I stared into my iced tea and watched the ice cubes move back and forth, clinking against each other. The sound of it was almost like music, but so faint that I had to strain to hear it, like when you catch just the faintest hint of a great song from some distant radio. There was a conversation going on around me, but I couldn’t follow it. I imagined that was probably because I hadn’t eaten anything that day, but there wasn’t a lot I could do about that.
“Aren’t you ordering anything, man?” One of the guys in the band we’d just met the night before asked. I could remember neither the band’s name nor his name. We were in Austin for South By Southwest, which was something of an annual tradition for us. We owed so much to that festival, practically our whole career, so at least one of us always went each year. It was like a pilgrimage of sorts, a near-religious experience, paying homage to the rock gods.
“He’s fasting for two,” Taylor replied. When the guy stared at him quizzically, Taylor added, “His wife’s pregnant, so Lent is all on him this year.”
The guy nodded, but still seemed perplexed. I supposed it was odd; although most of the family had started attending church more regularly since we had already settled down and gotten married, Isaac and Taylor weren’t nearly as devout as Kate and I had become. When it came to certain aspects of the Orthodox faith, I was always the odd man out even within my own family. It wasn’t like I was fasting entirely, though, but since my brothers hadn’t bothered to choose a vegan restaurant, I was shit out of luck for this particular meal.
When we lost the baby, it seemed natural to seek comfort in religion. My family had all discovered the Orthodox church earlier that year, but Kate took to it faster and harder than anyone else. It was quieter and based more on rules and regulations than the fire and brimstone she’d been raised on. It gave her a sort of comfort that I knew I couldn’t, and for that, I embraced it, too. If it could save her, maybe it could save me.
It hadn’t yet.
It did, however, give me an excuse to just not eat without people looking at me like I was crazy. I had noticed something funny over the last few years. If you’re relatively happy with yourself, unconcerned about a few extra pounds around the middle, people will take any opportunity to put you down, even if they think it’s just a joke. But when you try to eat healthier, maybe exercise a little, suddenly you’re crazy and don’t need to lose any weight at all.
You just can’t win. I just can’t win.
But at least right now, on a fast day, all I need to do is mention Lent and no one bats an eye when I skip a meal or nibble on a few dry vegetables and little else.
“Yo, Zac,” a voice said, and it took me a moment to recognize that it belonged to my brother Isaac. “You in there?”
“Not really,” I replied, which seemed to make everyone laugh, even if it wasn’t really a joke.
“We were just talking about hitting this bar down the street,” one of the guys whose names I still didn’t know
said.
I shook my head. “Not for me. Not right now.”
“He can’t drink until Lent is over,” Taylor explained. “So basically, he’s no fun right now.”
I rolled my eyes at that, but didn’t dispute it. What was the point? Whatever they thought of me wouldn’t even come close to the reality, and I didn’t want them to know the reality anyway. Deflecting, making up excuses and cracking jokes came all too easily to me, even when I wasn’t trying. The more the lies kept coming, the less people paid attention to what I wasn’t saying. It was just too easy to deceive them all, even my own brothers.
No one thought twice about me turning down their offer to continue the party elsewhere, and so we all parted ways quickly, my brothers off to get shitfaced and me on my way back to the hotel with another plan. I had picked up some good weed from one of our former opening acts who I happened to run into earlier that day, and I knew it was a strain that didn’t give me particularly bad munchies. My fast was safe, and I could relax for the rest of the day before starting the media circus all over again in the morning.
My hotel balcony was a bit of a joke, given that it faced an alley, but the lack of a view was made up for in privacy. I pushed my chair back against the wall, just in case anyone was looking, and lit up my pipe right there on the balcony of the seventh floor. Just a few hits, enough to take the edge off. Maybe I would hit it again before I went to bed, because it always helped me sleep. That little remedy got me through even the worst nights stuck on the tour bus. Hotels were never as comfortable as my bed at home, especially when I was all alone, so a little sleep aid was called for then as well.
