Abby Rosebrock
Seriocomic
JESSICA, late 20s
Pregnant, friendless, and freshly rejected by her pastor-turned-lover, JESSICA has enlisted her husband’s coworker and love interest, MOLLY, for moral support on a trip to the abortion clinic. Here, as the women are getting to know each other, JESSICA explains why she has always been superstitious and in the process reveals her deep-seated dread of being alone.
JESSICA The day it came out Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid were splitting up, I saw something about it on a hospital TV, and it was just weirdly devastating to me, and I thought, This has to be a horrible omen. Otherwise I wouldn’t feel so bad about it. And then my mom died later that afternoon, and ever since then I’ve been like a crazy person . . . You know what’s always scared me? I’m not saying my dad flew off into somebody else’s arms right away; he didn’t. But right after she died . . . Sorry for telling you this; I’m in a weird mood . . . But after she died, all these middle-aged women started just . . . coming out of the woodwork, throwing themselves at him. I’d see it at church and my aunts’ and uncles’ parties. And I got to know a handful of them when he started dating, and they were all just so desperate. None of them were attractive, they had this . . . shellacked hair, and I remember thinking, Honey, you know not to use that much hair spray! I know you know that; have you not seen a magazine in twenty years!? What’s happened to you!? And they weren’t far from our age now, Molly. One of them was thirty-three! And that’s when I figured out . . . If it’d been the other way around—if, God forbid, my dad had died and my mom had been the one to survive, there wouldn’t be any men lining up to marry her. She’d have been alone for the rest of her life, just getting fat and doing ridiculous shit to her hair.