The Lemon Tree

Russ lugged the three-foot leafy tree in its ceramic pot into the sunroom, flooded with afternoon light from its southern exposure. It wasn’t supposed to freeze that night—the forecast was high thirties—but with mid-September in Vermont, you never knew.

He wasn’t even sure why he bothered. Though the tree kept growing, its oblong oval leaves a dark glossy green, it’d never flowered once in its five years of life. The experts all said you could grow lemons in Vermont, soaking up the late spring and summer sun outside and then indoors when the season changed. The trees were self-pollinating, after all. But not if there were no flowers. He poured water from the can over its roots, which trickled deep into the dark soil.

Many times, Russ had thought about giving the barren bush away and getting a Bonsai tree instead. But he never had the heart, as it’d been a first anniversary gift from Linnea. With real meaning behind it, a callback to the lemonade he’d made for their first date picnicking on the shore of Lake Champlain. Having just moved up north from sunny Georgia, she’d told him it tasted the way her Gram used to make it. Instead of store-bought lemons every anniversary they’d make a new batch from their own crop.

Sadly, half a decade later, not a single lemon. He fingered the smooth waxy leaves as if trying to rub circulation into a cold hand. A dud. Like him.

After years of trying with Linnea, he finally went to the doctor and was diagnosed with something called azoospermia. Parts all intact, hormone levels normal, his body wouldn’t make any swimmers. Which meant they couldn’t even artificially inseminate. And no operation to cure him. “Be fruitful and multiply” simply wasn’t in the cards for Russ.

He turned on the fan, the artificial wind swaying the small tree’s branches and fluttering its leaves.

By the time Russ had brought up adoption, he and Linnea had already stopped being intimate. “What’s the point?” she once muttered under her breath in response to one of his bedtime advances. Though he pretended not to hear, it was like a kick in the nuts. Which shouldn’t have bothered him, since it seemed he didn’t have much worth protecting down there, anyway.

One day Russ came back from work and was unsurprised to find a moving van in the driveway. Linnea filed for divorce a week later, and it was all finalized in a month.

He bent over to pluck a single yellow leaf from the underside of the tree. If he was being honest with himself, it wasn’t fond remembrance but spite that kept him nursing the thing. Crushing the dead leaf in his fist in a burst of citrus scent, Russ promised himself he’d make it bear fruit if it killed him.

***

Online, Russ learned that aside from lack of light—not an issue in the south-facing sunroom—the most common reason for lemon trees not flowering was poor fertilizer. Never a fan of chemicals, he’d stayed away from the commercial stuff. The unanimous advice was to try compost tea, a liquid brew of the organic material.

It turned out to be upwards of eighty bucks for a single bottle with who knows what inside. And he was already paying some company twenty bucks every month to take his food scraps away. Why not make the tea himself?

After calling and canceling the service, Russ drove to the home and garden store. Ended up dropping almost three hundred for one of those fancy spinning bins with separate chambers for fresh and mature compost, as well as a smaller bin to keep by the sink. Over the fall and winter, he’d make the perfect batch and in the spring brew the tea to feed the tree.

During the following weeks, composting became Russ’ new after-work hobby. He bought more fruit and vegetables than before—organic only—eating lots of eggs and even picking up a coffee drinking habit because the shells and grounds were supposed to make primo compost. He, of course, kept out meat and dairy as well as avocado or peach pits, anything that wouldn’t break down. Sometimes, instead of storing his leftovers in the fridge, he’d feed them straight to the pile.

To his dismay, a full six weeks later, on a brisk October autumn, the compost in the outside bin was still a goopy, rancid mess. He stuck his hand into the bin; cool, not warm the way it was supposed to be. Perplexed, he went online and learned the sliminess meant there wasn’t enough dry material. The suggestion was to use tissues.

A little gross, maybe, but from that point on every time Russ blew his nose, he shoved the snotty paper in the kitchen bin. Unfortunately, almost month later, the first light snow on the ground, the compost was still slippery and cold. Clearly, he wasn’t using enough tissues.

