Red Clocks(21)

When she got pregnant with Bex, at thirty, the wife felt as though she were sliding under a closing garage door.

Why did “thirty” loom like an expiration date?

She and Didier hadn’t planned it; they weren’t married; they’d been dating for seven months. But the wife felt old. It was August, her last year of law school was about to start, the home pregnancy test made a cross. This is what I want, this!—law school was nothing to this.

“She said I did steal,” says Bex, “and so she isn’t friends with me anymore.”

“Give Shell some time to cool off.”

“But what if she never cools off?”

“I think she will,” says the wife. “Also, we need to talk about your research project! Have you decided on a topic yet?”

A small smile. “It’s narrow to two.”

“Oh, you narrowed it down?” The wife starts the ignition, flips her turn signal. Throat stab: she forgot to get any new books for Bex at the library.

“Wood sprite or ghost pepper, the hottest pepper known to man.”

“Those are good choices, sweetpea.”

“Shell’s mom has ghost pepper from India at their house. They have seventy-three different spices in their spice cabinet.”

“Oh, they don’t have that many.”

“Yes, they do—we counted. How many spices do we have, Momplee?”

“No idea.”

In the rearview, some cow is waving at her to get moving.

The wife will take her sweet time.

If she constructs a solid argument, he’ll be convinced.

But then you’d actually have to go to counseling with him.

Which might work!

Which would be the whole point.

To feel okay again. Even good.

To stop her throat from hurting when Bex asks “Do you and Daddy love each other?”

To stop reading online articles about the maladaptive coping mechanisms of kids from broken homes.

To stop brokenhomebrokenhomebrokenhome from reeling in her head.

To stop staring at the guardrails.





I brought aboard with me a sack of skerpikj?t, which the Canadian sailors were interested to try. They called its taste “harrowing.” I explained that if the lamb is dried during an unusually wet or warm season, it may ferment to the point of decay.





THE BIOGRAPHER


The biographer loves Penny at school, sharing snacks in the teachers’ lounge, but she loves her best on Sunday nights, when they watch Masterpiece mysteries in her little house with its rose-dotted wallpaper and stone fireplace and wool rugs, rain pattering on the oriel windows.

Penny hands her a napkin, a fork, and a plate of shepherd’s pie. “Tap water or limeade?”

“Limeade. But isn’t it time?”

“Oh damn!” Penny hurries to the television. (She is always losing her clicker.) Settles with her own plate next to the biographer, tucks a napkin into the collar of her turquoise sweater. “Let’s see what skills you’ve got for us, Sergeant Hathaway.” The opening credits begin, theme song swelling over shots of Oxford’s dreaming spires, a weak English sun turning Cotswold limestone the color of apricots. Penny intones, “Who will die tonight?”

“You should write mysteries instead of bra rippers,” says the biographer.

“But I prefer the beating heart. Did I tell you I’m going to a romance writers’ convention? They have agents you can pitch to.”

“How much do they charge you for that privilege?”

“Well, they charge plenty. And why shouldn’t they? The agents are being flown all the way from New York.”

“Can I read your pitch?”

“Honey, I have it memorized. ‘Rapture on Black Sand opens at the end of World War I. Euphrosyne Farrell is a young Irish nurse so gutted by her sweetheart’s death at the Somme that she emigrates to New York City. After becoming engaged to a middle-aged widower, she finds herself drawn to Renzo, the widower’s nephew, whose magnetic Neapolitan eyes prove irresistible.’”

“Where does black sand come in?” asks the biographer.

“Euphrosyne and Renzo make love for the first time in a small cove on Long Island.”

“But wouldn’t it be more interesting and, um, maybe less clichéd if she got engaged to the nephew, then found his uncle irresistible?”

“Lord no! This isn’t Little Women. Renzo’s a Brooklyn stallion and his britches are strained to bursting.”

Penny is a teacher of English and an inventor, she says, of entertainments. “They’re a hoot,” she answered when the biographer once ventured to ask why she wanted to write soap operas valorizing romantic love as the sole telos of a female life. Penny has written nine of them, all waiting for cover art showing bulge-groined men relieving bulge-chested women of their bodices. She intends to be a published author by her seventieth birthday. Three years to make it happen.

“Okay,” she says, “here’s Detective Sergeant Hathaway. Can’t buy cheekbones like that.”

Inspector Lewis and DS Hathaway trade jokes across a sheeted corpse; enjoy beers at The Lamb & Flag; and chase a murderous puppeteer through a faculty drinks party, leaving a wake of Oxford dons agape.