Girl One(17)

T: So even you, Dr. Bellanger, a man who’s made it his life’s mission to take fatherhood out of reproduction, admit that there’s still value to fatherhood?

B: Scientific progress is one thing, and I’m certainly proud of what I’ve accomplished, but we can’t forget the importance of familial ties.

T: What of motherhood? How do you think your work with parthenogenesis has changed our views of the maternal role?

B: Without the patience and faith of these young ladies, nothing would have been possible. Margaret, I hope you know that history and science owe a lot to you ladies for your willingness to listen to a man like me, before the rest of the world would put up with me. My hope is that your names will be listed every time I’m mentioned, as a reminder of the enduring virtues of faith and patience.





8

I’d been staring at the same giant, blank-eyed baby for nearly an hour. As the sun sank lower, the lights beneath the billboard popped on, illuminating the baby’s round cheeks and startled O of a mouth. Aside from the arc of the overpass, this billboard for a pediatric hospital was the only thing out here. I was stuck on the side of the freeway, the Chevy swaying and rattling ominously whenever an eighteen-wheeler roared past. The tow truck wouldn’t be here for another hour, at the earliest. The repair alone would cost four hundred dollars that I didn’t have, and I’d have to figure out a place to spend the night in this waystation somewhere between Redbud and Topeka. It was as far as I’d gotten before the Chevy gave up the ghost.

I wished I had somebody I could call. Not for help. Just to talk. More than anything, I felt incredibly alone, not even the radio for company. It was weird—living with my mother for nearly twenty-two years of my life, I’d never felt alone, exactly, even though our lives looked lonely to other people. Even when I’d started undergrad courses and we barely saw each other, I knew my mother would have my back. Maybe that was part of the reason I lived at home.

It wasn’t until I moved to Chicago and the first flurry of busyness faded that I woke up one morning to realize that I was on my own. Cut in half, almost. I hadn’t noticed that constant, submerged sense of someone-on-my-side until it was fully gone.

Dutifully, I’d tried to get to know my classmates, but any potential friendships had been flattened into the pattern of an occasional study date or idle chitchat in the lab, where I spent most of my time trying to prove myself. My work at the lab involved exposing zebrafish sperm to the irradiating blast of UV rays, then using the sperm to fertilize eggs. The resulting haploid embryos were parthenogenetic, like me, carrying only genetic material from their mothers. They only lived a few days, at most, which offered us enough time to screen for any new mutations, but I was obsessed with each one. This was such a rudimentary version of what Bellanger had done. These fleeting, doomed little beings, dying off before they even started, stripped of half of their genetic material. The work gave me a tiny glimpse into what Bellanger must’ve felt. The electric brink of discovery.

Cars roared past in a steady stream. Eventually I got so sick of the stuffy air in the Chevy that I climbed out and leaned against the hood, ignoring the occasional honks and the trailing ribbons of shouts and jeers. Someone had thrown a plastic cup of pop at the car and neon-pink gore was streaked along the back windows. I toyed with the idea of trekking back to the closest gas station to call Dr. McCarter, but it would be hard to argue for more responsibility in lab rotations after he’d seen me stranded along a Kansas freeway.

Headlights bloomed on the grass in front of me, expanding for a second, hot against my back. A car had pulled off the road right behind me. I stiffened and turned, adrenaline kicking in as my brain scrambled to figure out what to do. For a second I remembered that maroon car that had been lurking outside my mother’s house in Coeur du Lac, and I tensed, all too aware of how unprotected I was out here—I could vanish just as easily as my mother had—

The headlights blinked into darkness, the door thumped closed. A man’s silhouette stepped out. In the purplish twilight, it was hard to make out any features.

“Josie?” he called. “Girl One? Is that you?”

“Tom,” I said, and for a second I relaxed at the relief of seeing somebody I kind-of-sort-of knew, my arms unwinding. Until I realized how uncanny this was—running into Tom hours from where I’d last seen him. “Funny meeting you here,” I said, hiding my suspicion behind a joke.

“God, I thought that was you,” he said, stopping a few feet away. “Car trouble?”

Of fucking course, I thought. “It’s the alternator. This old hunk of junk is only good for running errands. I should’ve known, but…” I shrugged. “Anyway. Why are you in the area?” I glanced around at the long strip of freeway, multiple lanes leading off into the horizon in either direction. “It’s pretty wild that you were just passing by and happened to spot me,” I said, letting an accusation creep in.

“Must be fate.” When I narrowed my eyes, skeptical, he said: “Hey. I’m based in Kansas City. Remember? Kansas City Telegraph. This is my home turf.” He gestured with a half-joking grandeur at the flat, scrubby landscape, the pinprick stars fizzling to life overhead. “I was passing through and I saw you and thought: Hey, I know that girl. Looked like you were in trouble. I had to turn around and come back. Like I said. Fate.”