Future Home of the Living God(16)

Then, just as abruptly, the curtains were again pulled shut.

At present, although the counter of my convenience store is brightly lit, and I have just handled a large number of lucrative transactions, I once again exist in the blind monotony of my illness. The pen is too heavy to lift.

After shopping at the giant discount grocery halfway back down to the Cities, I go next door to the Wells Fargo bank branch. I’ve kept eight thousand dollars in an old-fashioned savings account, which I’m supposed to be able to access anytime. The teller, however, purses her lips when she sees my withdrawal slip. “I don’t think so,” she says, sliding back the slip.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think we’ve got that much cash today.”

She’s a round, burly, fluffy-haired blond lady with apple rosy cheeks and bright lipstick. She’s wearing lime green with dark red touches here and there. If she were in her twenties, she could definitely be one of the fake newscasters. Maybe I look more Native than usual today, darker and more raven-haired from being on the reservation. I hope that’s it. I hope she’s not telling the truth.

“I’d like to see the manager.”

“He’s off.”

“Well then, I’ll wait.”

A wilting, heat-mad line is forming behind me. The teller—Marjorie, a name plate informs me—says, “I’m going to have to ask you to step aside, ma’am.”

“But I can’t do that.” I use my most pleasant passive-aggressive manner. “I need my money because I’m pregnant.”

With a deep, resentful, ominous stare, Marjorie picks up the telephone and pushes a button. Her cheeks purse, she pulls in air. Puts down the phone.

“Okay,” she hisses at me, “walk back please and Hawaii will be waiting for you.”

And this woman named Hawaii is waiting. I quickly fill out paperwork and close my account. Hawaii counts the money out in hundreds and fifties.

“You’ve got a nice name,” I say. She was probably conceived in Hawaii, I think, on a happy and expensive honeymoon.

“What’s happening?” I ask her.

She shrugs. Her face is pale. She looks up at the clock.

“I don’t think we’ll last til noon.”

As I walk back down the hall, I see that the line I was in now stretches out the door. I cross the parking lot and enter the red doors of a Target, where I do something overly normal and self-indulgent. I shop for you. I buy tiny clothes and blankets and diapers, even a couple of toys recommended for newborn babies. I fill two huge white bags and pay with my emergency credit card. I ignore the lines around the bank, stretching on and on, into the parking lot. I pat you. I get into the car, but instead of starting it up, I freeze. The line to the bank is even longer. And the cash is probably, now, being parceled out to each person in small amounts. If things go way south, and we head into a barter economy, I need the new cash.

I see a drive-up liquor store at the end of the strip mall. So I drive up.

“I need some help,” I tell the clerk, a droopy fellow with spiked gray hair.

“All right.” He leans on the window.

“What do people like to drink when they’re desperate?”

“Anything. But you don’t look desperate.”

“It’s not for me, it’s for the end of the world.”

“Oh, that. Well, pull around and I’ll load you up.”

“And while you’re at it, twenty, thirty cartons of Marlboros?”

“No problem at all.”

It is as if the liquor store man deals with end-times hoarders on a regular basis. I load up. Put it all on my credit card, again, in a bet against the survival of credit card companies. On the way home I make another stop and fill the spaces between the cases with a thousand dollars worth of shotgun shells, bullets, and deer slugs. Back on the road, I drive with calm care. If I were stopped, the car searched, could I claim that I was stocking up for a drunken target-practice party? I’d be the first to arrest me. And what about a random spark of flame? I drive carefully and am exceedingly relieved when I pull into my driveway. I decided to unload the cases through the half-built garage, then treat myself. I can’t wait to clean out a drawer for you, to snip off the tags and wash the newness from everything that will touch your skin. To gather up the little T-shirts and jumpers and flame-retardant sleepers and place them in perfectly folded piles.



August 11

My midwife, Gretchen, scheduled an appointment for me on a health plan left over from a job I had last year. My COBRA has lapsed, but all hail some computer glitch, because it worked. But even Gretchen isn’t going to show up today. She doesn’t want to risk getting caught on the insurance thing. I refused amniocentesis but persuaded her to order me a class 2 diagnostic ultrasound mainly because I knew the equipment was sophisticated and I wanted to see you as clearly as I possibly could. I’ve researched you, kiddo. You are between months 4 and 5. You have passed through the age of miracles. Gone from tadpole to vaguely humanoid and lost your embryonic tail. Absorbed the webs between your toes and fingers and developed eyelids, ears, a tiny skeleton. Grown a 250,000-neuron-per-minute brain. You can already squint, frown, smile, hiccup. In fact, you are hiccuping regularly as I walk down the long, sage green corridor.

The medical attendants in the ultrasound room are unusually perky, cheerful, and snoopy.