by Leni Zumas
“Why would I need someone to help me decide?”
“Okay, what about when the kid has a guitar performance in assembly and you can’t be there because of work and everyone laughs at him for crying?”
The biographer does the tiny violin.
Didier pats his shirt pocket. “Hell are my smokes? Pete, do you—?”
“I got you, brah.” They head out together.
She thinks to start clearing the table—this would be a good thing to do, a courteous and helpful thing—but stays in her chair.
Susan, in the doorway: “They’re finally down.” Her narrow face, edged by blond waves, pulses with anger. At her kids for not settling faster? At her husband for doing nothing? She goes to hover behind a chair, surveying the mess of the table. Even angry she is shining, every piece of dining-room light caught and smeared across her cheeks.
The males clomp back in, smelling of smoke and cold, Didier laughing, “Which is what I told the ninth-graders!”
“Classic,” says Pete.
Susan reaches for plates. The biographer gets up and hefts the roast pan.
“Thanks,” says Susan, to the pan.
“I’ll wash.”
“No, it’s fine. Can you get the strawberries out of the fridge? And the cream.”
The biographer rinses, pats, and de-tops.
“I bought those specially for you,” says Susan.
“In case I need some folic acid?”
“Are you—?”
“Another insemination next week.”
“Well, distract yourself if you can. Go to the movies.”
“The movies,” repeats the biographer. Susan has a knack for commiserating with suffering she hasn’t suffered. Which doesn’t feel like compassion or empathy, but why not? Here is a friend trying to connect over a trouble. But the effort itself is insulting, the biographer decides. The first time Susan got pregnant, it wasn’t planned. The second time (she told the biographer) they’d only just started trying again; she must be one of those Fertile Myrtles; she’d expected it to take longer, but lo and behold. If she told Susan about seeing the witch, Susan would act supportive and serious, then laugh about it behind the biographer’s back. With Didier. Oh, poor Ro—first she’s buying sperm online, now she’s tramping into the forest to consult a homeless woman. Oh, poor Ro—why does she keep trying? She has no idea how hard it’s going to be.
On her teacher’s salary she will die holding notices from credit-card agencies, whereas Susan and Didier, who also live on a teacher’s salary, are debt-free, as far as she knows, and pay no rent. Bex and John no doubt have trust funds set up by Susan’s parents, fattening and fattening.
“The comparing mind is a despairing mind,” says the meditation teacher.
Well, the biographer will figure out how to send her baby who does not exist yet to college. If the baby chooses to go to college, that is. She won’t push the baby. The biographer herself liked college, but who’s to say what the baby will like? Might decide to be a fisherperson and stay right here on the coast and eat dinner with the biographer every night, not out of obligation but out of wanting to. They will linger at the table and tell each other how the day went. The biographer won’t be teaching by that point, only writing, having published Mínervudottír: A Life to critical acclaim and now working on a comprehensive history of female Arctic explorers; and the baby, tired from hours on the fishing boat but still paying attention, will ask the biographer intelligent questions about menstruating at eighty degrees below zero.
As a girl, I loved (but why?) to watch the grindadráp. It was a death dance. I couldn’t stop looking. To smell the bonfires lit on the cliffs, calling men to the hunt. To see the boats herd the pod into the cove, the whales thrashing faster as they panic. Men and boys wade into the water with knives to cut their spinal cords. They touch the whale’s eye to make sure it is dead. And the water foams up red.
THE MENDER
Malky’s been gone three days. Long for him—she doesn’t like it. The sun is dropping. Killers in the woods. Malky is a killer himself but no match for coyotes and foxes and red-tailed hawks. Every creature, prey to someone. The girl rides away from school in the car of a boy in an old-fashioned hat. (Does he believe the hat looks good?) Hat boy walks hips first, boom swagger swagger, pirate-like.
Not that the mender can warn her. She has been keeping away from town for fear the girl will catch her watching.
She wipes down the sink, the oak countertop. Tidies the seed drawer. Sets clean jars by a basket of eyeless onions.
Boom swagger boom.
A pirate slept off his dreadful deeds at a tavern on Cape Cod. He met the local beauty, not yet sixteen. Maria Hallett fell hard for this bandit. Then Black Sam Bellamy sailed away. She was packed with child. Child died the same night born—hid in a barn, choked on a piece of straw.
Or so went the story. Little did they know. The farmer’s wife who raised the child told no one but her diary.
Goody Hallett was imprisoned. Or banned from the village. Became a recluse. Lived in a shack by a poverty grass. Waited on the cliffs for Black Sam Bellamy in her best red shoes. Rode the backs of whales, tied lanterns to their flukes, lured ships to crash on the shoals. Got a reputation: witch.
Black Sam was the Robin Hood of pirates. They rob the poor under the cover of law, he said, and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage. In 1717, after some Caribbean plundering, Captain Bellamy rode back up the Atlantic with his gang of buccaneers. Their stolen ship, Whydah, sailed into the worst nor’easter in Cape Cod history. Ship went to pieces. Dead pirates all over the beach. Black Sam’s body was never recovered.