Though that wasn’t exactly true. Russ did throw out a thick wad every night before falling asleep. He hadn’t found the confidence to jump back into the dating pool and had to stave off the loneliness somehow. Snot was one thing, but that…that was disgusting.

Or was it? Was there really that much of a difference between bodily fluids? So, he started adding those into the compost, too, spinning the outside bin like an old-timey organ grinder on the street. 

Sure enough, by midwinter, despite temperatures dipping into negative double digits, the compost started cooking to the point where he could almost warm his hands off it. Often, after making the week’s deposit, he’d catch himself staring at the chunky, multi-colored future soil, the way a normal man would with a brand-new car in the driveway.

Soon, Russ left that side of the bin alone to mature and started feeding the second chamber. His life was little more than a monotonous blur of work, drinking, TV, and sleeping. But the pile gave him something to focus on. To care for. To give him hope. 

By spring’s first thaw, Russ reached into the mature stuff, and, to his joy, brought out a handful of moist, perfectly crumbly soil. It was ready! Grinning ear to ear, he scooped a few shovelfuls into a burlap sack, dropped it in a bucket half filled with water, and let it soak overnight.

The next day after work, he poured the compost tea—murky black as a forest swamp—into a mason jar. Almost giddy, he went into the sunroom, knelt beside the tree, and cautiously as if it were a five-hundred-dollar bottle of scotch, poured a third of it over the roots to seep into the soil. Then he went back outside to brew a new batch.

As he’d hoped, in the first few days of May, a tiny cluster of white buds sprouted from the juncture of one of the tree’s top branches. And a few days later, the first delicate blossom, a snowflake that smelled like Linnea’s hair after a shower. Then another bud and another, each coming to full flower a week later. And the week after that, the earliest flower morphing into a pock-marked green nubbin the size of a quarter.

He kept the compost tea flowing, the bloom stage being the most important time for the health of the fruit.

The next week brought more and more buds, flowers, and nubbins. By mid-June, ten lemons were on their way. Silly as he knew it was, Russ couldn’t have been prouder.

***

Over the summer, to Russ’ immense satisfaction, the lemons plumped. The earliest one stayed well ahead of the pack, growing larger, rounder, and yellower. But it was slow going, and by the end of August Russ worried he wouldn’t be able to taste his own lemonade until after a frost. Which was like going for your first swim of the year on Halloween.

Late one night, he was caressing the fruit’s smooth dimpled skin. Squeezed it. Lifted it a bit. And then—oh crap!—it broke off its stem to drop in his palm. Horrified, he stood there staring at it like a puppy’s head that’d popped off.

He’d gotten greedy and picked an unripened fruit. Except when he sniffed it, it smelled sharp and sweet the way it should. Maybe it was ready, after all.

He hurried to the kitchen, set the squat little sun on the cutting board. Got a knife from the drawer and warily sliced off the very end of the nubbin.

The knife fell out of his hand to clang on the tile.

He blinked and blinked to try to form what he was seeing into something sane. Something remotely in the realm of logic and sense. But the awful vision wouldn’t clear, and his veins were ice.

From each of the seven segments of lemon, two pairs of tiny stumps—threaded with slender white bones—dripping clear juice onto the cutting board. Meanwhile, the cut-off nubbin encased fourteen miniature severed feet, each with imperfectly formed flippers instead of toes. Peering closer, the bones appeared to be made of seeds, stretched out and articulated into a rudimentary form. And none of them moving.

Russ’ chest felt tight, like he was wearing a shirt three sizes too small. Somehow—impossibly—two-inch creatures were trapped inside each section of the lemon. And he’d cut their frigging feet off.

His first instinct, crazy as it was, was to grab his phone to call 911. He pushed the 9 before he stopped to think. What would he even tell them? If anywhere near the truth, it wouldn’t be an EMT they’d send but a psychiatrist.

