#48 Adina, Astrid, Chipewee, Jasmine- Matthew Klam
OK, two days in a row now I’ve read stories about a
loveless marriage of a couple having a child.
At least this one has a somewhat happy ending.
On the first page we see an idyllic picture of 8 month
pregnant Julia: “A cartoonist couldn’t have drawn a more adorable creature”
then a half page later: “You were supposed to slip naturally into the new
shape…But she popped out hugely, and felt like a bear sipping tea.”
The rest of the story is an overly depressing picture of
miserable people during this process. We see Kevin who is a failed videographer
who “thought of the things he’d never be, the speeches he’d never give.” He’s abandoned
a documentary about a young basketball phenom when the kid’s career never
panned out…just like his own. Sad enough, but then we get passages like this:
“He stopped loving Julia when he couldn’t get her pregnant,
but then, after two years of humiliating and expensive $29,000 fertility
process, they’d succeeded, and now that she was pregnant he wished he was
dead.”
Jeez…it’s like a
country song about a drunk dog getting hit by a train comin’ from momma’s
funeral. The whoa-is-me feeling in this story is really over the top. In fact
the whole story is littered with these statement:
“If it got any worse, she would have to kill herself.”
“If she hadn’t been locked up in that place, she’d be dead”
“It would be easier just to die”
“I’m gonna kill her in her sleep”
“—“
“—“
etc.
I didn’t buy anything in this story. Kevin somehow comes home from a trip, doesn’t
check in with his pregnant wife, doesn’t check his messages all night, then
doesn’t find it strange that his 8-month old wife isn’t home after midnight,
etc. There is nothing in this story making us believe he is a capable of that. And I don’t buy the sudden and whole-hearted emotional redemption in the
end. I get that pregnancies are hard for
couples, but there are 7-billion people on the planet, so let’s not pretend
that these characters have been through some new trying human endeavor.
Sorry, I guess I was in the mood for something else, maybe
something with hope and goodness in it. After these last 2, I'm feel pretty sorry for
humanity.
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