In 1984 the remains of Whydah were found off the coast of Wellfleet, Massachusetts. That same year Temple Percival bought a foreclosed tackle shop in Newville, Oregon, and arranged on the shelves some spooky trinkets and called it Goody Hallett’s.
Now Temple’s fingernails live in a jar on the cabin shelf. Lashes in a glassine packet. Head hair and pubic hair in separate paper cartons—both almost gone. The rest of her body in the chest freezer behind the feed trough in the goat shed.
Scratching on the doorstep. Malky slinks in without greeting or apology. She tries to sound stern: “Don’t ever stay out that long again, fuckermo.” He purrs tetchily, demanding supper. She gets a plate of salmon from the mini fridge. It is happiness to see his pink tongue lapping. Merry, merry king of the woods is he.
Two short knocks. Stop. Two more. Stop. One. Malky, who knows this knock, goes on eating.
“Is it you?”
“It’s me.”
She opens the door but stays on the threshold. Cotter is her only human friend, the kindest person she knows; doesn’t mean she wants him in the cabin.
“New client,” he says, holding up a white envelope. His poor pimpled cheeks are worse than usual. Toxins trying to exit. They should be leaving through the liver but are leaving through the skin.
The mender pockets the envelope. “You talk to this one?”
“Works at the pulp mill in Wenport. Ten weeks along.”
“Okay, thanks.” She needs to replenish coltsfoot and fleabane. Check her supply of pennyroyal. “Good night.”
Cotter rubs his black wool cap. “You all right? You need anything?”
“I’m fine. Good night!”
“One more thing, Ginny—” He pulls off the cap, palms his forehead. “People are saying you brought the dead man’s fingers back.”
The mender nods.
“I’m just telling you,” says Cotter.
She wants to sit by the stove with Malky in her lap and nothing in her head. No vigilance, no fear. “I’m tired.”
Cotter sighs. “Get to bed early, then.” He turns, is taken by the woods.
Cotter works at the P.O. Whatever people are talking about, he hears. But she knew before he told her. She’s been getting notes in her post box. From fishermen, or fishermen’s wives, frightened by the seaweed plague.
U think its funny? Its our LIVING.
She adds pine branches to the stove. Where is Malky? “Come here, little mo.” He can’t be persuaded onto her lap, even though he knows how much she’s missed him.
Cunt, quit hexing the water.
Her own cat does not obey her; why should seaweed?
Why could I stand to see the whales killed, but not the lambs?
THE DAUGHTER
She thought it would go a different way. She thought the way it would go would not include taking the east stairwell to lunch and seeing Ephraim’s hand in the shirt of Nouri Withers, whose eyes were shut and fluttering.
The daughter makes no sound. She creeps back up the stairs.
But she can’t breathe.
Breathe, dumblerina.
She sits on the landing, spreading her rib cage to make room for air.
Breathe, ignorant white girl.
Still has to finish the day. Get through Latin and math. Go pick up her new retainer.
Nouri Withers? Maybe if you like tangled hair and black eye shadow and nail polish made from otter dung.
She has never missed Yasmine more than exactly right now.
Yasmine, lover of strawberries, queen of whipped cream.
Singer of hymns and smoker of weed.
Who’d say: Forget that Transylvanian slut.
Who’d say: Are you even going to remember his ass in five years?
Yasmine, who was smarter than the daughter but who got worse grades because of her “attitude.”
Yasmine came out of the bathroom and held up the pee stick.
A month earlier the federal abortion ban had gone into effect.
The daughter was thinking: we need to get you to Canada. They hadn’t closed the border to abortion seekers yet. The Pink Wall was still just an idea.
A year and a half later the Canadian border patrol arrests American seekers and returns them to the States for prosecution. “Let’s spend the taxpayers’ money to criminalize vulnerable women, shall we?” said Ro/Miss in class, and somebody said, “But if they’re breaking the law, they are criminals,” and Ro/Miss said, “Laws aren’t natural phenomena. They have particular and often horrific histories. Ever heard of the Nuremberg Laws? Ever heard of Jim Crow?”
Yasmine would have liked Ro/Miss, who talks about history in a way that makes it memorable and who wears the clothes of a kid: brown cords, green hoodies, sneakers.
A tuft of cells inside her, multiplying. Half Ephraim, half her.
You can’t be sure.
She carries the test around unopened in her satchel.
If she is—
She might not be. Her body feels pretty much like it always does.
But if she is, what the hell is she going to do?
Don’t borrow worry. —Mom
Stay in your lane. —Dad
After all, she might not be.
In math Nouri Withers taps her steel-toed boot against the chair leg, from excitement probably; she’s thinking of her next time with Ephraim. Where will they go? What will they do? What have they already done? Ash isn’t there to comfort her; the daughter has no friends in this room; it’s calculus, all eleventh- and twelfth-graders except for her. The tenth-graders think she’s a snob because she moved here from Salem and takes AP classes and her dad’s not a fisherman and she once said it was dumb to call the teachers “miss.” To prove her lack of snobbery, she says “miss” now too.
After class Mr. Xiao pulls her aside for “a word.” She is already shaky from the combination of eight weeks late plus Ephraim’s hand up Nouri’s shirt; the prospect of a reprimand from her second-favorite teacher makes her eyes water.
