Mother Knows Best

by Kira Peikoff

  “I realized that later. Unfortunately, by then it was too late.” A bitter silence ensues; an opportunity. “I’m sorry,” I announce. “I regret that more than you know.”

  He nods—an acceptance? If so, I wonder if forgiveness lies around the corner. He pushes back his chair and stands up. “I need more ice.”

  I motion to the dispenser on the fridge, then chase my edginess with a gulp of dry Cab. The alcohol tamps down my stress. Too bad he doesn’t drink. He could use a glass himself. I remind myself that dwelling on our bad times is unproductive. There will be much to accomplish in the coming days after we cross the border to Canada.

  Time to change course. After he returns to the table with a glass full of ice, I fish my wallet out of my purse and remove an old photo, its corners worn down to nubs. In sepia tones, we’re arm in arm, laughing, having just stumbled off the Cyclone at Coney Island. Right after the camera clicked, he drew me close and whispered in my ear, I want to fuck you right now. And he did, in the back of a cab, on our way back to Manhattan. We were so enthralled with each other that summer, before Claire torched it all.

  I slide the photo across the table. “Hey, remember this?”

  He blinks in surprise, like I’ve given him emotional whiplash. In an effort to build goodwill, I remove the gun from the table and place it down by my feet, out of sight.

  An audible sigh escapes Abby. No wonder she’s barely said a word. She’s scared shitless.

  “Want to see him before you were born?” I ask her. “Here.”

  She silently takes the photo from me.

  “Handsome, right?” I smile.

  She nods. Reaching across the table, he plucks it out of her grasp. I watch his eyes carefully for an inadvertent twinkle—that memory was undeniably one of our happiest together. As he gazes at our faded past, I think I see a shade of nostalgia cross his face.

  “The good old days,” I reflect. “You haven’t forgotten, have you?”

  “No,” he says. “I haven’t.” He offers me the briefest smile. “In fact, could we discuss something privately for a minute? There’s something I want to ask you.”

  “Sure.” My interest is piqued. I must admit I’m delighted by any chance to score alone time. “Do you want to go in my room?”

  “Yeah. We’ll be right back,” he tells Abby. “Wait here.”

  As I lead him away from the table, being careful to scoop up the gun just in case, a faint jingling noise catches my attention. So faint, I’m not sure if I imagined it. I look over my shoulder to see that Rob is following behind me, having just passed by Abby.

  “What was that?” I ask.

  “What was what?” he says.

  “That sound.”

  He and Abby both stare at me blankly, but Abby’s stare is not professional enough. Her twitching lips give her away.

  I backtrack over to her. Her hands are folded tightly in her lap.

  “Open your hands,” I command.

  She pauses, searching for a sign from Rob.

  “Come on,” he urges me. “Can’t we talk?”

  “Open your hands!” I bark at her.

  Reluctantly, she pulls her hands apart and my car keys fall out.

  “What the fuck?”

  I raise my gun at Rob, and his hands fly up. “It’s my fault, okay? Not hers. I saw you put them in your blazer when we got here.” He glances at my blazer, which is still draped over the barstool in the kitchen where I left it. “I got up to get the ice and I took them out of the pocket, then slipped them to her just now so she could try to leave without me. She didn’t even know, so please don’t do anything to her.”

  I gasp. I wanted nice, I tried nice, but now it’s too late; now it’s punishment time. For both of them. I whirl on Abby.

  “Don’t shoot me!” she begs. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

  I calmly lower the gun to my side, knowing the wound I’m about to inflict will hurt more than a bullet. “You don’t know anything about Ethan, do you?”

  “Who’s Ethan?”

  Rob stiffens. Torment manifests on his face like physical pain.

  “Tell her,” I demand. “Or I will.”

  A moan escapes him. “No … Jillian, please …”

  Abby shrinks in her chair. “Dad, you’re freaking me out. Who’s Ethan?”

  He lifts his head slowly, clinging to the last moments of an illusion he’s been keeping up for a decade.

