Scott Baumgartner

 

Scott Baumgarten graduated from the creative writing program at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, in 2007.  He splits his time between Washington, DC, where he teaches English at Cesar Chavez Public Charter School and his family's home in New Hampshire, where he grew up.  When he's not making lesson plans or grading papers, Scott is working on a memoir of his first year of teaching at a reform school in rural Massachusetts.

The following work is copyright © 2008. All rights reserved. No distribution or reprinting in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  

Before  

  

            Before he could hear her crying from the street – or maybe it was just an echo in his head – he bent to kiss her forehead, which was buried in the pillow.

            Before her face was buried in the pillow – or maybe it was turned away, facing the radiator – they were at a playhouse seeing a performance of A Streetcar Named Desire.

            Before they were at the playhouse – or maybe they’d just rented the movie and watched it on her television, which had old tubes that made everything look like it was happening at sunset – they had a long discussion about coming to a natural end, like a good book, so they could remember each other fondly.

            Before they had a long discussion about the end – or maybe it wasn’t a discussion, but one informing the other, or maybe it was a fight, or a series of fights – they had not seen each other in two weeks.

            Before they had not seen each other for two weeks – or maybe it was a month – she told him she was too tired for sex.

            Before she told him she was too tired for sex – or maybe she asked him how she could possibly be in the mood, after her appointment at the clinic – they had ridden around to all the subway stops they’d never been, because it was free, listening to musicians with battery-powered amplifiers play different versions of “Auld Lang Syne.”

            Before they had ridden around to all the subway stops – or maybe they’d just plain been lost, and maybe a little drunk – he took her out to a fancy dinner.

            Before he took her out to a fancy dinner – or maybe they ate at a place they’d been several times before – he’d tried to order wine.  She said to the server, “I’ll have a glass of Merlot,” and he asked, “Can I have one, too?”  The server glared, deciding whether it was worth it or not to card him, and she looked at him, too, thinking it was strange to be in this situation with someone who could not even legally drink.

            Before he wasn’t carded – or maybe the server decided to ask, so he had to pat his pockets and say his license must be in his other coat – she came to visit him, still in college, and they went to a formal Christmas dance.

            Before she came to visit him in college – or maybe there was a snowstorm and the buses weren’t running out of the city – she stared at the two items on the table: the positive test and her phone, rehearsing in her head the conversation she’d have to have with him.  The phone rang, sending vibrations the length of the table.  It was him; she answered quietly so he knew to ask her if everything was okay.

            Before she answered her phone – or maybe when he called, she simply silenced it and continued to sit, rubbed her belly, and thought she felt a round, smooth stone lodged there – it was the end of summer.

            Before it was the end of summer – or maybe it was the early fall – they were house-sitting together, and she came back naked into the bedroom and stood at the foot of the bed.  He admired her, the curly hair that came halfway down her long neck, gently sloping breasts and nipples the tint of bubble gum stretched over a finger, her tiny belly, the skin taut, the navel a soft dimple, the place between her legs an upside-down triangle of black balanced on an unbloomed iris.

            Before she came back naked to him – or maybe she came in a bathrobe, and let it fall about her feet – he was lying where they’d just made love, a strange mattress on a low bed with oak sides and a bookshelf built into the headboard, looking at a needlepoint on the wall of a rainbow and a cloud, only the rainbow had two green bands and no indigo.

            Before the imperfect needlepoint – or maybe it was a crocheted tapestry with pulls and snares – they’d come back from where they’d been and started kissing before the door even closed and carried each other to the low bed with the oak sides and the bookshelf built into the headboard.

            Before that – if there was any significant before – they’d wondered aloud how they’d even lived, now overwhelmed by such a bright and certain future.