Thinner \'thin-er\ - thinner than thin but not thinnest; the in between.
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You know, a miscarriage--the loss of a child in which no one is to blame--can kill a woman's soul.

Jean knows.

She knows the thin line a woman walks, the one between hating and loving herself, remembering and letting go, guilt and absolution. Jean has tucked it all inside of her, folded the shadow of the burgeoning mass of cells deep within her psyche as a flower pulls its petals in at night.

She walks the thin lines on the thin crust of the earth. Thin as an eggshell. The idea of the unmade soul floating around her weighs down on her shoulders, pressing her feet through the shallow, brittle earth. Jean is sinking into it.

A baby would have fixed things. Babies are precious and wonderful, the standard solution to marital difficulties. Marital difficulties: disagreements, frequent and varying in intensity, that threaten to shred the love that binds two people, cutting them apart from one another and forcing them to drift in their own separateness.

One must note that two people who love each other cannot be cut apart easily. The tendrils of the self that each lover has wrapped around the other must be removed one by one, strand by strand. It is a painful process and Jean knows this, too.

The idea of him and forever was very appealing, but Jean wondered if there was the elusive something else. She had never really known the love of another man, though she had been the object of lust. Jean was in want of a sign, something to tell her that the line she had been walking up to this point was the correct one.

Things: the unacknowledged conflicts that make a woman question her relationship with the man who, beneath all of the things, she knows she loves. A baby would fix things.

She was happy to tell him. For a few days, she held the secret inside, as a woman sometimes will, and thought of the best way to tell him. She imagined a renewal of the spark that had characterized their relationship for so long.

In the kitchen, she washed strawberries, tumbling the ripe red fruit on a paper towel. You should use a colander, he says, because those heavy things will tear right through that paper towel. It gets thin and weak when it's wet. Jean says I know and decides to tell him then. He smiles and embraces her gently. Jean lets the strawberries fall into the sink as he kisses her. Then he leaves because he has a class to teach. The colanders are in the cabinet to your right, he says.

Jean was right to think that the proverbial spark would renew itself. For three weeks the baby grew inside of her, promising to add another, thicker strand to the thinning rope of their relationship. Jean knows that the faults have become easier to see. Faults: the parts you are not happy with; the parts you do not want.

In New York City one day, Jean walked past windows of clothes that she would be happy to be unable to wear in a few months. Her palm rested on her stomach, rubbing slowly and unconsciously in small circles over the thin silk of her blouse. A wind came and with it a man who wanted her leather purse. Instinct made her hands grip the strap more tightly. She pulled, for it was not her nature to give in. He kicked her hard, right in the stomach and the thin strap snapped and he ran away, taking the wind with him. Her knees hit the pavement and she let her face feel the cool stone base of the window display next to her. The streets were spinning and she didn't even care. All of that for a purse with a special wallet in it, from a vacation to Italy, and a photograph in black-and-white taken on her mother's camera.

There was blood on the sheets two days later. She went to the infirmary early in the morning so no one would see her stumbling. Stumble: to almost fall.

Telling--to reveal, to expose--is always hard, if it is a lie, a story, an apology, or news so good you think you're heart might explode to tell. Maybe news so bad that your heart will break instead. Jean's heart broke when she told him and he held her, said it was okay. Jean knows she is walking on thin ground.

Telling lies is hard. Jean lies to a different man, a friend, says that they have decided to go their separate ways. She says that she doesn't love him anymore, that he doesn't understand, that she suspects he blames her.

Why didn't you just let the goddamn purse go? Why didn't you keep a hand on your stomach? Why are you so fucking stubborn, why weren't you paying attention, how could you let your body let go so easily? I thought it was not in your nature to give in. All of that for a purse with a special wallet in it, from a vacation to Italy, and a photograph in black-and-white taken on your mother's camera.

Being lied to is hard. There is the thinnest chance that you will let yourself believe because the lie is what you want. It's not your fault Jean's friend says. He holds her all she wants but that is all he will do because he knows Jean loves the other man, who dreams of when he first met Jean and heard her say I love you. Love: strong affection, warm attachment, a beloved person; a score of zero in tennis.

Zero is where you must start before you can recover from a loss of everything. Then you must step back and see what you have not lost and the zero is suddenly far beneath you. Jean never lost the man she loved, the man who found her in her office one day and asked her to marry him. Suddenly, they can sit together and feel comfortable in each others' presence, in their own thin skins, thickened by everything they have lost and are afraid to lose. Afraid: frightened, fearful, often of something that isn't there.

Jean realizes one day, sitting with her husband in the sun that thin does not have to be bad. Thin can be strong, the way a canvas sail snaps in the wind, not tearing. She knows that their love is the canvas sail, filling with wind and pushing their ship against walls of waves.

He strokes Jean's hair as she lays out on the grass beneath an oak tree, leaves and wind jeweling the sun above. The patterns on her face are irregular shadows. She runs her arms and legs over the grass, the earth, as her husband watches.

"Feel that," she says. "Feel it? The ground we live and love on... It's so thin."

"Yeah."

"We could fall right through it. I think people do every day. Fall through the ground, I mean. In a metaphorical sort of way."

"Because the ground is so thin?"

"Thinner than an eggshell," she says.

Disclaimer: All characters, settings, storylines that are not the product of my own imagination are the property of 20th Century Fox and Marvel Comics. I write these stories and run this site to satisfy my obsession and to provide a little pleasure for others. I make no money from this site in any way.

Author's Note: This story was partially inspired by the final line of the first act of a play I was in. It was "Rewrites" by Lee Blessing and I was honored to play a part.