  When he meets her gaze, his strained voice fills the silence: “Your father.”

  ABBY

  “That’s impossible.” I find myself flattened against my chair, unable to back up any further. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s true,” Jillian says. A minute ago, she was threatening to shoot us, and now her face is soft with kindness again. I have no freaking clue what is going on—who she is, who my dad is, who I am. Or whether we will ever get out of here alive.

  My dad’s mouth is moving, but I don’t hear his words; my head is a heavy balloon about to float away. I feel myself swaying, and the world blurring, until two firm hands grip my shoulders. I open my eyes and he’s right there—my dad, the only dad I’ve ever known, his face exactly the same as it was a minute ago, yet somehow forever changed.

  “I love you, Abigail. You will always be my daughter, no matter what.”

  I jump up and run to the opposite wall. “Get away from me. You’ve done nothing but lie my entire life! I want Mom!”

  “She lied to you, too,” says Jillian, closing in on me, her long pink skirt swishing. Silver bangles clink together on her wrists—bangles I admired at school only a few hours ago. “I came to tell you the truth.”

  I stare at the man whose real name I don’t even know. “When were you going to tell me?”

  His eyes fill with tears. I have never seen him cry.

  “We didn’t want to burden you with this until you were older.” I can see that he hates himself right now, but he’s also desperate to convince me he’s not a total jerk.

  “Don’t touch me!” I yell, as he reaches for my hand. “I don’t even know who you are!”

  “I’ll tell you everything.” He slumps against the wall near me, but not too close. Jillian sits on the floor across from us and hugs her knees. She’s watching him with a strange focus, like he’s the only person in the room. I can’t help staring at her gun, and when she notices my fear, she places it behind her, out of sight.

  “Go ahead,” she urges him. “Tell her.”

  He takes a deep breath. “My name was Robert Nash, and I was your mother’s doctor. I oversaw the experiment we did to create you, so you would be born healthy.”

  “Don’t let his humility fool you,” she interrupts. “He was the greatest fertility researcher of our time.”

  After watching her lash out, it’s shocking to see her flatter him; she seems kind of, like, obsessed with him.

  But he ignores her. “Your mom came to me with … her husband. Ethan.”

  He pauses to let this sink in. I can’t picture my mom with anyone but him. It makes no sense.

  “They wanted another baby, but you know about Colton. They didn’t want that to happen to you, too.”

  “So you’re not Colton’s dad, either?”

  “No.”

  That explains why I’ve never seen a picture of them all together. There are plenty of Colton and Mom. I always figured he was the one behind the camera. Not some other guy …

  “In fact,” he tells me, “I never even met your brother. He died before they came to me. It’s why they came to me.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me before?”

  “We didn’t want you to feel different from anyone else. Especially at your age, when fitting in seems so important …” His voice trails off. “I don’t know, maybe we should have. We were afraid that it would ruin your childhood.”

  “I just can’t believe I was a lab rat before I was even born.”

  “There’s no shame i
t,” says Jillian. “You’re lucky. You should be grateful.”

  “Give her a minute,” he snaps. “She has three parents. How would you feel?”

  “If I was healthy?” she says. “Pretty damn good.”

  They both fall silent. I rub my eyes. A wave of exhaustion is hitting me, and I can’t stop checking every five seconds that Jillian is not about to reach for her gun again.

  “Jillian’s right, you know.” He grits his teeth. “If we’d let nature take its course …”

  “Too bad your mom got us in trouble.” Jillian rakes her nails across the carpet, leaving a gash in the fibers. “Even though she promised us secrecy, she told Ethan, a big shot in the ethics world at Columbia, and he reported our work as a federal crime. No one in this country is allowed to edit eggs or embryos for human reproduction, and he didn’t agree with us doing it.”

  “It does sound kind of creepy,” I admit. I picture them hovering over a dish of cells that would one day become me, squeezing drops of different people’s DNA into the mixture and swishing it all together.

