Ducks in a Row by Louise Marburg

At first, I think I’m nauseated from a bad oyster I ate. When the nausea doesn’t go away and I feel exhausted, I suspect I have lymphoma because I knew someone, a nurse in the psych ward at the hospital where I work, who had the same symptoms and died of the disease. Her name was Astrid, and she was only thirty-four; she left behind a husband and three-year-old twins. I don’t think I’m morbid, but I have imagined my funeral; I think everyone does now and then. Instead of a church service, I want a memorial party and my ashes buried in a cemetery on Ocracoke Island that dates from the 1700s. Finally, it dawns on me that I might be pregnant, and voila: the test is positive.

“Didn’t you miss your period?” my friend Jean says. She’s the only person who knows. 

I have five tests lined up on my coffee table, every one of them showing two pink lines. I swipe them off the table like dinner crumbs and toss them into the kitchen garbage. “It’s always been irregular, sometimes it skips a month.”

“Are you going to tell Randall?”

“Absolutely not.” Randall was my boyfriend for twenty-five days, and though I thought I was in love with him I don’t know everything about him including his beliefs about when life begins. You never know about people anymore; someone seems cool, and you think you’ve made a friend, then you find out how they voted, and everything falls apart. “I’ll go to New York,” I say. “I can stay with my roommate from college.”

“I didn’t know you have a friend in New York,” Jean says. She’s folded up like a bat in my beanbag chair still looking as dismayed as she did when I told her. 

“I haven’t been in touch with her in a while, but we were close, I’m sure she’ll help me out.”

I’m shocked when Jean bursts into tears. After a minute she calms down and blows her nose in a paper towel I hand her. “Will you have the baby and give it to me?” she says. “I’ve always wanted a baby, and I don’t think I’ll ever have one of my own.”

“That’s not true! Why do you say so?” I go over and sit beside her in the beanbag. There’s not enough room, and we’re both about to fall off so I put my arm around her shoulders and scoot in.

“I’ve never had a serious relationship, and the way things are going I don’t foresee having one. If by some stroke of luck I do find a partner, I’ll probably be over forty and barren.”

“None of that is true,” I say. “You haven’t found a partner yet, and you’re only thirty, you’ve got plenty of time. You’re discerning, I admire that about you, you won’t go out with just anyone.”

She gives me a puzzled look. “Remember that guy I slept with who gave me a fake phone number? I picked him up at a diner, I wouldn’t call that discerning. I wish I had gotten pregnant with him. Or with anyone, I don’t care who.” She rolls out of the beanbag and goes to the bathroom. I hear her crying again. 

“If I’d known this would make you so sad, I wouldn’t have told you,” I say through the door.

“I’d have been really hurt if you hadn’t told me. Either way, I’d be sad.”

“What can I do to make you feel better?” Stupidly, I think about the strawberry ice cream I have in the freezer as if Jean is a child who can be mollified by sweets. 

“I told you. Have the baby and give it to me,” she says. “I know I’ll be a good mother.”

I wonder how she comes by that knowledge. If I think at all about what kind of mother I’d be, I imagine I’d be a bad one. I don’t care for kids, for starters, I can’t see how having one would change that, and I dislike chaos unless I create it myself. “I can’t do that Jean! I can’t watch you raise a child I know is mine, and what would we tell it? I gave it to you because I didn’t want it?” I can’t believe I’m talking as if it’s even a thinkable idea. “And I don’t want to be pregnant. Not now, not in nine months, maybe not ever.” She doesn’t reply. I wait and then knock on the door.

“That’s a terrible thing to say,” she says as she opens the door and comes out. “Someday you might want kids, and what if you can’t get pregnant? You’ll remember this moment and feel like you cursed yourself.” She goes to my refrigerator and takes the ice cream out of the freezer. I should have offered it to her after all. She takes a fork out of a drawer and opens the carton. She’s eaten ice cream with a fork for as long as I’ve known her. I imagine her teaching my child to do the same thing and feel a fresh rush of nausea that might or might not be related.

“Jean, obviously I can’t. Please tell me you’re not serious.”  

She forks up a pink gob and points it at me. “You can,” she says. “You just don’t want to.”

My friend in New York was my roommate during our senior year of college when we shared a bedroom in a house with six other students. Her ambition was to be a fashion designer, while I thought I would go to graduate school to become a psychotherapist. Neither of us ended up realizing our goals; she landed at a company that puts on corporate events, and I became an art therapist. It’s been upwards of five years since we’ve been in touch, but we used to talk on the phone all the time.

I decide to email her instead of calling so she’ll have time to digest my news before responding. I spend thirty minutes writing and rewriting before I’m satisfied.

