Red Clocks(57)

She suggested as much to the captain, who said, “And will you be pointing out the snow fairies too?”





THE BIOGRAPHER


Notices today how large Mr. Fivey’s desk is. He grips its burnished surface with his hands wide apart, as a mogul might. Hanging behind him are the Ivy League diploma and several photos of Mrs. Fivey, which prompt the biographer to say: “I’m glad your wife is doing so much better.”

“That’s nice, Ro. But let’s get down to the marrow. Since the school year began, you have been late no less than fourteen times.”

No fewer.

“And absent five times.”

“Four, actually.”

“Tomato, tomahto—it’s become a problem. These kids aren’t going to teach themselves. Instead of learning history they’re memorizing the anti-meth posters in study hall. I’d like to know how you intend to solve this problem.”

“Well,” says the biographer.

“Unless you’d prefer not to teach here at all?”

She uncrosses and recrosses her legs. “I do want to teach here. Very much. The thing is, I’ve been having some health issues, which—”

“Whatever it is, Ro, it can’t go on. Either take a medical leave, quit, or get to work on time.” His saliva lands on her face.

Has he gotten more dickish because his wife was in a coma? Or because Gin Percival’s trial starts soon? Fivey will have to sit in the courtroom and hear how his wife allegedly sought an abortion from the witch, though she wasn’t allegedly pregnant in the first place. And how his wife allegedly had an affair with Cotter at the P.O. And how her breasts are allegedly real. Even the biographer, whose finger is not on the pulse, has heard these rumors.

“I won’t be late again,” she says.

“No, you won’t, because I’m giving you an official warning. One more violation and you’ll need to call your union rep.”

“We don’t have a union.”

“It’s an expression. I don’t mean to be a hard-ass,” he adds. “You’re good at your job, when you’re around.”

Fivey is a bush-league fish in a bush-league pond.

And these kids are going to teach themselves.

She’s only here to give them some nudges and clues. She is here to tell them they don’t have to get married or buy a house or read the list of shipwrecks at the pub every Saturday night.

Ten days until Every Child Needs Two comes true.

She should have asked Mattie sooner.

Plunged faster.

When told, last year, of the biographer’s desire for a child, the meditation teacher suggested that she get a dog.

With a knife she stirs cream into her third cup of coffee. She inherited the family silverware, which Dad was not interested in carrying to Ambrosia Ridge, but most of the spoons had to be thrown away. The same spoons that had once entered the mouths of the biographer and Archie freighted with ice cream or pudding or soup were later used to heat the heroin and water that was sucked through a shred of cotton into a needle that went into Archie’s skin. The charred spoons were useful to stumble upon (under beds, in creases of couches) when the biographer needed to confront him with irrefutable, unarguable evidence—though he did, in fact, to her amazement, sometimes argue.

“Ever heard of a dishwasher? They mess up spoons.”

Or “That’s probably been there for two years; it’s not a current event, my friend.”

Archie was a dumb fuck.

And her favorite person of all.

She will name her kid after him, if she ever has a kid.

Why does she even want one?

How can she tell her students to reject the myth that their happiness depends on having a mate if she believes the same myth about having a child?

Why isn’t she glad, as Eiv?r Mínervudottír was glad, to be free?

She sips coffee. Drums her heel to the throbbing clank of the kitchen radiator. Opens her notebook. Writes on a new page: Reasons I am envious of Susan. It embarrasses her to write the word “envious,” but a good researcher can’t be stopped by ugly data.

Convenient/free source of sperm

Has two



The biographer’s family once looked like the Korsmos—mother father sister brother, a foursquare American family. They had a weedy yard, a house. The biographer doesn’t want a house, but she wants a kid. She can’t explain why. She can only say Because I do.

Which doesn’t seem like a good enough reason for all of this suffering effort.

Maybe she has flat-out been programmed by marketing. Awash in images of mother and child, mama bear and baby bear, she learned, without knowing she was learning it, to desire them.

Maybe there are better things she could be doing with the life she already has.

She glances down at the pasty insides of her elbows: the tracks are fading. Resemblance to Archie evaporating. Weeks since her last blood draw, since she last laid eyes on Kalbfleisch’s indifferent golden cheeks.

Reasons I am envious of hate Susan:

Convenient/free source of sperm

Has two

Doesn’t pay rent

Told me to distract self at movies

Has two

Said you don’t truly become an adult until, etc.

Has two



A less envious, less hateful person would not be hoping that Mattie Quarles was arrested at the Canadian border.