Red Girl Rat Boy by Cynthia Flood

it.
    He did the hunting. Often she came along, still happy though sickish-dazed from The Pill.
    Distinctive 1 BR suite even had a pantry. They moved in.
    By then Julie could, just, see around him.
    Also she knew she had never filled Jeremy’s vision.
    Sort-of arguments began, about The Pill. He, after research that took a lot of time away from his work, decided on condoms and foam.
    In the distinctive building’s entry, ceramic tiles formed octagons in a complex black-and-white arrangement. Stained glass. No elevator, no laundry room. The brass doorplates and fir floors were original.
    â€œI checked.” Satisfied, Jeremy closed the pantry door to work for hours so they could get ahead.
    The paned windows stood tall, Julie not. They and the floors gleamed (she made sure of that), yet the elegant life once lived in these turn-of-the-century Vancouver rooms did not seem like anything she could match.
    â€œWhat about a baby?”
    â€œNo, not yet. “
    â€œWhen?”
    â€œNot yet!”
    Every time, Julie did not start a third interchange. Did she lack character? She did hunger for concord. They settled, kind of, on soon.
    To be alone so much was still surprising. The magazines suggested picking one room each day, in rotation, for special cleaning. Julie did that. She ordered dress patterns, clipped recipes. Dinner was quite good sometimes. When Jeremy stayed late at the law office, she’d get into bed to wait, wanting him.
    The spermicidal foam oozed all over the bed linen. Back and forth Julie walked to the laundromat, never meeting the same people there.
    â€œYou’re pregnant?”
    Jeremy couldn’t or wouldn’t believe she hadn’t tricked him.
    â€œGot your way, again.” He slapped at the want ads, some red-circled. “I have no time for this. Can you at least follow up?”
    Did again mean he hadn’t wanted to marry?
    Julie followed up, went further.
    Of the place she found, he said, “It’ll do for the time being.”
    What could time do but be?
    Jeremy conceded the value of 2 BR nr shops, bus, beach, although old frame houses with lacy trim had been bulldozed to make space for the mod apt tower . He deplored and Julie smiled at the lobby’s earnest mural of a tropical sunset, the palm trees etched on the mirror by the mailboxes.
    Of 1 prkg he said, “Too bad you were careless. No money for that now.”
    Their own decor did please him. All paint and textiles and floor coverings were bone. Not the red lumps that dogs gnaw on, Julie knew that. White trim.
    â€œPerfect neutrals. You do see how they don’t call attention to themselves?”
    The look of their Danish coffee table by the picture window also pleased Jeremy, for the north-east light enhanced the teak’s grain. He removed their white cups to the kitchen as soon as they were empty.
    â€œIf only we were higher up.” He opened his briefcase.
    Under new mgmt.
    â€œThat’s you!” Silently Julie teased the hidden kicking child. “You get the second BR.” Jeremy’s desk, electric typewriter, file cabinet lived in the master.
    The elevator too was soundless. Eyes closed, Julie couldn’t tell whether the movement was up or down. The little tale she made of this uncertainty failed to amuse her husband after his stressful day in court.
    â€œDo you mean that?” Jeremy asked.
    He asked the question again when the baby’s crying made Julie worry about the neighbours. “This building’s solid concrete. I guess construction is another thing you just can’t understand?”
    Still Julie couldn’t forget his pallor after the delivery, his joyful tears as he phoned long-distance to tell his parents and hers about James, while she trembled after a labour not much like that in the natural childbirth book.
    Nor did she forget how they two began, at her sunny Kits bach gt view. Unusually for a girl, she’d had her own apartment.