“Whoa, whoa! You’re not in trouble. Jesus, Quarles, it’s cool.”
She dabs her eyes. “Sorry.”
“Everything all right?”
“My period.” Men teachers don’t touch that excuse.
“Okay, well, I’ve got some good news for you. Do you know about the Oregon Math Academy?”
The daughter nods.
As if she shook her head, Mr. Xiao explains: “It’s a weeklong residential program in Eugene. The most prestigious and competitive academic camp in the state. Nobody from Central Coast has ever been selected. And I’m nominating you for it.”
She hears the words, but no feeling follows. “Thank you so much.”
“I think your chances are good. You’re bright, you’re female, and as a little bonus, I went to undergrad with one of their admissions guys.” He waits for her to look impressed.
The Matilda Quarles of last year—of last month—would be euphoric right now. Would be dying to get home and tell her parents.
“The deadline is January fifteenth,” adds Mr. Xiao, who is not good at noticing how people feel unless they’re crying or yelling and so believes the daughter is just as happy as she should be.
“I look forward to applying,” she says.
She knows quite a lot, in fact, about the Oregon Math Academy. She has wanted to go since the seventh grade. She and Yasmine planned to apply together. In eighth grade Yasmine scored highest in their school on the math section of the state exam; the daughter was two points behind her.
Going to the academy would help her get into colleges with top marine-biology departments.
Her parents would be over the moon.
The academy happens in April, over spring break.
If she’s three months pregnant now, she’ll be eight months pregnant then.
How to make skerpikjøt (“sharp meat”):
1. Hang lamb’s hind legs and saddle in drying shed (October).
2. Cut down saddle and eat as ræst kjøt (“semi-dried meat”) (Christmastime).
3. Cut down legs and carve for serving (April).
THE WIFE
Herd crumbs into palm.
Spray table.
Wipe down table.
Rinse cups and bowls.
Place cups and bowls in dishwasher.
Open bill for Didier’s dentist co-pay.
Open bill for plumber, who did not even fix the dripping tap.
Open overdue notice for John’s trip to the ER, where all they did was give him an antinausea pill yet somehow it cost six hundred dollars.
Write check for dentist co-pay because it’s only $49.84.
Slide plumber and hospital into folder labeled PAY NEXT MONTH.
Start a list on the back of an envelope: Why we should go to counseling.
Think of what to put first—not the strongest reason, nor the weakest.
In law school they teach you to end any litany on the most convincing item and bury in the middle the weakest.
Last spring, Didier’s answer was five variations on “Because I don’t want to.”
At eleven a.m., the violet sedan pulls up.
Mrs. Costello bothers John less than she bothers Bex, and sweet John never complains on Tuesdays and Thursdays when the sedan deposits Mrs. Costello and her knitting bag. The wife is always ready with purse on shoulder, keys in hand. Four hours, twice a week, belong to her alone.
“There’s fish sticks in the freezer, and baby carrots, and I got more PG Tips for you—”
“We’ll be splendid,” Mrs. Costello mournfully says.
And John lets her pet his blond head—John, who is nicer than the rest of the hill dwellers, who will snuggle against Mrs. Costello even though she smells like old-person teeth. Bex was an accident, but it took ten months of trying to conceive John; the wife had begun to despair; she cried every morning after Didier left for school; then, finally, it worked. And John came murmuring into the world, leaking what looked like milk. Little white drops kept forming on his nipples. Witches’ milk.
The wife has until two forty-five, pickup time
for Bex.
What should she do until pickup?
She isn’t impressed with the first-grade teacher. Homework is a sheet of fill-in-the-blanks or some tame question they have to answer using a computer encyclopedia.
Does not want to shop or otherwise errand; the kids might as well be with her for that.
But what does she expect from a rural school district that can’t afford music classes.
Does not like to stay at home, hidden from John, because she’s home all the bleeding time.
The nearest private school is an hour away and Catholic and, though less expensive than the average private, still too expensive for the Korsmos. The wife’s parents have nothing more to give them. Didier’s mother is a part-time bartender, and his father he hasn’t seen since he was fourteen.
She chooses the library. She was once a good researcher, at ease in the stacks, fetching, piling, skimming, choosing.
The rain is letting up.
The wife had her own carrel at the law library with its thirty-foot windows, black mirrors at night.
On a low stool by the newspaper rack is Temple Percival’s niece, stinking of onion, twigs in her hair. That stool is her favorite.
The wife smiles, as she always does.
Guilty for finding her repulsive.
But she is repulsive.
Temple Percival once gave the wife a tarot reading, at her store: “The castle will fall.”
At one of the two blond-wood tables, she spreads the paper before her.
“Excuse me, but are you done with the sports section?”
Armpits and aftershave. She turns. He teaches at the high school. What’s his—
“Oh, hi,” he says. “You’re Didier’s wife, yeah?”
“Susan. I think we met at the summer picnic. How are you?” It hurts her neck to look up at him, he’s so long.
“Sweaty. I apologize.” He pulls out the chair beside her. “The kids are taking bubble tests so I’m free until soccer practice, and I ill-advisedly went for a run.”