The Killing Jar by Jennifer Hritz

First runner-up in the 2019 Los Angeles Review Literary Awards, in the category of Short Fiction.

Final Judge: tammy lynne stoner

James labors on top of her. Teeth gritted, brow furrowed: this sort of grim determination does nothing for Elizabeth’s libido, though that’s been missing for a long time now, since before she started the fertility drugs, since before the miscarriage in November. James would probably credit both for her disinterest, but deep down she knows that it’s James himself who turns her off. James, with his enthusiasm and encouragement and fucking tenacity. “C’mon,” he’s muttering, and she doesn’t know whether he’s annoyed that she’s not matching the grind of his hips or if he’s giving his sperm a pep talk. He’s working hard enough to sweat, and Elizabeth closes her eyes.

What she likes to do while James finishes is organize her day, think through the projects she has going on at the office. She works for the city, and despite the bleakness of the February morning—she can feel the wind seeping through the ancient windows of the brownstone James insisted they buy, and spy a sky-full of lake-effect snow—she knows spring will arrive in mere months, bringing the butterflies along with it. She’s been planning for months, interviewing artists, allocating funds; for a while, she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to pull it off. But she saw the first one yesterday, big and bronze and wonderful, sculpted wings spread wide. The idea is to place them—all twelve of them—throughout Chicago, part beautification project, part tourist attraction. “Gorgeous,” she’d told her boss, “Really stunning.” But since then she’s been wondering.

James shifts positions, sliding one hand beneath her and gripping her ass in a way that makes her wince. She’s not exactly wet, and they’re not allowed to use lubricant. In the old days he would’ve just gone down on her. In the old days, before he became so obsessive about this whole pregnancy thing, before—if she’s going to be honest—they got married. She thinks back, to their first time, the relish with which he unbuttoned her blouse, the slip of his mouth on her skin, the way her back arched like a cat’s with pure pleasure. This morning he barely kissed her, a brusque brush of the lips she didn’t return. But that first time… Oh, that first time he couldn’t get enough of her, and she’d laughed when he reached for her again before they’d even had time to catch their breaths.

Enough, she thinks. The past is her husband’s realm; he’s the one who spends all of his time digging up the dead. Not that he’s in the field much anymore. His students take up too much of his time, a complaint that always unnerves her. Shouldn’t his classes be top priority? He needs tenure, he tells her, especially if they’re starting a family, and that’s not going to happen if he concentrates solely on his students. He teaches three or four classes a semester, and between those and his committee work his trips abroad are limited to the summer months. Sometimes she takes a week or so off to accompany him; last year she met him halfway through an excavation on the isle of Crete. She’d been taking the Clomid for four months at that point, in ever-increasing doses; the medication had unraveled her. She spent most of the trip curled up in the hotel bathroom, crying, then staring out across the Aegean with half a mind to flee.

She sighs, an inadvertent breath that James misinterprets. He’s getting close; she understands the shift in his expression when she opens her eyes. She’s seen enough of it the past two and a half years. At first the doctors couldn’t figure out when she was ovulating, and she and James had sex every other day, just to be sure. After a while, she couldn’t stomach the thought of him. She wondered then, as she does now, what he thinks about in order to make this happen. She’s not altogether sure she wants to know.

Allowing her thoughts to drift back to the butterfly, she lets her arms fall from her husband and spreads them wide across the bed. Yesterday she’d touched the sculpture’s bronze wings and been thrilled to find them warm. She’d expected something cold, lifeless. Never mind that the sculpture rested in the artist’s studio on honey-colored hardwoods, in a bank of rare winter sun; the metal shouldn’t have breathed beneath her hand. But it had, and she’d trailed her fingers along the tip of one wing gently, carefully, as if traces of its precious dust might linger still.

Elizabeth was a butterfly once. She remembers the costume, with its light, perfect wings and matching antennae. Her mother had made it herself, and Elizabeth had left a trail of silver glitter as she flitted through the neighborhood, trick-or-treating. Now she wonders what happened to that costume, if it might be at her parents’ house or if it was thrown away, long ago. She almost hopes that’s the case; she has a feeling that her mother or James or someone would expect her to offer it to her daughter, should she have one, and she’s already bitter about everything she’s had to give up. No alcohol, light exercise: she’s sick of the rules, tired of feeling guilty when she lies to James about meeting Monica for a drink after work, or taking her kickbox class. She hates the combination of relief and disappointment she feels every month at the sight of her period. She hates having to tell James.