Dear Holly!

It’s been forever since we’ve touched base! How are you? What’s happening in your life? I’m dying to hear your news and get back in touch. I miss you!

Things with me are complicated right now, and I’m writing because I need your help. As you probably know, abortion is illegal where I live, and I am unexpectedly pregnant. I’d like to come to New York and stay with you while I have the procedure done. I don’t know of a doctor, so I’ll need a recommendation from you. I know I’m asking a lot, but I have nowhere else to turn. I have only the best memories of our friendship, and I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think you’d be there for me as you always were. My phone number is the same if you’d prefer to talk. Thanks, Holly. I’m looking forward to connecting again. 

Love, Sheila    

I press send and sit back with relief. The first step has been taken. I leave my office to teach a group of patients how to build a clay pot by hand; when I return an hour later, I’m surprised to see my email has bounced back. I cut and paste and revise a bit and send another to her work address. Again, the email bounces back, recipient unknown. When I try to phone Holly at the number I have for her, an automated voice tells me my call can’t be completed. I open my browser and Google Holly’s name.

There are Holly Howards all over the internet. They live in Florida, Wisconsin, Louisiana, New Mexico, Vermont, to name just a few places, and they work in real estate, dairy farming, finance, manufacturing, all kinds of careers. One has a fleet of car dealerships in Oklahoma, another is a plus size model. But none of them live in New York City. I Google “Holly Howard event planning” because I can’t remember the name of the company where she works, but that just produces event planner websites with the name Holly excluded from the search. Legacy.com informs me her mother died four years ago, and though there are only two Peter Howards in the Waterbury, Connecticut area, neither is Holly’s father. My sister Daisy calls me in the middle of my search. 

“How can a person disappear without a trace?” I say as I mindlessly scroll. “I can’t believe it’s possible these days.”

“She got married and changed her name?” Daisy says.

“But why would she change her phone number and email?”

“Maybe she has a stalker she’s trying to avoid. Or maybe she’s on the lam.”

“No seriously. The last time we talked she lived in New York City. I hope she’s still there.”

“What difference does it make where she lives?”

“I was thinking of going up there for a weekend, see a show or something.” Daisy is newly separated from her husband, but having kids is ninety percent of her life plan; she would be horrified if she knew I was attempting to squander the chance to be a mother. “I thought I’d stay with Holly, but now I can’t find her.”

“So go anyway and stay in a hotel,” she says. “Hey, let’s go together!”

I’m one of those people who’s always about two hundred dollars away from being indigent. I waste my money on restaurants and take-out rather than cook for myself, and I’m addicted to getting tattoos and buying expensive shoes. I rarely think about money because my salary and my expenses are about the same, but I realize now that I can’t afford to fly to New York, and though I don’t know how much an abortion costs, I’m sure I can’t pay for that either. “Daisy, if I asked to borrow some money from you, what would you say?”

“Are you asking?” she says.

“Hypothetical.”

“It would depend on how much and what you needed it for.”

“Why would what I need it for matter?”

“I would want to know, that’s all.”

“What if I said it’s a secret?”

“I’d really be curious in that case. I have a right to know how my money is being spent. Sheila, do you need a loan?”

“Of course I don’t. I said the question is hypothetical.”

“Well, I don’t have any money yet anyway, not until the house is sold.”

I roll back my creaking chair until it hits the wall behind me. My office is so small I’m sure it was a closet at one time. Artwork from former patients decorate the walls and sit on the bookcase shelves, paintings and collages and little clay sculptures, crochet doilies, macrame hangings. My favorite thing is an ink drawing that hangs on the wall above my computer, a gift from a young man who had seemingly uncontrollable bipolar disorder. It’s a beautifully detailed rendering of a sunflower, each seed drawn with exacting care, so large that the sheet of paper barely holds the whole flower. I thought when he created it that he was surely getting better, the meds were taking effect. He had told me he didn’t understand the point of living because life is so dark and painful; after he drew the sunflower, I asked if he still felt the same way. “I can’t change reality,” he said in a kind yet condescending tone, as if his perception was unrelated to his condition, and I was sweetly deluded.

I know what my parents’ politics are, but I also know they married for only one reason, because my mother was pregnant with me. I don’t want to ask them for money, I don’t want to say why I need it, but they are the only people I know who have money to spare. I make my mother swear she won’t tell Daisy.

“The father is out of the picture,” I say. We’re in the living room of the house where I grew up; serious discussions have taken place in this room for as long as I remember. “He wouldn’t marry me anyway.”

“He doesn’t have to marry you,” my mother says.

“He doesn’t want to be involved.”

“Have you asked him?” she says.

