Bitters
“Contrite Respite” by Brooke Walker
after Donald Barthelme
Having stopped drinking, my husband wants a baby. He already has a dog, but he had the dog when I met him. Now he says he wants us to build something together. He wants a project.
He’s an okay dog owner, my husband. I don’t know how he’ll be as a father. The dog is sweet, but he jumps and he barks. Not like all dogs do, but in the way where I have to say sorry a lot when I walk him. I never wanted one way or the other about a baby, but I spent so long wanting a husband that I might as well. They say the thing about husbands is if you want to keep them, you’ve got to keep them happy.
Statistically, more husbands than wives are happy to be married, which is a hustle. Everyone says wanting to get married is such a girl thing. But it’s disappointment that’s the ultimate girl thing.
I miss before my husband was a Husband, when he was just Thomas. Before he was the guy who lives in my house and mows the lawn and asks me what we’re having for dinner, before he was a generic. I miss when he was specific, and everything about him was interesting and tender. Over time, the more certain things blur, the more others come into focus. Less insecurity, more intimacy. More mundane, less mysterious. Less negligée, more nosehair. I don’t know how to keep the aperture where I want it.
***
A photograph taken by my husband’s late father hangs in our living room. You’d know it if you saw it. I never met him, but when I was growing up I used to take pictures all the time. Darkroom and everything. Nobody in my family was an artist and they all wondered when I’d grow out of it and get a real job and I said never, until one day I did. When I met my husband I told him I’d always admired his father’s mastery of light. That’s funny, he said, because his father cast quite the shadow.
My father was more of a negative space. Maybe that’s why I ended up with a husband who flickers in and out, like a far-off radio station. When he’s tuned in, it’s impossible to turn away. He wants to be a present father, my husband says. And as bad as it was when he used to tune out, I don’t know what I’m going to do without all that alone time. Especially if there’s a baby. Babies eat up two things as soon as they’re born: milk and alone time.
***
My husband has lost weight since he quit drinking. He’s taken up running instead. The dog has been calmer since my husband has been running with him. My husband has been calmer, too. I have to admit, he looks good. My husband, I mean, not the dog. The dog is fine. I think he’s using how good he looks to convince me we should have a baby. But something about having sex for a reason besides just wanting to makes me not want to.
A baby sounds so generic to me. That’s why I can’t make myself feel excited about it. Maybe a baby is the opposite of a husband: the longer you spend with a baby, the less generic they get. No longer just Baby as a category, but your specific baby, growing into their own specific person-ness.
The kind of baby my husband wants is the kind that sleeps through the night, the kind who poops polite little pellets, like a rabbit. He doesn’t want a baby that will take my eyes off him. But he doesn’t know that yet.
***
I’m sipping a bitters and soda at a bar where my husband can’t go. I don’t have a problem with alcohol, so I can walk into a bar without a punch line that hurts. Everybody needs some private space out in the world to think. That’s what my husband’s running time is for. Sitting at the bar with my book and my drink, I feel like I used to before I had a husband, back when I just wanted one. Lucky for me Thomas has always been gentle. Lucky for him something in me is like a sheep with a bell. But not all of me. And lately the clapper’s started going wonky, almost like an alarm.
It’s getting to be a real issue, the baby thing. My husband claims he wanted this from the beginning. I remind him how, early on, over martinis, he told me he couldn’t picture himself as a father, not with the father he had. Then he reminds me I should know better than to believe anything he said while he was still drinking. Besides, he says, that’s why he quit drinking. So we started trying. My husband seems to be trying hard. Me, I’m mostly phoning it in. My siblings all send out holiday cards with pictures of the kids. My sisters and my brother’s wife make sure we get them every year. I’d rather die. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I find a way to make the Wife uniform fit right?
***
There’s a girl sitting alone in a booth in the corner, maybe ten years younger than me. She doesn’t look lonely. She’s drinking a short glass of something brown, with ice, and eating French fries like she’s got all night, slipping them out of the basket like cigarettes from a carton. The girl is wearing her coat indoors, and I can’t tell if the thick fur is real or not. Her gaze is relaxed, not alert like mine used to be — still is. I wonder if she has a normal job, a real job, or if she does something brave and interesting instead. I wonder how you raise a girl like that. I wonder if you can do it to yourself. I squeeze my sad lime. I stir my drink. I need to see if there are classes for that kind of thing, before the baby comes.
About the Author
Sarah Bess Jaffe is an award-winning audio producer, visual artist, and Creative Writing MFA candidate at St. Joseph’s University, where she is a Barbara Germack Foundry Fellow and co-editor of The Writer's Foundry Review. Sarah is also a co-founder of the TBR reading series for emerging writers, a translations reader for The Adroit Journal, and a 2025 writer-in-residence at La Porte Peinte Centre pour les Arts in Burgundy, France. Her work is featured and forthcoming in Electric Literature, Peatsmoke, and elsewhere, as well as countless Penguin Random House Audio productions. She is currently working on a short story collection, her first novel, and a hand-watercolored graphic narrative about the rise of the far-right in the US and France.
about the artist
Brooke Walker is a queer disabled artist and poet from rural Pennsylvania. They love to photograph the natural world and its creatures. They combine these photos, often with images of themself, to create digital artworks that act as monuments of turning points along their life’s path. Some artworks embody hope, wisdom, and confidence, while others embody pain, rage, and numbness. Many attempt to harmonize the two lenses, to produce something honest and relieving. Brooke works as a mental health public speaker, sharing a message of self-acceptance, validation of people’s struggles, and finding belonging in community. You can find their work on Substack under brookeewalker, and Flickr under brooke-walker.