Red Clocks(60)

Too tired to be furious.

The past future Susan MacInnes could have been a battling litigator who brought milestone cases to the higher courts. Edward is battling; he has marched into the mess. The wife can hardly bring herself to read about the case.

Bring yourself.

At the library, Gin Percival’s hair sometimes had twigs in it, and she gave off an oniony scent. The wife felt repelled by her animal dishevelment; yet she is coming to see the value in being repellent.

Bryan was a pitiful diversion, an excuse. This is an inside job.

Whatever frees Gin Percival to leave her hair twiggy and wear shapeless sack dresses and smell unwashed—the wife wants that.

Two days, two nights every week to herself.

Tell Didier you are leaving.

Before having kids, she envisioned motherhood as a jubilant merging. She never thought she would long to spend time away from them. It is hideous to admit she can’t bear the merging 24?7. Same guilt that’s kept her from putting John in daycare: she doesn’t want it to be true that she wants to be apart.

The judge says, “Prosecution may call its first witness.”

Mrs. Costello, never one to put much faith in science, believes Gin Percival cursed the waters, charmed the tides, and brought the seaweed back. Half of these jurors may think the same. And if a witch can charm the tides, what else is she capable of?

The pin-striped suit stands up. “Your Honor, we call Dolores Fivey.”

In law school, the wife excelled at trial performance. She used to get rounds of applause. But here in the gallery, watching the judicial choreography, she feels no desire to go back to law school. If she puts John in daycare it will be for other reasons, as yet unknown.





What is the flavor of human meat? The men in Franklin’s expedition, lost in the Canadian Arctic, turned to cannibalism, according to Inuit reports.





THE MENDER


Lola’s tits aren’t so fat anymore, they look drained, cells collapsing like houses of butter. She’s wearing them thrust up hell-for-leather, but they are ghosts of their former selves. Butter ghosts. She sits in the box in her push?up bra and a blue suit with long sleeves to hide the scar—less of a scar (thanks to the mender) than it would have been.

“Mrs. Fivey,” says the prosecutor, “please tell us how you came to be acquainted with the accused.”

The lawyer leaps up. “Objection. Your Honor, I ask that the prosecution refer to Ms. Percival using the less inflammatory term ‘defendant.’”

Drowning in his robes, the walnut-faced judge says, “Sustained.”

“How did you meet the defendant?”

Lola won’t stop staring at her hands. The mender loves those hands, small and graceful, the nails filed square. They held the mender’s ass timidly at first; then not timidly. They found their way into her wet scabbard.

“Mrs. Fivey?”

In a frightened voice: “I went to her for medical treatment.”

“Even though the acc—sorry, defendant is not a medical doctor? Or any kind of doctor, in fact? Even though she does not even have a high school diploma?”

“Objection,” says the lawyer. “The prosecution is testifying.”

“Withdrawn. Why did you seek medical treatment from the, ah, defendant?”

“I needed,” says Lola, then stops.

“Mrs. Fivey?” says the prosecutor. “What did you need?”

“Medical treatment.”

“Yes, that’s been established. What specific treatment was it?”

Lola shrugs. Twists her hands on the rail of the witness box.

“Mrs. Fivey?”

“You will answer the question, Mrs. Fivey,” says the judge.

“A termination.”

“A termination of what?”

“Of …”

“Please speak up, Mrs. Fivey.”

“Of a pregnancy? I thought I was pregnant but I wasn’t.”

In exchange for testifying, the lawyer explained, Lola gets immunity. Won’t be charged with conspiring to murder.

“And did Ms. Percival agree to provide an abortion?”

She looks at the prosecutor with her beautiful, painted?on eyes. Then back down at her hands. “Yeah, she did.”

Lola has reason to lie. She’s a cornered animal. The life she saves will be her own.

There is nobody to contradict her but the mender herself, who is a forest weirdo, a seaweed-hexing kook.

This predicament is not new. The mender is one of many. They aren’t allowed to burn her, at least, though they can send her to a room for ninety months. Officials of the Spanish Inquisition roasted them alive. If the witch was lactating, her breasts exploded when the fire grew high.





The blacksmith harpooned a polar bear. Cook made stew from the liver and heart. I did not take a portion, though it was agony to smell the rich broth. After supper the sailors grew sluggish—slept poorly—by morning, the skin around their mouths was peeling. The skin on their hands, bellies, and thighs began to slough away. They did not believe me that vitamin A occurs at toxic levels in polar-bear livers. They are saying I cursed the stew.





THE DAUGHTER


Doesn’t need to be convinced. What’s one absence? She has always been the good girl. Spotless record. Besides, she can’t think—her eyes keep closing. She wants to sleep for a year.