Red Clocks(14)

“I know,” says Jessica, “and it’s been forever since we had you over! We need to do that. It’s hard to find a good night with the kids so busy after school. We’ve got soccer, cross-country, violin—gosh, what am I missing?”

The oldest child says, “My gifted-and-talented class?”

“That’s right, my love. This one”—she nuzzles the boy’s head—“tested off the charts last year, so he qualifies for an accelerated math and language-arts program. You guys aren’t vegetarian, are you? We’ve been getting the most heavenly beef from our friends down the road. Their cows are grass-fed, no antibiotics whatsoever, just pure happy beef.”

“You mean happy before they’re slaughtered,” says Didier, “or once they turn into food?”

She doesn’t bat an eye. “So when you guys come over, I’ll make steaks, and the chard will be ready soon. Gosh, we’ve got acres of it this year. Fortunately the kids love chard.”

Still raining hard on the way home. Wipers furious.

“Shooting?” says Didier.

“Too quick,” says the wife. “What’s a very slow poison?”

“Hemlock, I think,” he says, taking a hand off the wheel to caress the back of her neck. “No, wait—starvation! Hoist them on their own, like, whatevers.”

“Petards,” she says.

“What is a petard, anyway?”

“Can’t remember. But I vote for starvation.”

“‘I notice you’ve got some unsoaked nuts on the premises, and I’m a little concerned. Frankly I wouldn’t dream of feeding my children an unsoaked nut.’”

“What are you guys talking about?” says Bex.

“A TV show we saw,” says Didier, “called The World’s Smallest Petard. You would like it, Bexy. There’s an episode where every time a person farts, you can actually see the fart—there’s these little brown clouds trailing behind the characters.”

Bex giggles.

The wife moves his hand from her neck down to her thigh and closes her eyes, smiling. He squeezes her jeaned flesh.

She remembers what she loves.

Not the fart jokes, but the sweetness. The solidarity against the Perfects of this world.

She will ask him tomorrow.

In the car-window fog she draws an A.

It was bad, yes, the last time he refused. She promised herself she wouldn’t ask again.

But the kids adore him.

And he really is sweet sometimes.

I got the name of a person in Salem, she will say, who’s supposed to be fantastic, not that expensive, does late appointments. We can get Mattie to sit—

And she has seen herself driving off the cliff road with the kids in the car.





When the polar explorer turned six, she was shown the best way to hold the knife and how to make a slice across the lamb’s throat—just one, they don’t feel it, do it hard, watch your brother. But when she had the knife, and her mother was squatting beside her with the little wriggler, she didn’t want to. Eiv?r was ordered twice to cut it and twice she said “Nei, Mamma.”

Her mother put a hand over hers and drew the knife under the lamb’s face; its face fell off; Eiv?r fell with it, screaming; and her mother hoisted the animal above a washtub to bleed.

Eiv?r was beaten on her thighs with a leather strap used for hanging slit lambs in the drying shed. And she ate no r?st kj?t that Christmas or skerpikj?t that spring, apart from the occasional secret bite her brother Gunni saved in his shoe.





THE BIOGRAPHER


Doesn’t know for a fact that Gunni saved pieces of fermented lamb in his shoe when Eiv?r wasn’t allowed to have any, but she writes it in her book, because her own brother used to hide cookies in his napkin when their mother told the biographer she didn’t need more dessert unless she wanted to get chubby. Archie would leave the cookies in his drawer for her to retrieve. Each time she opened the drawer and saw the grease-darkened napkin tucked among socks, a flame of happiness lit in her throat.

She wrote the first sentences of Mínervudottír: A Life ten years ago, when she was working at a café in Minneapolis and trying to help Archie get clean. When she wasn’t driving him to meetings or outpatient appointments, she was dropping leafy greens into smoothies he didn’t drink. She was checking his pupils for pinnedness, his drawers for needles, her own wallet for missing cash. Sometimes he would ask to read the manuscript. He liked the part where the polar explorer watches men drive whales to their deaths in a shallow cove.

As a hater of tradition, Archie would have applauded her solo pregnancy efforts. Would have tried to get his friends to supply sperm for free. (One dose of semen from Athena Cryobank costs eight hundred dollars.) She has not told her father about the efforts.

She closes her computer and sets Mínervudottír’s journal on a pile of books about nineteenth-century Arctic expeditions. Rolls her head toward one shoulder, then the other. Is a stiff neck another sign of polycystic ovary syndrome? She has researched PCOS online, a little, as much as she can stand. The pregnancy statistics aren’t good.

But Gin Percival might not know what she’s talking about. She didn’t even graduate from high school, according to Penny, who was already teaching at Central Coast when Gin dropped out. The visit to her did not go badly, or particularly well. She liked Gin Percival fine. She came away with a bag of gruesome tea.