All We Want Is Everything by Andrew F. Sullivan Page B

out soft, soft hands for their coins and cheques and endless pounds of flesh. The darkness is the same way and so Caleb continues down his path with the baby clutched in his arms, dodging streetlights and the occasional cab that slows to pass him on the shoulder. Everyone will have their piece eventually. Everyone will take a piece of the whole, punishing the body for the sins of the hand.
    Caleb’s hands are red in the cold and he worries they will draw out wandering eyes. They are glowing and he can barely feel them. The baby is quiet; maybe it is freezing too. The cold is not an enemy. It is a warm embrace that articulates each breath you take. Caleb stops to lean against a tree to whisper something about St. Peter choking on a stone. All your idols are crumbling, he warns the baby and the baby cries because it knows Caleb is right and so Caleb says, you weren’t born from me. And the baby cries again.
    Caleb fell off the top shelf of the pasta aisle at the grocery store a year ago. Twink was working the cash and she took him to the hospital and filed the workman’s comp and got them both kicked out of her Mom’s place once the baby bump could not be hidden anymore. She said it was Caleb’s, but Caleb can’t remember getting hard, not after his knee blew out and so he says okay, but it really isn’t okay. He remembers another boy and another bottle and not drinking. He doesn’t want the new apartment with the ducts and pipes filtering fluids and air through their bedroom, the stove rattling every time the bus stops in front of the house. He doesn’t want the feet shuffling above him or the loud screams of raccoons mating in the attic. Fighting, mating, all the same things; all flesh on flesh and the baby is just flesh, that’s it.
    Caleb remembers a church group and being able to walk without a limp and his older brother telling them about Jesus carrying you when you were suffering, when life was hard and filled with stones that cut the bottoms of your feet. Caleb has forgotten to wear his shoes and his socks are soaked and growing stiff around his toes. His brother was a youth pastor and a saviour and always right until the police took everyone away because of the incident, and so Caleb focuses on the baby instead, the one in his arms, the one that isn’t his and he tells the baby it will be okay even though he’s in the park now and the snow is deeper than he thought. He tells the baby to breathe with him and that Twink will be better after this, she will be less sad, she will be so much better. She will find them locked in time, locked in place, held together by moisture in the air because that’s where God is. God is a place. God is a place you will wait for the rest of your life.
    Two joggers will find them in the morning cold and the baby still won’t have a name.

Self-cleaning Oven
    After the third attempt, Harriet’s sisters started to call her the self-cleaning oven. Henry already had one kid with Doris, the bitch who kept calling them in the middle of the night to complain about the water temperature in Henry’s old house. She still expected him to maintain the property even after receiving full custody of their mewling little Jamie. Henry began sleeping through the phone calls and so it was Harriet who had to answer the phone.
    “Stop. Just stop, Doris. Call a plumber. Just look it up online.”
    Three years with Henry and the calls still continued. Three years and three miscarriages.
    Harriet’s sisters asked her if she had read the books they gave her. The one’s about sleeping on your back for all nine months and eating only cucumbers or avocados. They asked if she was smoking cigarettes when no one else was looking. They checked her cabinets for secret stashes of whiskey and questioned Henry. Was he beating her? Did he have a history of malformed sperm? Harriet just wanted them to go away, but they had nothing else to distract them.
    Theresa had her tubes tied after the third kid came out