Red Clocks(63)
“Wait, okay? I’m not going to tell anyone. Pretend I don’t work at school.”
“You do work at school.”
“Did you go to Vancouver?”
Mattie’s lips are purplish in the snow light. Her eyes are lake-green. “Didn’t happen.”
“Why not?”
“The Pink Wall.”
You mean—The biographer gleams inside. “But why—did they not arrest you?”
“One was going to. Then I thought another one was about to, like, sexually assault me in exchange for letting me go. But he actually just let me go.”
The baby is not gone?
The splinter is thrilled.
“Were you scared?”
Mattie wipes snow from her upper lip. “Yeah. But honestly?” Inhales a shredded breath. “I’m more scared now.”
I will take the baby on a train to Alaska.
Row a boat with the baby to the Gunakadeit Light.
Ask her.
“Did they notify your parents?”
“No.” A stricken look. “And you won’t either, right?”
“Scout’s honor.”
“I better go—there’s Ash.”
Ask her now.
But the biographer is halted, held mute.
She pats Mattie’s shoulder.
The baby will see the black ocean flecked with silver.
I will eat dinner with the baby every night.
FUCKING. ASK. HER.
Her mouth can’t make those words.
“Well, if you need anything, let me know?”
“Thanks, miss.”
The girl descends the steps, blue scarf rippling behind; and the biographer sees blue-swaddled babies shot from cannons across the Canadian border, then tossed back, still wrapped and cooing, onto American soil.
The significance of Eiv?r Mínervudottír’s research was Mínervudottír was important because Was she important?
From the Latin: to be of consequence; weigh. To carry in, to bring in.
She brought in:
Refusal to submit to cottage life
Measurements of ice chlorides and Arctic sea temperatures
Metric analyses of ice responses to wind speed and tide speed
A theory of refreezing predictors in sea-ice leads, invaluable for navigating ice-choked waters
And thus helped to bring in:
Shipping and trade through the Northeast Passage, once considered impenetrable
More ways for white pirates to steal from the not-white, the not-rich, or the not-human
Oil, gas, and mineral drilling in the Arctic
The shrinking of the ice
Mínervudottír may have felt free; but she was a cog in a land-snatching, resource-sucking, climate-fucking imperialist machine.
Wasn’t she?
Was she?
I DON’T KNOW
WHAT I AM
EVEN SAYING
ABOUT THIS PERSON THERE IS NOT
A SINGLE KNOWN PHOTOGRAPH OF
or why I couldn’t bring myself to ask for my lips aren’t working
THE WIFE
Labiaplasty surgeons earn up to $250,000 per month.
A little animal—possum? porcupine?—tries to cross the cliff road.
Sooty, burnt, charred to rubber.
Shivering, trying to cross.
Already so dead.
After federal and state taxes, social security, retirement, and health insurance, Didier brings home $2,573 per month. They don’t have rent or mortgage payments, but it’s still not enough.
Clap, clap, say the labia.
If the wife were a better budgeter, it would be enough. If she were more organized.
The wife has been letting the house “go.”
And letting herself “go.”
We’ll go if you let us.
Wife and house run away together, hand in door. Hand in dormer window.
I’d take lonely over beaten to a paste.
She pictures Bryan’s cousin, whoever she is, in a shack in the woods, hurled against a moldy particleboard wall. The husband is long bearded, wild haired. He rarely comes out of the woods or lets his wife come out. They drive to town once a month for supplies. On these trips Bryan’s cousin wears sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat.
Why does Bryan stand by and let it happen? Shouldn’t he run into those woods and find the shack and put a stop to the beatings? Shouldn’t he and the mother he visits in La Jolla, if they care so much, call the police?
Can’t think of Bryan without broiling with shame.
“Mommy.”
“Yes, sprite?”
“Cold,” he says, her dear boy who isn’t interested in saying much, who is so different from his chattery sister.
“Let’s go put on a sweater,” hoisting him onto her hip.
After they separate, will Didier buy pot gumdrops and leave them out on the coffee table for the children to find?
You need to tell him.
Upstairs, she finds a blue wool pullover.
Can pot be overdosed on?
“No!” shouts John.
“I forgot, you hate this one—sorry.” She pulls off the blue wool and picks a red cotton, less itchy, from the drawer.