I ignore the question. “This is my life Mom, and I don’t want this pregnancy. I’m not like you and Daisy, I’m not cut out to be a mother.”

“That’s what I thought too when I was pregnant with you.” She sits back against the sofa cushions and crosses her legs, her absent gaze landing somewhere beyond my left shoulder. The room is decorated entirely in yellow. Yellow walls, yellow carpet, yellow floral upholstery. The kitchen is yellow too, and the powder room off the front hall. Mom thinks colors can affect people’s moods and that yellow makes you feel cheerful. If you’re clinically depressed or homeless or dying of cancer, or unmarried and broke and pregnant by mistake, yellow won’t affect your mood one bit but try to tell her that—no, yellow will make you smile. “Have I been a good mother?” she says plaintively.

She was a better mother to Daisy because Daisy was the baby by nine years. I tell her what I always thought was the best thing about her. “You were the most fun mother I knew growing up. No one could make me laugh like you did, even when I was in a terrible mood.”

“You have a wonderful sense of humor,” she says. “I think you’re wrong about yourself, I think you’d make a terrific mother. You should give it more thought before you do something you might regret.” She looks at her watch. “Oh my goodness, I have a dentist appointment I almost forgot about.”

“Wait, will you loan me the money?”

“What’s your plan?”

“I’m still forming a plan.”

She seems surprised.  “Well, you better get your ducks in a row, sweetheart.”

“I’m trying to,” I say.

If I were at work, I’d be eating lunch right now, a falafel sandwich from Akbar’s or a meatball sub from Gino’s Pizza. I go to the kitchen and devour several slices of deli ham and a sleeve of fancy crackers because I’m too hungry to wait the two minutes it would take to make a sandwich. There are some oatmeal raisin cookies in a jar on the counter; I sit at the kitchen table and chew one after another as slowly as a cow. I’m queasy, but I don’t think I’ll throw up. I rise carefully so I won’t wake the nausea beast and go upstairs to snoop around.

I shouldn’t be surprised that my father has moved into Daisy’s bedroom. His clothes are in the closet, his book is on the nightstand; his brush and comb are on top of the chest of drawers and his nightguard is in Daisy’s bathroom. I open a bottle of aftershave, which smells comfortingly of him. When he slept with my mother, their bedroom smelled only of her perfume. Not for the first time, I wonder why they don’t divorce. They’re only in their early fifties, still young enough to be married to other people for as long as they’ve been married to each other. I sit on one of Daisy’s twin beds and ponder their relationship. Oddly, they never fought while I was growing up, or never fought that I was aware of. I only know they’ve never been in love because when I was nineteen my mother had one martini too many and told me I was why they married.

“Is that supposed to make me feel good or bad?” I said.

“Neither,” Mom said. “It’s just a fact.”

“Well, I think it’s sad.”

“It may be sad, but it would be even sadder if we never had you,” she said. “You children are the lights of our lives. On that Dad and I have always agreed.”

“Daisy is the light of your lives,” I said because I thought they favored her.

“Both of you. You’re our precious girls.”

I lie on the bed and think about Randall, who if things had gone right would have been the light of my life. Even if we were still in love, I wouldn’t want this baby. Children are such mysterious beings, both smart and stupid, sweet and difficult, interesting or an annoyance. I’d like a child who’s already grown, it’s getting there that I can’t see.

I’m not aware of being asleep until my father wakes me up. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” he says. I look up at him as if I’m a baby myself. I feel a bit of drool at the side of my mouth. I’m pregnant, I want to tell him because it’s my first thought.

“Have you always loved me?” I say. 

He grins as if he’s been waiting for me to ask. “Always,” he says. “Forever.”

I call my college’s alumnae office to see if by chance they have Holly’s contact information. They do: Holly Howard Platt, class of ‘17; she lives in Katonah, New York. I punch her number into my phone as if I’m calling 911. I feel like a blind person whose sight has been restored.

“God, yes, I’ll help you,” she says when I tell her why I’m calling. Her voice is the same, matter of fact and unaccented, like a news anchor or an actor. I thought she was so glamorous when we first met in college because she was from New York City, but she was like anybody, unpretentious and smart. She answered questions directly and spoke her mind; I admired her forthrightness. Physically we were similar, tall and slim; we used to wear each other’s clothes without asking, what belonged to one of us belonged to the other. “I’ll get you an appointment with my doctor, and we’ll go from there, okay?”

“I wouldn’t put you out like this, but I’m desperate,” I say.

“Of course you are. The barbarians have taken over. Making women feel desperate is their mandate. Don’t you worry, I got you, and I’m glad to do it.” Her voice softens when she says it’s nice to hear from me. I feel guilty that we lost touch, even guiltier that I’m only calling now because I need her help. “I got married,” she says. “I have a two-month-old baby boy. What’s going on with you?”

