Red Clocks(47)

Ro, too, is thronged by students. She has wiped the rage off her face and is gesturing theatrically, making them laugh. They love her—and why not? She’s a good person. The wife would like to be a good person, a person who’ll be happy if Ro gets pregnant or adopts a baby, who will not hope that she doesn’t.

When Ro sees the wife’s children, is she jealous? What if she never conceives? Can’t adopt? What will be her life’s pull light then? When the wife goes down a street, John in the stroller and Bex holding her hand, purpose is written all over them. These little animals were hatched by the wife, are being fed and cleaned and sheltered and loved by the wife, on their way to becoming persons in their own right. The wife made persons. No need to otherwise justify what she is doing on the planet.

Huge brown eyes, sunlit hair, perfect little chins. All small children are cute. You know that, right?—D.’s reliable smashing of her happiness. Okay, yes, kids are built adorable so they won’t be abandoned to die before they can survive on their own; but it is also true that some kids are more adorable than others. Jambon sur les yeux, Didier likes to say. You’ve got ham over your eyes.

Lifting, settling, buckling.

Specks of rain on the windshield.

Soon, the sea.

“Starving!” calls Bex.

“Almost home,” says the wife.

Almost to the sharpest bend, whose guardrail is measly. Hands off the wheel. They would plow through the branches, fly past the rocks, tear open the water.

The newspapers tomorrow: MOTHER AND CHILDREN PERISH IN CLIFF TRAGEDY.

“Momplee,” says Bex, “do reindeer sleep?”

As they approach the bend, she eases her foot off the accelerator.

Didier was once jealous of Chad, the third-year student she’d gone out with a few times before meeting her husband.

If she were ever to tell him I slept with Bryan, would he spring into action, agree to counseling, fight to get her back? Or would he say, without looking up from the screen, Congratulations?

She is too chickenshit to leave her marriage.

She wants Didier to leave it first.





In the summer of 1868, aged twenty-seven, Mínervudottír left Aberdeen, taking with her an extra month’s salary (the shipyard director’s wife liked her) and, shoved deep in her suitcase, four silver candlesticks.

Went to London.

Sold the candlesticks.

Obtained a reader’s ticket to the British Museum Reading Room, which required no membership fee.

Bought a notebook with a brown leather cover.

This notebook filled with facts.





THE DAUGHTER


Behind the Dumpsters she lights her first cigarette of the day, which is normally the best one but they haven’t been tasting right lately. Soft chemical bloom on the roof of her mouth.

Why do some walruses in Washington, DC, who’ve never met the daughter care what she does with the clump? They don’t seem bothered that baby wolves are shot to death from helicopters. Those babies were already breathing on their own, running and sleeping and eating on their own, whereas the clump is not even a baby yet. Couldn’t survive two seconds outside the daughter.

The walruses are to blame for Yasmine.

Who sang at church.

Whose church was African Methodist Episcopal. Whenever the daughter went to services with the Salters after sleepovers, she felt strange.

Yasmine said: “Well, Matts, I feel strange all the time.”

Ignorant white girl.

It starts to rain. The daughter lights a second cigarette and decides to skip math, even if it means annoying Mr. Xiao, whom she does not want to annoy and who’ll say, next time he sees her, What the hell, Quarles? Nouri Withers will be in math, and who needs a glimpse of that mess. She closes her eyes, sucking, rain pittering on her lashes.

“Trying to get cancer?” Ro/Miss is standing right in front of her.

“No.” The daughter grinds the cigarette under her boot.

“Pick that up, please.”

The daughter tucks it into her peacoat pocket to avoid the inelegance of walking over to the Dumpster and struggling to lift its crusty lid. Her peacoat is going to reek of dead cigarette.

“Tell me what’s going on, Mattie.”

“Nothing.”

“You’ve never gotten a B minus on a quiz before.”

“I studied the wrong chapter.”

“Are you still upset about the whales?”

The daughter spits out a laugh. Looks across the soccer field at the jagged evergreens, the sky darkening behind them.

“You can talk to me, you know. I’ll help if I can.”

“You can’t,” says the daughter.

“Try me,” says Ro/Miss.

I’m too scared to go to Canada because of the Pink Wall but the witch went to jail and I need a plan and I don’t have a plan and what would you do if you were me?

But what if it’s in her teaching contract—mandatory reporting of child abuse and, in her case, child murder?

The daughter is not a murderer.

They’re only cells, multiplying.

No face yet. No dreams or opinions.

You didn’t have a face once either.

Ro/Miss reports her, and Principal Fivey kicks her out of Central Coast Regional.

Math Academy not thrilled about that.