Spilled Wine

The Red Dress Club is writing about jealousy this week, and I chose to continue Greta's (fictional) story.  As always, concrit is appreciated.  Also, let me know if you are getting tired of Greta!  I definitely plan on following through with her story, but I can do it outside of the weekly prompts if it's becoming cumbersome.

Her phone rang, vibrating to life on the sterile granite countertop. Greta picked up the phone automatically, glancing around the kitchen with a grimace. There were no dinner dishes littering the counter or sink or dishwasher. James was working late. Again. Cheerios and Cabernet could be consumed without using the stove or microwave or any of the expensive, newlywed-gifted cookware languishing away in cupboards, collecting dust instead of memories.

Seeing her brother’s name on the phone’s display screen buckled her knees, and the phone clattered back to the counter before she could press the button to answer the call. Even with over three weeks to prepare herself for this, Greta had managed to block her sister-in-law’s due date from her mind.

Sinking to the floor, her chin fell onto her knees, her hands pressed into her temples to force the unwanted images from springing into consciousness.

The positive pregnancy test. James’ elated hug that lifted her from her feet and left her spinning with joy on the other side of the apartment. Her first doctor’s appointment, where she quickly calculated she would deliver their baby about six months after Paul and Louise’s little girl, her first niece, would come into the world. Giggling with James over whether their baby would be a girl or a boy and deciding not to find out until the doctor announced the news in a bustling delivery room.

The cramps. The blood. The almost scalding water that ran cold before James could pull her off the shower floor into a plush cream-colored towel. Later, that towel had to be thrown down their trash chute along with her expectations about becoming a mother and maybe even about staying a wife.

Emptiness. Physical, then emotional, then physical and emotional as James stayed later and later at work, despite scattered mentions of dropped clients and a lightened workload.

An anonymous baby’s cry flying across a restaurant, smacking her in the heart.

Louise’s baby shower, when Greta told herself that Paul must not have told Louise about her miscarriage. If Louise would have known, she wouldn’t, couldn’t have coyly chatted about passing along carefully crocheted blankets and impossibly tiny booties to “our baby girl’s future cousin!”

Torn between wanting to be happy for Louise and wanting to bargain with God to somehow get her baby back. Torn between being genuinely happy for Paul and the gnawing, ugly feeling of wanting Louise’s pregnancy to gestate for an extra hundred years.

Her phone again jumped to life on the grey countertop. She didn’t need to look to know it was Paul calling, again, to tell her his daughter had been born.

Steadying herself, she stood and deliberately pushed the phone away from her. The hard plastic case slid across the smooth surface, spinning into her wine glass, toppling it over. Greta gasped as the sound of glass against stone rang through the room, the half full glass inexplicably unbroken.

Wine ran over the edge of the counter, spilling onto the spotless birch floor, spreading like blood towards her worn white slippers. She backed away from the spill too late, a crimson blossom spreading near her left toes.

A guttural moan echoed in the kitchen as she escaped to the living room, leaving the wine to congeal in an abstract pattern on the wood.

It was more than a year before Greta could drink red wine.