Whatever those things were, the way the juice leaked, they had to be suffering. He tore a paper towel from the roll, folded it in half, and stuck it against their ankle stumps. Seconds later, the liquid stopped seeping through. And when he gently peeled the paper away a few minutes later, the area had dried.

But were they even alive? Only one way to find out.

Nimbly, he peeled the fragrant leathery rind down to the fruit’s white sticky layer. Pinched apart the first two segments. And gasped in wonder and horror at the tiny humanoid fetus inside both pulpy cells. White veins ran across the bulbous foreheads, eyes skinned over, flipper hands, a smooth patch where there should be genitals, and knees drawn up with the shins ending in stumps.

And they were deathly still. He peeled the other segments apart, and all were puny statues. Russ’ stomach turned over, and he felt like puking.

Were all the fruits like this? Whatever they were—he had no reference point for this—they weren’t fully formed. Preemies. He’d picked it too soon.

But didn’t they save preemies all the time? Warmth and oxygen. Of course, these were no normal babies, so maybe they needed to stay wet. Heart racing, he ran paper towels under the warm water and wrapped each of the segments like pigs in a blanket. And paced around the kitchen mumbling to himself.

Twenty minutes later he peeled the towel away from one of them. Still no movement. His heart sunk. Then a wild thought. What if they were trapped in the segment?

With the tip of a fingernail, he pierced the thin skin and let the juice bleed out. Then, carefully, carefully, scooped out the fetus with his pinky and held the motionless kachina doll in the center of his palm.

He hung his head. They were gone. It was possible he’d suffocated them by not freeing them sooner. But he was pretty sure they’d been stillborns. Stillfruits?

Russ had no idea what to do with the bodies. So, he covered them with a few paper towels, poured himself four fingers of whisky, and wandered into the dark den to plop down in front of the TV. Nursing his glass, he tried to enter the world of a rom-com where dead lemon fetuses didn’t—couldn’t—exist. But every few minutes, his mind kept wandering back to what was on that cutting board.

When the movie ended, fully drunk, Russ stumbled back into the kitchen. Tore the paper towel off like a bandage and stood a long time staring at the wee ones.

Unable to stop himself, he went into the drawer and fished out a fresh steak knife. Without preamble, he sliced a vertical line into one of their little stomachs. Juice welled up but it was just translucent pulp inside. And a little higher up, a ribcage made of seed bones. He cut all the way to a stringy spine made of the same stuff.

And then into the head through the thin skull. Just more pulp. No way the thing could’ve ever been alive. 

Finally, he slit the layer of white skin over the eye. A blind orb stared back at him, green as summer leaves. Green like his own, in fact. Russ made a weird sound between a blubber and a whimper and fell back against the counter.

A lucid dream! It had to be. It wouldn’t be the first time.

He shot to his feet. Grabbed the knife. Stuck the tip into the pad of his middle finger and pressed until it broke skin. It stung like hell—worse with lemon juice on it—and a drop of blood welled out.

This was no dream. The one ray of hope snuffed out.

Unless he was hallucinating! He’d smoked plenty of pot in college, even taken mushrooms a few times, and had seen his share of weirdness under the influence. Though it’d always been organic patterns, walls pulsing or trees swaying, dull colors made vibrant. No straight up conjuring of objects that weren’t there.

He closed his eyes tight as he could, ground his fists into them until he saw stars.

Madness. Some stressor—maybe abuse he’d blacked out as a kid—had finally caught up with him and broken his mind. He was seeing things, and such would be his life from then on, wrapped in a straitjacket inside a padded room.

He opened his eyes, the kitchen coming back into focus along with the lumpy paper towels. Somehow insanity didn’t feel right either. He’d always been even keel and hadn’t noticed anything wrong until that moment. Which wasn’t how mental illness worked, was it?

He leaned against the counter, the sharp edge biting into his skinny rear. No, the toughest answer to bear—yet the one that seemed to be the truth—was that this was really happening. And the only way to move forward was to try to make sense of it.