The first insemination took, even though the pregnancy didn’t last. There’s no reason to believe that the second insemination won’t work, and if that’s the case they should have a baby by Thanksgiving. Elizabeth quivers at the thought. She’s still not sure she’s ready for a step of this magnitude, still not sure she’s cut out to be a mother, despite James’s protests. “This is the Clomid talking,” James told her last summer, after Crete, when she finally confessed her misgivings, and when she told him she didn’t think so, that she’d been on the fertility drugs long enough, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to go through with the artificial insemination, he shut her out. For twenty-four hours he barely spoke to her, and then when he did, he told her that if she didn’t at least try to get pregnant he’d leave her.

Oh, not in those words. Her husband would never issue such an ultimatum. But she could tell by the careful way he worded his argument—he could understand her hesitation, this had been a frustrating, emotional experience for both of them—that if she didn’t go through with it he’d never forgive her. They’d been envisioning themselves with a baby since before they were married, he reminded her. And he was right. They had talked about children from the beginning, or at least from the time she found out about his relationship with Joel, and James decided he might as well tell her everything.

He never used the word abortion. Never once, as if uttering the word itself might jeopardize everything, this quest to right the decision his college girlfriend made without him, despite him. Elizabeth isn’t stupid. She knows what her husband’s trying to do. For a long time she didn’t mind the idea of helping him make reparations. But lately she’s been feeling less like a participant and more like a pawn. She wishes she hadn’t promised.

James stops, and she can tell when she looks at him that he lost his orgasm. She almost sobs; she’s ready to be done with this, ready for a shower, ready to escape the confines of their bed and cocoon herself in her office to think about the butterflies. But she knows James won’t let her, not the morning after the insemination, not when her doctor has told them that the more sex they have the first twenty-four hours after the procedure, the greater Elizabeth’s chance of getting pregnant. “What’s wrong?” she whispers, and James scowls. She should know better than to ask, and anyway, she knows the answer. The problem is her lack of interest, her unwillingness to feign desire, even for the sake of a baby. Her body, which has to be plied with hormones, tricked into readiness, inseminated artificially. The problem isn’t James or James’s capable sperm, which somehow managed to impregnate his college girlfriend even though she was on the Pill.

James takes a deep breath then drops his head to her shoulder. She can feel his eyelashes flutter briefly against her skin, butterfly kisses that bring tears to her eyes. She’s not thinking of her husband, though; she’s not thinking of leaning into her future child’s face, blinking against his cheek until he giggles. Instead she’s thinking of her conversation yesterday with Chloe, the artist who sculpted the first of the butterflies. They were talking about where in Chicago to place them, where the butterflies would have the greatest impact, and suddenly Elizabeth realized what they were discussing. They were talking about anchoring them. “Not a problem,” Chloe said, showing her the surreptitious foot where the butterfly would be bolted to the concrete.

Elizabeth knows she blanched.

Eyes closed, James props himself on the palms of his hands. He’s ready to try again, and Elizabeth quells her tears. At this point she’s used to them, though when she had the miscarriage James was the one who had to be consoled. Whatever tears she shed were the result of out-of-whack hormones and exhaustion. The loss flattened James, in a way she should’ve expected, but didn’t. Maybe that’s why when she caught him on the phone with Joel a few days after the D&C she didn’t protest, even though what she really wanted to do was wrest the phone from his hand. Never mind that he and Joel have been friends since college; never mind that he and Joel haven’t been involved for years. Elizabeth doesn’t like being reminded of their intimacy.

She takes a quick look at her husband. He’s turned away from her, his head to the side, his carotid artery throbbing. What image does he hold beneath his eyelids? Is he thinking of Joel? Or is the promise of a baby enough to bring him to orgasm? Elizabeth averts her eyes from his morning stubble, from the purse of his bottom lip, from the strain of his neck. How she once delighted in tracing the contours of his face, how she cherished the warmth of his skin! Now he groans above her, chilling her with sweat and detachment, the metamorphosis of their marriage as inevitable as the ecstasy of their first time.

James encircles her wrists with his hands. His breath quick, his movement focused: he’s ready. She’s been captured, mounted, pinned. What good will it do her to resist? She’ll get pregnant; she’ll have the baby. Maybe James is right. Maybe she’ll feel differently when she holds the baby in her arms.

James moans, tightening his grip around her wrists. Twenty blocks away Elizabeth’s butterfly spreads its wings, in a futile suggestion of flight. Beyond the windows the snow continues to fall.

Jennifer Hritz is the author of two novels, The Crossing and I, too, Have Suffered in the Garden. Themes of memory, psychological trauma, and betrayal fill her fiction, including her forthcoming novel, Slow Burn. Winner of the Chris O’Malley Fiction Prize, she holds both an M.A. in Literature and Language and a Ph.D. in American Literature. She lives in Austin, Texas, where she writes and teaches creative writing workshops for girls. Read more from Jennifer at www.jenniferhritz.com.