Red Clocks(48)

Colleges not thrilled about that.

Mom and Dad least thrilled of all.

“I have class in a minute,” she says, “and Mr. Xiao said he’s going to rip the next person who’s late a new turd cutter.”

“Emotional health takes priority. I’ll handle Mr. Xiao.”

Maybe she can.

“It’s nothing,” says the daughter.

“Try me.”

Ro/Miss wouldn’t care if it’s in her contract. She’s fiercer than that.

The daughter says, still watching the trees: “I’m pregs?”

“Oh Jesus—”

“But I’m taking care of it.”

“In what way?” snaps Ro/Miss, engine-red, freckles pulsing like brown stars.

She’s angry?

“It’s being dealt with,” says the daughter.

“How can you be smoking?”

How can she be angry?

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Oh really?”

“The smoke won’t—”

“What do you plan to do, Mattie?”

“Terminate,” says the daughter.

Ro/Miss frowns.

“It’s just an embryo, miss. It can’t make an offer on a house, even though it has the legal right to.”

Not even the littlest twist of a smile at hearing herself quoted. “What happens if you get caught?”

This is not the Ro/Miss she loves.

“I won’t get caught,” says the daughter, buttoning her peacoat. The rain is coming down harder.

“But what if you do?”

“I won’t.”

What happened to the Ro/Miss who says we have better things to do with our lives than throw ourselves down the stairs?

“You know they’ll charge you with a felony? Which means juvenile detention until you’re eighteen, then—”

“I know, miss.”

She would be sent to Bolt River.

Who is this monstrous imposter?

Ro/Miss pushes back her parka hood and starts raking all ten fingers through her hair, scalp to ends, scalp to ends, like an actor playing a mental-hospital patient.

“I got the name of a termination house,” lies the daughter. “It’s supposed to be good.”

Raking, raking, scalp to ends. “Are you kidding?”

“Um, no?”

“Term houses charge a shit ton,” says Ro/Miss, “and take shortcuts because nobody, obviously, is regulating them. They use out?of?date equipment, don’t disinfect between patients, administer anesthesia without”—the first bell rings—“training.” The fingers stop, mid-rake.

“Please don’t tell my parents or Mr. Fivey?”

Tears in Ro/Miss’s eyes. As if this moment needed to get any worse.

“Are you going to tell them?” bleats the daughter. “Please don’t!”

It is weird to be scared of a person you’ve always been the opposite of scared of.

Ro/Miss pulls her hood back up. Tightens the drawstrings around her scrunched, streaming face. “I won’t.” She wipes her eyes with a parka sleeve. “This is just—This is really, I don’t know—”

“It’s okay,” says the daughter, touching her elbow.

The elbow stays against her hand.

Ro/Miss blinks and shudders.

They stand hand to elbow for what feels like a long time. They are both getting soaked and the daughter’s arm starts to hurt.

The second bell rings.

She says, “I have math?” and unhands the elbow.

“Sure. Yes.” Sniffles. “But Mattie …?”

The daughter waits.

The teacher shakes her head.

They walk together along the soccer field, not talking, and up the steps, not talking, and through the blue doors.





She shouted “Help” in three languages.

Slit lambs hung in the shed, throats red.





THE BIOGRAPHER


There are four oranges in a bowl on her table. She throws them one at a time at the kitchen wall. Two bounce, one splits, one splatters. Opens the fridge: soft cheese, broccoli, chocolate pudding. Flings the cheese and pudding out the window into the neighboring yard, hears no splat because the wind is up. Recalls that chocolate is fatal to dogs. Has never seen a dog in that yard.

Words I hate:

33. hubby

34. sammie

35. diagnosis

36. Pregs

She will leave the oranges where they are. Head off soon to this goddamn eve of Christmas Eve dinner.

Mattie will head off soon to her abortion.

That’s one more married couple ahead of the biographer on the wait-list who’s not getting a baby.

Which is not Mattie’s problem.

She rubs her cold forearms.

Her veins are buried. Archie’s were collapsed.

A friend of Archie’s wore black wire-and-mesh wings to his funeral.

The biographer once watched, on television, a church group chanting “Hurray!” outside the funeral of a politician’s wife who had used IVF to acquire two children and thereby had summoned (said the church’s press release) her own death by cancer. She and her husband coveted things that were not theirs, they reared up in fury, decided to show God who was boss, and meddled in matters of the womb. The politician’s wife was now a resident of hell. Flee her example.