then collapse.
    “What about your parents?”
    “That’s a joke. My dad’s too busy being a prick and my mom’s too busy letting him. It’s all melodrama. I don’t know what . . .” It started to rain. “Shit.” The clouds broke open the way they do in Florida in August and within seconds they were drenched. Steam rose up from the ground in front of them. She smeared her bangs off her forehead. “Ira, see you at the Pond. I’ve got to walk.”
    “Wait. I’ve got nowhere to be.” This was an event for him, a chance to be loyal.
    She patted his wet shirt to show she didn’t question his sincerity. “No, I’ll be in later.” She held her cheek out for him to kiss. “Thanks for coming.”
    Her feet slapped one in front of the other down the buckling sidewalk, past the pastel clapboard houses with weathervanes and widow’s walks. Did women throw themselves from roofs? She