A quick online search for “lemon babies” only pulled up a bunch of YouTube videos of infants making funny faces after being fed the sour fruit for the first time. In the meantime, he couldn’t keep looking at those things in his kitchen. He took the cutting board outside. Used the shovel to dig a small hole in the unfinished compost and dumped them in. Covered it over.

When he pulled the shovel back out, the sharp tip had speared a tissue. Thoughts a jumble, none of them making the least bit of sense, the bleeding dawn sky reeled overhead like in a planetarium.

***

The next month dragged by for Russ. Every morning dawning with dread, every night tossing and turning with dreams of what he’d seen—what he’d done.

Was he really entertaining the idea of his spermy tissues brewed into compost tea somehow fertilizing the flowers? His working hypothesis that he knocked up a frigging tree? It was madness. Impossible madness! But what other explanation was there? The teensy stillborns were real, and, however they came about, he was the one who brought them into being.

He stopped composting or even watering the tree, and always kept the sunroom door closed. Tried his damnedest to not even think about what’d happened. He knew he should get rid of the thing, dump it in the woods somewhere, but he didn’t even want to go in there, much less touch the monstrosity. Eventually, it would die, and he could pay someone to haul it away.

Finally, one particularly drunken Friday night, he got a hold of himself. Remembered there wasn’t any such thing as “unexplained phenomena,” only science the world hadn’t made sense of yet. And science was nothing more than the workings of nature. And nature certainly wasn’t anything to be afraid of.

He marched over to the sunroom and threw open the door. Eight of the lemons, plump and golden, weighed down the branches. One more fallen into the pot.

Chest tight, hands shaking, he picked up the fallen lemon. Sure looked normal enough. Sniffed it, and it smelled fine, too. Maybe it’d been a random mutation, some fluke, like a two-headed snake. And every other fruit would be ordinary. 

He brought the lemon into the kitchen. Rinsed it in the sink. And then started peeling the rind down to the white pith. So far, so good. Stuck his thumb between two segments and pulled them apart.

He cried out, vision swimming.

A gooey clump of organs. Slimy intestines like a ball of snakes. A glistening brown slab that might’ve been a liver. But worst of all was the purple heart. And it was beating.

Reeking blood slicking his fingers, Russ dropped the thing in the sink with a gooshy plop and puked on top of it.

His mind stalled, unable to make sense of the sight before him, his brain not a complex enough model to process the reality. Though one word did float through his head. Abomination.

If this fruit was ripe, what were the others like? He didn’t want to know. DIDN’T WANT TO KNOW! He sluiced the mess down the drain and flicked on the garbage disposal. Faucet rushing, it clanged and grinded for over a minute with a foul stench until he turned it off. Then washed his hands.

Teeth grinding in fury, he stormed into the sunroom, yanked the tree out of its pot, roots and all, and dragged it outside into the yard like a bad dog. After dousing its base and trunk with lighter fluid he lit a match.

And held the flame until it burned down to his fingers and went out.

Whatever these things were—however horrible—he’d created them. The least he could do was give them a chance. And if they weren’t meant to live, a respectful send off.

He grabbed a colander and picked the remaining eight lemons, setting each one gently inside. Then back to the kitchen to peel the next one over the cutting board.

If it was even possible, this fruit was worse, a clumpy, winding maze of pale flesh tubes. A brain.

“Nooooo,” he groaned. After hacking it into four chunks, down the drain it went. 

The third lemon was nothing but pink and blue twining veins and arteries. He gagged but had nothing to throw up. Another burial at sink.

The next one had the typical lemon segments. And like the preemies, still little forms inside. But these—oh my God—were all skeleton and no flesh. When he chucked them in the disposal, a loud snap and then the rattle of broken metal.

Russ didn’t think he could handle much more but had to get it over with. He figured he was numb at this point, anyway. Boy, was he was wrong. Number five, a pulsing mass of black jelly that stunk of the grave. Bile or rot, he didn’t know. Didn’t care. Down the drain even though the disposal wasn’t working anymore.