  “Why?” Jillian shoots back. “If it saved your life?”

  “I don’t know. It just seems wrong.” I raise an eyebrow at him.

  “I’ve been thinking about that question for a very long time,” he says. “What makes it seem wrong, when in fact, by intervening, we helped you avoid a terrible fate.”

  “And? What’s the reason?”

  “Ethan would give you a whole philosophical argument about why we shouldn’t play God. But honestly, I think he was just scared of disrupting the status quo.”

  “Even if that means some kids die an early death,” Jillian says angrily.

  “Right. We decided that the harm of being born to three parents—struggling with your identity, for instance—would be way less than the harm of being born very sick to two parents. That’s why we felt the experiment was the right thing to do.”

  “But then I got sent to prison.” Jillian shakes her head as if she’s still surprised. “Our country is backwards.”

  He sighs. “Yeah. And I ran away to help your mother. She had no one when you were born. But we’ve had to live a very quiet life because we broke the law.”

  I’m barely breathing. “Wait, you guys aren’t even together? You just live together?”

  I think I might throw up. I picture them swing dancing around the living room, doing crossword puzzles in bed, planting veggies in the garden. How could it all be an act?

  “No!” he cries. “Don’t think that. Our marriage may not be official, but it’s as real as any other.”

  “Because you got stuck together?”

  “Because you brought us together. We loved you at first sight, and then eventually, we fell in love with each other, too.”

  Neither of us realizes how Jillian is taking this until she stands up with a snort. “That’s bullshit. There’s no way you could love that mental case.” Her furious eyes land on me. “He’s telling you a fairy tale.”

  “I am not! Honey, I’m telling you the truth.”

  I glance between them, unsure who to believe.

  Jillian rolls her eyes. “He put up with her because he’s a good man, and he sacrificed everything for you—but it’s not too late to get it all back. That’s why I came.”

  He frowns. “What are you talking about?”

  “I came to set you free.”

  She smiles for the first time in an hour, a real smile of hopeful excitement. He scoots closer to me, breathing fast. The contrast between them fills my chest with panic.

  “First thing tomorrow,” she announces, “we’re driving to Canada. Once we’re out of the country, you won’t have to live in fear anymore. We can finally work on publishing our research, and the rest will follow: Jobs. Money. Fame.” She grins at me. “You’re our ticket to freedom.”

  A sound like a retch comes out of his throat. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He stands up, picks me up, and throws me over his shoulder, the way he used to when I was little and refused to go to bed. “This is batshit crazy.”

  “You’ll sleep in my bed,” she tells him, not missing a beat. To me, she lets out an apologetic sigh. “I hate to do this, but I think it’s best if you sleep in the basement. I wouldn’t want you to do anything stupid like try to run away. It’s just for one night, okay?”

  What?

  “No way!” I cling to his neck. He attempts to comfort me with a squeeze, but his face reflects my horror.

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “It’s heated with a cot and blanket. You’ll be fine. We’ll regroup tomorrow.”

  She walks to a door in the far corner that I thought was a coat closet. But it opens to a staircase.

  What can I do? I don’t want to piss her off again, especially with that gun, so I follow her, holding my backpack. She flips on the light to guide my path. A single yellow bulb hangs from the ceiling. The smell of musty wood and dust nearly choke me as I go down the stairs. The air probably hasn’t moved for a century.

  There’s a small metal cot and blanket on a cold concrete floor, plus a half-underground window, an oil tank, and a pile of logs. Past the circle of the light, I can’t see a thing. The rest of the basement is totally dark. A shiver crawls over my arms. What else might be living down here?

  “Night night,” Jillian calls. At the top of the stairs, she gives me a sad little wave, as though she’s being forced to do this. “See you bright and early!”

  Then she slams the door—and slides a lock into place.

