Red Clocks(71)

When Mr. Fivey found the scar oil in Lola’s purse, he pestered her until she admitted going to Ms. Percival about the burn. Hadn’t that been a better idea than going to Umpqua General, where they might ask questions? Mr. Fivey didn’t agree. He saw a bonkers witchy-woo too deranged to graduate from high school who had no business ministering to his wife.

Lola went to pack her suitcase. She planned to drive to New Mexico (she has a friend there who makes pi?on kokopellis) to think things over.

Mr. Fivey came into the bedroom with a glass of vodka and the bottle of scar oil. He had crushed up (she learned later) several tabs of colarozam and mixed them into the oil. He handed her the oil and said, “Drink.” When she said no, he slapped her. She drank. And chased the oil with the vodka. And got so wasted that on her way to the kitchen, she fell down the stairs.

She was not—nor did she believe she was—pregnant when she consulted Ms. Percival. That was the last thing on her mind.

Has she ever been pregnant?

Once, thirteen years ago, before she met her husband. She would prefer not to talk about that.

Why is she recanting her previous testimony?

This question makes her quiet. The judge has to remind her she is obliged to answer.

Finally Lola says, “Because I’m done doing his laundry.”

They wait in the transition room while the jury deliberates. The lawyer’s assistant brings in a box of chocolate-covered blueberries and says, “Fortitude?”

The mender tastes: delicious.

Lola didn’t say: I’m recanting because it wouldn’t be fair to make Gin Percival spend seven years in prison. Barely mentioned Gin Percival at all.

The lawyer is scratching, as usual: wrists, ears, the back of his neck.

“Eczema?” says the mender.

“Bedbugs,” he says. “Courtesy of the Narwhal Inn. My apartment in Salem now has them too. I’m on my second fumigation.”

“I know some good banishments. If I get out—”

“When.” He lifts his arms to air out the drenched pits.

“Where will Lola go?” she asks. “She can’t stay at home.”

“Her attorney said she’s already moved to her parents’. The question remains, where will Mr. Fivey be staying?”

The mender eats the last blueberry. “You mean, which cell?”

When the jury foreman rises, she shuts her eyes.

“Ladiesanjinnelminnuv.”

“Haveyoureached.”

“Have yeronner.”

“Whatsayyou?”

Stop shaking. You’re a Percival.

“We find the defendant—”

Descended from a pirate.

“—not guilty on both counts.”

A whoop from the audience. She is shaking too hard to look, but it sounded like the voice of the pissed-off library lady.

She takes the lawyer’s damp hand.





In the first fairy tale Uncle taught me, a glass splinter in the eye would make all the world ugly and bad. I have such a splinter now. I see Harry’s name on my paper in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London and curl with rage. It is mine but no one knows. They know the facts imparted, which have more value than my small self; yet with this splinter lodged in me, I can’t rest. I would like to run up to Sir George Gabriel Stokes at the Royal Society and show him my finger stumps and say, “I gave these in exchange for my facts.”





THE DAUGHTER


Friday night she scours the Math Academy website, rereading the seminar descriptions and inserting her own face into photos of nerds laughing around tables. If she even gets in. The application was hard. All the nominees will have top grades and test scores, said Mr. Xiao: “You have to stand out. Make yourself come alive in the essay answers.”

How do you see mathematics figuring into your future?

My future will include

Math will be important in my future because

In my future, I see

I notice there is a pun in this question

If she gets in, she plans to take the seminar on recursion. Self-similar structures. Variability through repetition. Fractals. Chaos theory.

Think about fractals, not about suction and sloshing tubes and the term-house door smashed open by a cop’s battering ram.

She won’t be sixteen for almost a month; she wouldn’t be tried as an adult. But even non-adults can be sent away.

When Yasmine operated on her own clump, most termination houses didn’t exist yet. It was right after the federal ban had gone into effect. To help the ban take hold, the attorney general ordered district attorneys nationwide to go after the harshest possible sentences for seekers. Send a message. Girls as young as thirteen were incarcerated for three to five years. Even the daughter of Erica Salter, member of the Oregon House of Representatives, was locked up in Bolt River Youth Correctional Facility. A message had to be sent.

A day before the self-operation, Yasmine said nobody could know she’d been pregnant, and if the daughter told anyone, she wouldn’t speak to her ever again.

“I’m not giving them another reason to think I’m not smart.”

“Why would anyone think you’re not smart?”

“Is that a joke?”

“No,” said the daughter.