The following fruit was simply one giant seed. He got out a hammer to try to crack it, but it was seed—bone?—all the way through. He tossed that one into the outside compost with its siblings. Because that’s what they were, right?

Or maybe parts of a whole, where, if put together they’d make one creature? But no. Because fruit number seven had a layer of skin, which, when peeled back revealed another brain, a shivering heart, and twin bloody crescents of pulp that had to be lungs. Into a garbage bag and into the can.

Another was all genitals, tiny foreskins, scrota, and labia, but in an M.C. Escher geometry that made Russ’ eyes hurt.

Last one. And it would be over. And he could try to pick up and glue together the broken pieces of his sanity. What now? A pile of crap? He laughed out loud. Or how about a giant booger? Or, even better, a pool of semen, the culprit of the atrocities. 

He peeled. To his astonishment, writhing translucent babies inside each of the eight segments. Yet, hallelujah, all normal-looking, perfect fingers clenched into fists! Ten tiny toes a piece, fully intact feet. Eyes closed. No genitals.

Carefully, holding his breath, he separated each of the sections and set them down on their own wet warm paper towels. Then, with a fingernail, carefully pierced the outer skin to drain the juice. And, with the gentlest of touches, delivered the first fetus from its citrus womb.

In a magic moment, the newborn opened its eyes. Bright green like Russ’. Then, a pang in Russ’ heart, it reached for him with tiny sticky arms. Of course, no sounds because it didn’t have internal organs, much less vocal cords. Indeed, the chest didn’t rise or fall either, so technically it wasn’t even breathing. Yet somehow it was “alive,” perhaps the way a virus was. The question was, for how long? He wrapped it in the towel with only its head poking out.

He birthed—hatched?—the other seven and swaddled them in towels. Then waited with shallow breath for them to die. But they didn’t, all of them wriggling like worms, blinking and making Os with their mouths.

He wasn’t going to name them—that’d make the inevitable loss that much worse—but to keep them apart he gave them numbers, One through Eight.

Gaping mouths like baby birds, he didn’t think they could eat—where would the food even go?—but clearly they were hungry. Or at least some impulse inside them triggering that reflex. He stuck the tip of his pinky in Three’s mouth and felt a slight suction. Which grew stronger until it stung, and Russ had to pull his finger away.

After maybe twenty minutes, mouths even wider, universal language for “Feed me!” Alright then, but what? Unless they were more like normal babies than he’d guessed.

Out to the 24-hour drug store for a jug of milk and medicine dropper. When he got back, he warmed the milk in the microwave, tested with a finger to make sure it wasn’t too hot, then a single drop in One’s mouth. It spat up the milk instantly, face a scowl of hate, little lips sealed tight. Same thing with Two. So much for milk.

Over the next few hours towards dawn, they got more and more mouthy, more insistent, angrier, Russ racking his brain over a possible menu. Since they had no teeth, solid food was obviously out of the question. But he was sure that if they didn’t have something, they’d die. Think!

Then a chill. The way One had sucked on his finger, it should’ve been obvious right away. As the sun slanted through the window, Russ left a message at work, saying he wouldn’t be in that day. 

In the closet he found Linnea’s sewing kit and got out a needle. Doused it with rubbing alcohol in the bathroom. And then pricked the pad of his finger. Sucked several drops of blood into the dropper and made himself go back into the kitchen.

He squinted at the little critters. Tiny vampires? He pictured jabbing all his fingers, track marks up and down his forearms and legs like a heroin addict. Face pale and anemic from loss of blood. Soon capturing and bleeding the neighborhood cats. And then, in time, like in Little Shop of Horrors, moving on to humans to feed the growing bloodlust. 

Hand trembling, he dropped the blood over Three’s mouth. It missed and ran down its weak chin and scrawny chest. Russ tried again. This time he got it dead center. Eyes slammed shut, Three spat out the blood like One and Two had done with the milk. 

“Whew,” Russ whispered to himself, the invisible belt around his chest loosening a notch. Still, he tried with Four just to be sure. Who spat it up even quicker.