  CLAIRE

  Light hits my eyelids. Not the soft pink sunrise I wake up to every morning at home. This light streams from the ceiling, harsh and artificial. I squint at the nurse standing over me with a clipboard. She’s wearing the same blue scrubs and tight bun as before, but her under-eye circles are covered with concealer. It must be a new day.

  “Feeling better?” she asks. “You had quite a night.”

  “What?”

  “The guards … don’t you remember?”

  The memory returns in a flash—being tackled and drugged. Now my empty stomach churns with nausea and hunger.

  “How long was I out?”

  “About twelve hours.”

  “Have you heard from my husband?”

  She shakes her head. “Not yet. Sorry.”

  I bolt up, but my head sways, so I lie back down. Out of habit, I reach for my cell on the nightstand, but it’s not there.

  “Take it easy. The tranquilizer could still be wearing off.”

  I don’t want to take it easy. I don’t care about my illness. Only one thing matters. But I can’t show any panic, or they’ll drug me again.

  “Please,” I say as evenly as I can. “May I call him?”

  She checks her watch, whose pink band is adorned with Minnie Mouse cartoons. It’s the only bright spot in her drab uniform. I wonder if she has a little girl, too—if she understands the torture of separation.

  “It’s almost time for rounds. The doctor will want to evaluate you.”

  “Please? I just want to make sure my daughter made it to school.”

  She hesitates, apparently weighing my request.

  “There’s a big test today,” I lie. “It’s really important.”

  “Fine. But make it fast.”

  “Thank you!”

  She leads me to the phone station. In the hallway, we pass several patients who are headed to a group therapy session. One young man has a single shaved-off eyebrow and his eyes are darting around suspiciously. An unkempt woman dodges some imaginary ghost, veering too close to me and reeking of body odor. I jump back in disgust. Then I realize I’m still wearing the same clothes I blacked out in, my face is an oily mess, and my teeth are coated in sludge. Maybe I am one of them.

  “You have five minutes,” my nurse says at the phone bank. “No more.”

  I punch in Rob’s cell. My yearning to hear his voice is stronger than my need to pee or eat or drink. But his instant voice mail shatters my h
ope. I try Abby’s cell, but her ironic voice mail greets me: Hi! I’m not here right now, but my assistant Alice will take your message. Alice? Then the robot voice: Record your message after the beep.

  Abby was so proud of herself when she came up with that prompt. It made us both chuckle. Now it fills me with dread.

  I hang up and call her school. It’s one of the few numbers I have memorized.

  “Garrison Union Free School,” the receptionist answers, “how can I help you?”

  I picture the cheerful blonde woman whose nails are often painted to match the school’s colors, navy and pink. She’s like cotton candy—all sweetness, zero edge.

  “Carla!” I say brightly. “It’s Abby’s mom.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Burke; how’s it going?”

  “Pretty well, thanks. I’m actually out of town, and I wanted to make sure she got to school okay. I can’t get in touch with my husband.”

  “Oh, let me check.” A chirpy musical chorus plays on hold. It couldn’t be further from the mood in this suffocating phone booth, where my time is almost up.

  When she comes back on the line, her voice is apologetic. “I’m sorry, but she stayed home sick today.”

  “What? No, that can’t be right. She never gets sick!”

  “I’m sorry. Is there anything else I can do?”

  “No, that’s all right. Thank you.”

  I keep the phone to my ear to buy myself another minute.

  Abby is ridiculously healthy, the polar opposite of Colton. I can’t remember the last time she took a sick day. A single letter breaks on the shore of my mind.

  What if J is somehow behind this?

  With all those cameras in the house and the new alarm system we installed, it seems impossible. How could a petite woman break in and accost a grown man and a child? Yet I can’t shake the fear. Am I just being paranoid? But she did seemingly show up at our house that night, and she did lure Abby to the museum.

  One part of my brain is yelling at me to get a grip—you’re being irrational—but I shut it down. I listen to the louder voice, the one egging me on.

  I march out of the phone booth.

  “All done?” the nurse asks.

  “Yes. I’m going home today.”