Sweet Affliction by Anna Leventhal

The choices people make. I’m not sure I understand myself. What good does it do, to talk about the wrongs of the past? To make ourselves relive them over and over. We only fuel our anger that way. You don’t fight fire with fire. You fight fire with
water.
”
    â€œIf you’re going to hit me,” Maitland said, “can I at least pull over first?”
    Sylvie began to cry. She cried quietly, so as not to wake the children.
    â€œYou want me to be angry at you,” she said finally, “but I refuse. I am not that kind of person.”
    â€œOkay,” Maitland said.
    They went on in silence. Sylvie tried to feel sadness or sympathy for that girl so many years ago, the one betrayed by a friend who liked her too much, but found she could muster only a detached pity.
    â€œWhat’s the point?” she said again.
    A pair of yellow eyes appeared fifty feet in front of the windshield. Sylvie heard Maurice say a single word,
Papa
, and then Maitland was swerving into the oncoming lane. There was a clattering sound that seemed to be coming from inside Sylvie’s body but was not, and her fetus flipped a full one hundred and eighty degrees and arched its body like a fish. The tires skidded on the moist pavement and then the anti-lock mechanism clicked in, the car swung out and around, and suddenly they were motionless on the outside shoulder, facing the wrong direction. Sylvie did and did not want to turn around. She did, slowly. Christine was still asleep in her carrier, her bangs stuck to her hot forehead. Sylvie touched her cheek, and she fluttered her lids and sighed. Maurice was wide-eyed. “What was it?”
    â€œIt was a deer,” Sylvie said.
    â€œThere are no deer in this park,” Maitland said. “It must have been a dog.”
    â€œA big dog,” Maurice said. “Maybe it was a werewolf.”
    â€œMaybe,” Maitland said.
    â€œDid we hit it?”
    â€œNo,” said Maitland. “
Calisse
, that was close.” His hands were shaking. He rested them on the steering wheel and bent his head forward onto his wrists.
    â€œIt was a deer,” Sylvie said.

Helga Volga
    When Abby and Marcus walk home they do this thing where they pretend they’ve just met and are going home together for the first time.
    â€œThis your place?” Abby says.
    â€œYup,” says Marcus.
    â€œNice.”
    â€œThanks,” says Marcus. “I try to keep up.”
    It’s not as funny as it used to be, but Abby thinks they’re both afraid of what will happen if they stop.
    I can’t talk about it right now,
Marcus said.
    They live together but they’re not married and never will be, because they don’t believe in things like obligation. At least Marcus doesn’t, and Abby is more or less indifferent. It didn’t seem to matter when they first met, because when they got together it was with the sense of being superior creatures who didn’t need rules. They attended friends’ weddings with mildly amused condescension. They ate their cake and drank their mojitos and toasted themselves and their ungovernable love. But last June Abby watched her childhood best friend walk down the aisle and thought, there’s something sexy about a contract.
    And then this morning, he calls her from work.
    I have to tell you something bad, but I can’t talk about it right now.
    There is no response to this, or at least none that will not lead to an argument. Isn’t it funny how you can find yourself saying words that if you heard them on a TV sitcom you would turn to your partner and go “Oh please, that’s not how real people talk.”
    So Abby said, “Yes honey, of course, we’ll talk later.”
    She puts Stacey in the highchair and tries to feed her a grilled cheese while Stacey makes noises like a pterodactyl. These days everyone’s giving their baby girls old-fashioned names: Olive, Maude, Mabel, Gladys,