Russ let out a long slow breath. Even though he’d yet to solve the mystery, at least he’d scratched the most disturbing possibility off the list.

Pacing around the kitchen, he tried to figure out what babies gestated inside a citrus fruit could possibly eat. Then it became clear. The same thing that gave them life in the first place!

He still had some leftover compost tea in the jar and sucked up a dropperful. And gave some to Five, like a parent on Christmas morning hoping he’d bought his kid the right toy. Not only did Five spit it up, the tot thrashed about in a bug-eyed hissy fit. Russ was terrified he’d poisoned it, but a minute later it settled down and resumed its open-mouthed begging.

Wait! A lightbulb flashed on in the darkness of his mind. Maybe they weren’t hungry but thirsty! He rinsed the dropper and tried some cool water for Six. Six drank it down yet instantly popped its gummy mouth again, hungry as ever.

Russ hung his head, all hope gone. They were nothing but cosmic mistakes, born only to die. As are we all.

He leaned over them to say goodbye. And the first real cry in a long time, born of frustration and grief and guilt, broke through.

“I’m sorry, little ones,” he blubbered.

With its teeny translucent tongue, Three licked its lips. And again, as another tear fell from Russ’ eye. Tears. Could it be?

Quickly, he put the dropper to the corner of his eye and sucked up the lingering wetness. He gave it to Seven. Who lapped it up like a hungry dog, and, seconds later, closed its eyes with what could’ve only been a content smile.

With bated breath, Russ tried Two. Same thing, lip-smacking followed by cozy nap. By the time he was on to Three, the dropper was empty.

No other option but to keep crying. Except it wasn’t like a faucet he could turn on and off. If anything, he felt joyful right then, finally cracking the case as to how to keep the little wonders alive.

But he had to. He tried to picture the saddest things that had ever happened to him. When he was eleven, the vet neutering Russ’ puppy and accidentally not cauterizing the wound properly afterwards, the yellow Lab dying of internal bleeding that night. Not a sniffle.

At sixteen, his grandmother dropping dead of a heart attack in front of him and trying to do CPR on her—and failing. A pang of sorrow but still dry-eyed.

Those things were sad. Traumatic perhaps. But they’d happened decades before and even if the wounds hadn’t entirely healed, they’d scarred over.

He needed something fresh. Something raw. 

Closing his eyes, an image of meeting his lovely Linnea at the cocktail bar after assuming her to be a friend of his friend only to realize, after twenty minutes of chatting, that she was a complete stranger. Driving three hours through a literal blizzard to visit her at med school. Their inside joke about every time either of them said something that got a laugh, they’d put out a hand and say, “Gimme money!” It wasn’t the good memories that got him crying but the mournful fact that they’d never make new ones together.

It worked so well, he sucked up enough tears in the dropper to feed the others, who all joined their siblings in peaceful slumber. A weight off his psyche, around sunrise Russ caught a few hours of sleep and roused himself in the afternoon to find them wide awake again.

When he went to change One’s towel, he was shocked to find its pale body a full inch larger. Same with all eight down the line. If they grew that quickly in a few hours, how big would they get in a week? Would they max out at the size of a doll or make it to full human scale? Or were they destined to be giants?

He pulled up another memory of Linnea—the last time they played Scrabble and how he’d never play that game again—which got him another few squirts from the dropper. Fed, the babies went back to sleep.

Russ called his boss and told her he’d need Friday off, too. She wasn’t happy, reminding him he was out of sick days and needed to be in on Monday even if he was hacking up a lung. He said he’d do his best.

After hanging up the phone, Russ stood there for some time watching them sleep. If someone would’ve told him a week earlier that he could’ve spent a full hour watching babies sleep, he would’ve laughed in their face. But he’d never felt this way before, a warm glow as if he was bursting with life. Along with a fresh vulnerability, like a soft spot that even the slightest touch could bruise.

He slept soundly. In the morning, they were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed again, clearly hungry again by their mouthing, though not as furiously as they had been. And, when he changed their dry towels, they’d each grown another inch or so.