Once I was pleasantly numb, I sat the pipe down and pulled out my phone. It probably wasn’t the best time to call Kate, not in my current state, but I had a sudden urge to hear her voice. It took just a few rings for her to answer.
“Hello?”
“Hey, babe,” I said. “Just thought I’d check in. Everybody else went out to party without me.”
Kate laughed softly. “Poor baby. At least I bet you can see your own feet right now.”
“Only because it’s a fast week,” I replied.
“Mmm, and I had Rocky Road for breakfast.” Kate’s shit-eating grin was practically audible.
“You’re going to miss being able to get away with that, aren’t you?”
She sighed. “I suppose. But I think the reward for all these months of morning sickness and backaches will be worth giving up the junk food.”
“I’m so proud of you, baby,” I said softly. “I dunno, maybe that’s weird to say. I just mean… god, I don’t know how you’re doing it. I’d be so scared. I am so scared. Like, I don’t wanna touch you, breath on you or look at you wrong, like somehow that’s going to screw everything up. If I’m this scared now, what the hell am I gonna do with an actual little baby I could drop or hurt or—”
“But you won’t,” she cut me off. “You won’t drop him. Or her. You won’t hurt our baby. The fact that you’re so scared just shows how much you care, and I love you so much for that, Zac. And for everything. For sticking by me through all of this, through all of the… the… you know.”
I did know. I knew exactly what she meant. It took nearly a year for her to get pregnant again, after months of tests, special diets and prayers. We did everything, including some very acrobatic positions that I didn’t think you would find even in the Kamasutra. We tried anything and everything that claimed it could help us conceive again, and we had only just now, now that she’d entered her third trimester, exhaled and accepted that this really was happening. We really were going to have a baby.
And I was scared shitless.
I couldn’t explain all of my fears to Kate, but it wasn’t really fear of inexperience. I had enough siblings; I knew how to handle babies. That wasn’t the real problem. The real problem was… well, this kid shared my genes. And my genes contained a lot of fucked up thoughts and self destructive habits, and I didn’t think I was the only member of my family who could say that. It wasn’t a fluke. It was something I could pass on to a kid, and that made me feel so selfish for wanting to have kids at all. What right did I have to saddle a tiny, helpless human being with the sort of problems I had?
But Kate… she was perfect. So I could only hope her genes won out over mine.
“Thank you so much,” I practically whispered. “I love you so much, Katie. And our baby. I love our baby so much already.”
“I know you do. I do, too.” She sniffled, and I felt a twinge of guilt for making her cry, even if it wasn’t necessarily a bad sort of cry.
“I think maybe we’ll be alright,” I said softly.
“I think so, too,” she said. “And I also think I’m going to waddle my fat ass to the kitchen and have some of those frozen corndogs of yours.”
“Aww, no fair!” I replied. “You know those are my favorite.”
Kate giggled. “And you’re not here to eat them. Too bad, so sad.”
“You’ll pay for this,” I said, but we both knew it was a hollow threat.
“Yeah, yeah,” Kate replied. “Love you, too.”
“Love you,” I said. “I’ll talk to you later, okay? Because it’s bad enough to know you’re eating my corndogs. I don’t think I could handle hearing it, too.”
We said our goodbyes and I reached for my pipe again. Maybe just a few more hits. It was almost sundown, the end of my fast for the day. A pizza would hit the spot, I decided. Pizza, weed and video games. A nearly perfect night in my world.
It would have been even better if Kate had been there, though. I knew I leaned on her too much and depended on her too much for my happiness, but I didn’t know what else to do. Sometimes I felt so guilty for it, when I knew that what she had gone through over the last year and a half was even worse than what I’d experienced. But she seemed so strong, so faithful and so resilient. She was all the things I wasn’t sure I could ever be.
But maybe, just maybe, if I clung to her, I could somehow absorb some of that strength. Maybe I could learn to be like her, and I could support her the way she supported me. Sometimes I wondered if she knew just how much I depended on her to hold me together, but I didn’t dare ever tell her. She might have seemed strong, but what would it take to break her? I didn’t want to know, and I damn sure didn’t want to do anything to put a crack in that perfect façade.