Temptations are Limited

My wife has been playing that song over and over again today. I forgot the name since I numbed it out of my mind, but I know the rhythm by heart. I suppose I can’t help but understand her, though, since we’ve just recently lost another child. Ten years I’ve been with this woman and not once have I held a child in my arms and smiled down upon it. At first I thought it was just me, but now I’m starting to believe maybe it’s her as well.

“Three loses…,” I mumble to myself as I sit in my living room, listening to that song my wife plays in our bedroom.

“Three loses in ten years…” I close my eyes. “Three…”

Three strikes and you’re out, a voice then says in my mind. I know this voice—it’s mine.

“Shut up,” I tell it.

How cruel. It laughs at me. Say…why not just find someone else to bear your child?

I open my eyes. “Are you serious?” I growl. “I love my wife!” Mm-hm? The voice is testing me. Just ask your wife for permission, then, if you love her so.

I close my eyes again, waiting until the song ends for the umpteenth time, and say, “Fine…”

That night my wife and I sit at the dinner table, barely touching our food. Although this is melancholic, this is the only other time besides sleeping I can enjoy since my wife turns off that annoying song.

Ask her…! the voice in my head growls, pressuring our earlier dispute.

I sigh. “Sweetheart?” I ask my wife, forcing a smile to show. “Yes, dear?” my wife asks back, still looking down at her barely-touched plate. It makes me frown. Her voice is so dulled-out that it’s barely hard to hear her. She sounds as if she were thirty years beyond what she was now.

“I was…thinking…” I gulp.

Just say it! the voice hisses, making my head feel as if it were being filled with acid.

“About the…”

“You know,” my wife interrupts, still staring at her food, “I was thinking about the solution to our problem.”

My heart stings. “Oh?”

She looks up at me. Her eyes have lost their shine from over the years; her skin turned pale like a corpse’s; and her hair unkempt. “You should find someone else to bear your child.”

I blink blankly, then smile and clap my hands. “That’s exactly what I was going to ask you, sweetie!” I get, walk over to her, then grab her hands and kneel before her. “Oh, honey…You won’t regret this. Once the child is born, we can take custody of it and…”

My wife lets me go and gets up. “What I meant was…she bares your child, not ours.” She then takes off her wedding ring and puts it on the table. She solemnly walks to her room. When she plays the song again, I stand up and smile gloomily.

“What a soothing song…”