Russ tried to come up with Linnea scenes again. But instead of making him sad, he found himself glad for the memories. Melancholy, perhaps, but not teary, as if he’d finally processed the grief of the divorce.

He tried to think of far more awful things like the latest school shooting, the devastating floods in Nigeria, the daily death toll from the current viral outbreak. To no avail. Terrible as those events were, without a direct personal connection, they couldn’t affect him on an emotional level.

A movie. He needed to watch a movie.

Dependably, Forrest Gump, sappy and impossible as the 90s blockbuster was, got the waterworks flowing, and he was able to feed them—each grown another half inch—that morning.

On Sunday evening, he brought out the big guns and watched all of Schindler’s List without getting up, taking care of the night feeding. They ate but didn’t go back to sleep, probably because they were still hungry.

“I’m sorry, that’s all I got,” Russ whispered. “I’ll try again in the morning, I promise.”

He got up with the sun, and, before waking them, pounded some water, and went to surf YouTube for the saddest videos he could find. Finally, he remembered something that had him bawling years ago. He typed in, “Baby hears Mom,” and watched the short clip of the infant with brand-new cochlear implants listening to her mother’s voice for the first time. While tears shone in the eyes of the mom, the nurse, and even the baby, not a drop for Russ. 

They were twice as big as the day before, a full five inches long and plump as potatoes, bawling their silent cries. No way Russ could leave them like that—he didn’t even bother calling into work. Why in the world wasn’t there paternal leave?

For hours he scrolled through YouTube—a dog saving a woman from drowning, a soldier surprising his family coming back from war, REM’s “Everybody Hurts” music video—to try to make him cry, but he got nothing. Maybe it was like sleeping, where the more you forced it, the harder it was?

By Tuesday, Four and Seven looked almost comatose, green eyes—his eyes—glassy in a hundred-mile stare. They were dying. And it was Russ’ fault. Sick to his stomach, he raced off to the drugstore for artificial tears.

Four and Seven didn’t care for the stuff. No outrage, just dribbled it out. Maybe because it wasn’t natural? So, Russ tried three different solutions of saltwater for Three, Five, and Eight. No dice. Russ was frantic.

It was clear they needed not salt water and not fake tears but real ones. But he wasn’t some actor. Though, come to think of it, didn’t they have some trick? He looked it up online and learned about something called a tear stick made of menthol where you dabbed a bit under the eyes, and, boom, you were Meryl Streep.

He ordered one for overnight delivery. In the meantime, all he could do was sing to them as he changed their towels. 

The menthol stick came the next morning. Russ broke open the box and applied it. Holy cow, it worked! He got enough in the dropper for a couple of feedings. He’d figured it out, and from that point on, they’d be strong and healthy.

Except, even after two drops a piece, they still gaped hungrily. Another drop all down the line. They sucked it up only to beg for more.

He was mystified. He’d cried for them, fed them more than their share. How could it not be enough?

“What do you want from me?” he yelled angrily. And accidentally stubbed his toe on the kitchen island, the pain so bad he looked down to make sure he hadn’t snapped the dumb thing off. And then realized he was crying. He sucked up the tears in the dropper and fed them. They lapped it up, and, one by one, dropped off to sleep.

Russ should’ve been relieved, but he wasn’t. Because he understood. Yes, they needed tears. But not just any tears, only those of sadness and pain.

That afternoon, to Russ’ chagrin, they were hungry again. He got out a hammer and smashed his pinky. And they fed.

Except they were famished again that night. Hammer poised, he aimed for his ring finger. Raised the tool. And stopped mid blow.

His heart leapt. Other people’s tears! Weird as the ask would be, people would do anything for money.

Then his heart sunk again into the muck. Even if he could, he knew what would happen. The babies would reject it. Why? Because they only wanted his tears. Maybe it was biological, the way a mother’s breast milk dished out not only the perfect nutrition but immunity.