“None of the above,” I say in a joking voice. I’m breathless with envy, it socks me in the chest, not because I want what she has, but because nothing is going on with me, not a fucking thing. 

I hang up the phone and cry with relief, heaving, hiccupping sobs. A nurse knocks on my office door and opens it, then quickly shuts it again. Without a doubt, she’ll go back to the nurse’s station and gossip about me crying. The last thing I need is speculation; I’ll tell her I’m upset for an uninteresting reason, like someone died, say my grandmother. My grandmother did die, just not lately; she was my father’s mother, and I never liked her. The grandmother I adore is still alive and rapidly losing her memory. She would have been the first person I’d have confided in if she could hold a thought for longer than ten minutes. 

My supervisor tells me to take the afternoon off. I say I’ll have to take some personal time for my grandmother’s funeral. I’ve never been so dishonest in my life, but I don’t think I have a choice. I cringe beneath her sympathetic gaze. 

“Be gentle with yourself,” she says as I get up to go. “Losing a loved one is hard.”

What I’m losing is someone who would have loved me, because children love their mothers. And I would have loved him or her because mothers love their babies. I know it’s crazy to turn down love, but I can’t bring myself to accept it.

I walk out into the chilly afternoon, unseasonable spring weather. The sun sparkles on the leaves of the budding rhododendrons outside the hospital; fair weather clouds like scoops of ice cream scud across in the sky. My breasts ache and my belly feels bloated and I am as tired as I’ve ever been, but I don’t want to go home, I want to see Jean, so I make my way toward the office building where she works. We haven’t gone more than a day or two without speaking since ninth grade, but it’s been five days of deafening silence so far, and I can’t stand it anymore. 

I’m half a block away when I see her on the marble steps of the building. She’s sitting alone, eating a burrito with such concentration that she doesn’t notice when I sit down beside her. She jumps when I say her name.

“Are we still friends?”

“I think so,” she says. “Are you mad at me?”

“Am I mad? I thought you were mad.”

“Why haven’t you called me?”

“Why haven’t you called me?”

Her burrito is falling apart in her hands, pulled pork and black beans plopping onto steps between her legs. “You want some?” she says when she sees me noticing.

“Do you eat out here every day?”

“When it’s nice. I like the time alone. I only have thirty minutes for lunch.”

I watch people passing by on the sidewalk wearing variations of business clothing. Jean has on red bell bottom pants and a puff sleeved pink shirt; her hair is tied back with a fat red ribbon that makes her look like a cartoon character. One of the things I love best about her is she is never full of shit.

“I’m going to New York,” I say. 

She nods and takes a bite of her burrito. “Are you afraid?” she says through a full mouth.

“A little.” 

“I’d be afraid.”

“Of what?” 

“That it would hurt. That I’d regret it.”

“I regret that I don’t want this pregnancy,” I say. “I regret that I’m not a woman who would be thrilled to be a mother. Right now, I wish I was that person.”

“I don’t wish you were different than you are. I wish I was different, though.”

“Maybe everybody does.”

“I bet if we did a survey of the people walking by, they’d all say they like themselves even if they don’t.”

“I’m not saying I don’t like myself. I’m saying life would be easier if I was more conventional.”

“Tell me about it,” Jean says. She rolls the remainder of her burrito into its foil wrapper until it’s the size of a tennis ball. Expertly, she tosses it into a metal trash can about ten feet away and laughs with pleasure when it lands. We get up from the steps and walk toward a street by the river where there’s a tattoo studio I like. I’m thinking I want a new tattoo before I go to New York.

“What will you get?” Jean says.

“I don’t know. What do you think I should get?”

She ponders the question as we walk. Reflections of the clouds move swiftly over the river, painting it dark and light. We used to hang out down here when we were teenagers, morose and pimpled and furtive.

“You should get a tattoo of a cage with its door open and a bird flying out of it into the sky,” she says. She opens her arms wide. “Because that’s who you are, you can’t be trapped.”

We reach the tattoo studio and look in the window at scores of colorful examples. We point out the ones we like to each other—a spider, an open palm, an old-fashioned bell, a bouquet of tiger lilies; and a four-leaf clover, dainty and bright, that Jean urges me to choose for good luck. I think a moment and decide against it. I feel lucky already.

Louise Marburg is the author of three story collections, The Truth About Me, No Diving Allowed, and You Have Reached Your Destination, and a novel, Fancy Meeting You. Her work has appeared in such publications as the Missouri Review, Story, Ploughshares, Narrative, and many others. She lives in New York City.

10 April 2026