The next morning they were ravenous, kicking and flailing their arms in eight tiny tantrums. Russ was an empty tank. Instead, he took each baby in his hands, lay down on the floor, and set them by his eyes to suck at the teats of his empty tear ducts.

Russ’ breath caught. Teats. Mother. The babies needed their mother.

Linnea had wanted nothing more than to have a kid with Russ. And the fact that they didn’t was why she left. But things had changed. Not only could she save the kids, the kids would save the marriage!

***

For the first time in months, Russ called Linnea. She didn’t pick up, and he didn’t leave a message. As he hoped, by the time he changed the babies’ towels, she called back.

“Hey,” Linnea said, neither snippy nor warm.

“I need you,” was how it came out.

“Russ,” her voice sympathetic but firm.

“Can you come over?”

“What? No. It’s time to move on. Past time.”

Russ didn’t reply, trying to figure out what to say. The wheels whirring in his head, needing them to land on the jackpot.

“We gave it a try,” Linnea said. “I don’t have any regrets. It just didn’t work out.”

Not what Russ had wanted to hear, but he wasn’t going to give up so easily. “Something happened. And I think it might fix everything.”

“It’s too late.”

“Too late? For what?”

“I’m pregnant.”

“Huh?” Knees weak, Russ’ eyes blurred.

“I’m having a baby.”

“But-but—” he could barely choke out.

“Why can’t you accept that we want different things?” She was annoyed.

And so was he. He cleared his throat. “You’re right.”

“I’m glad you can see—”

“I wanted you for who you are. You wanted me for what I could do for you.”

“Russ, that’s not fair—”

Crushed, he hung up the phone. The babies feasted like a football team at an all-you-can-eat buffet after the big game.

***

Linnea, hair wet from her shower, was warming her hands on her mug of coffee in the kitchen, about to take the first sip of the morning, when the doorbell rang. Hoping it was the crib she’d ordered, she waddled along in her socked feet to the door.

No cardboard box on the stoop, just a small Styrofoam cooler, the type you’d buy at a convenience store for a last-minute picnic. An envelope was taped on top. Rubbing her big belly, she peered down the empty tree-lined street. No one on the sidewalks, no car driving away.

Curious, she unsealed the envelope with a thumbnail, the front of the card reading SORRY in fancy font. She had a hunch, and, indeed, when she opened it, recognized the crooked handwriting right away. Russ. She let out a small sigh.

It’d been a shame the way things turned out between them. He was a good man, and she’d really loved the guy. The diagnosis hadn’t been his fault, and she still felt a little guilty for losing some attraction to him because of it. The truth was, she was pretty sure she’d have gotten over it if he’d been open to other options. Yet his outright refusal to even consider a donor meant he’d chosen his ego over their marriage—their future child!—and that was the real dealbreaker.

She felt herself getting sad, a tickle in her throat. Swallowing, she again reminded herself to leave the past in the past. After all, she was pregnant, and, even without a partner, it felt right.

Yes, she was finally on the right path, both for her and her little one. Still, the least she could do was read his note. 

Linnea,

I’m so sorry for what I said on the phone. I was upset because I still miss you. But I realize now that I’ve got to let you go. Knowing that, I wanted to make one last gesture, both as an apology and a thank you for all the great times we had and the love we shared.

Russ

She nodded approvingly. That was something, at least, admitting his mistakes and trying to move on. She wouldn’t respond of course, but maybe in a few months she’d send him a holiday card to let him know all was forgiven.

Kneeling down, she lifted the lid of the cooler. A tall thermos on a bed of ice. She unscrewed the lid, sniffed, and smiled. She’d recognize Russ’ lemonade anywhere, which, while she’d never told him, was even better than Gram’s. And he’d been kind enough to gift her one last batch.

She sat on the steps in the brisk morning air and took a sip. Mmmmm. Delicious as ever, equal parts bitter and sweet, pulpy yet refreshing. A longer swig, gulping it down. Then, oops, a seed in her mouth. Which she spat out on her palm. And screamed at the tiny green eye blindly staring back at her.