Red Clocks

by Leni Zumas

  Too sad to take a shower.

  She wanted to study sea ice, which

  begins as a cold crystal soup

  Harry Rattray, the Scottish tutor, knew nothing about

  forms a swaying crust strong enough to hold up a puffin thicker than the height of a man

  can block, trap, gouge, or

  outright crush

  a ship

  too sad

  THE DAUGHTER

  While they take their quiz, Ro/Miss is doing a weird thing with her fingers on the sides of her face. Rubbing in a sort of violent way. Her eyes are closed. Bad headache? The daughter doesn’t agree with Dad that Ro/Miss is a radical leftist; she’s just smart. A smart spinster. If the daughter were to say that word in front of Ro/Miss, she’d get a sermon: What does the word “spinster” do that “bachelor” doesn’t do? Why do they carry different associations? These are language acts, people!

  The witch is a spinster too. She is bold and cold and wouldn’t be agitated by the Nouri Witherses of this world. In the daughter’s shoes, instead of fretting over some little melancholy jelly Ephraim prefers, Gin Percival would either quit caring or take revenge. Devise a potion that made Nouri’s fingertips numb for the rest of her life, so that if she went blind in old age, she couldn’t read braille.

  Except she can’t make potions in jail.

  “Everyone finished?” goes Ro/Miss. “If not, too bad.”

  She hurt the principal’s wife, according to the newspaper.

  “Ash, stop writing. Now. Give me that paper.”

  Except she didn’t seem like a person who would hurt anyone.

  Do they provide tampons in jail? Gin Percival might not have brought any with her. And what if they give her the wrong size? A Slender when she needs a Super Plus?

  Yasmine coached the daughter on the phone when she lost a tampon inside herself. Explained how to find the muscles that would expel it. “Pretend you’re stopping yourself from peeing.”

  Pack ice could block, trap, gouge, or outright crush a three-hundred-fifty-ton ship. Mínervudottír wanted to acquaint herself with this brute.

  THE MENDER

  She is come from walking on the bottom of the sea. There the tiny eyeless and the footless walked with she. Ran with she the finned and flattened, sailed with she the lungless; swayed with she the fantom grasses, lantern fishes, wolf eels. To the north bathed viperfish, who did not even see she; to the south flew goblin sharks, who did not even eat she. Toed a wolf eel, thumbed a skate, fingered the sucker of a cockeyed squid.

  And back again, on waking, to the concrete bed.

  Like the cell of any hive.

  “Here’s your tray,” says the day guard, who has six fingers on her off hand. Hyperdactylia is a sign of the visionary. “And you got a letter.”

  On white paper, in pencil:

  Dear Ginny,

  Everything will be all right. I’m feeding the animals. And I took care of the other thing. I hope you like this kind of chocolate.

  C.

  So polite, Cotter. “I’m going to put it in now, okay?” he said, the first time they had sex. Polite till the cows come home. In, and in, and in. Her scabbard hurt after.

  She had been curious to try. They did it five times, on four different days, on a blanket on the floor of Cotter’s parents’ basement, until she decided she didn’t want to do it anymore.

  Cotter was sad but still walked her home from school, and they didn’t talk much, sometimes not at all. Her scabbard stopped hurting. They listened to the scroof and bap of their shoes on the sidewalk. The tsunami siren went off so loud the mender fell to her knees—“Will we drown?” She hated to swim, was frightened of sharks. “No, it’s just a test,” he said, and crouched to hug her.

  Cotter was not her future husband, even though, back then, he sort of wanted to be. Scottish virgins used to douse charred peat with cow piss and hang it in their doorways, and whatever color the piss-moss was, next morning, would equal the color of their future husbands’ hair.

  Has Mattie Matilda solved her problem by now? Or is the little fish still inside?

  “The letter says chocolate,” she tells the guard.

  “You’re not allowed to have the chocolate.”

  “But it was sent to me.”

  “You’re in jail, Stretch. Nothing here is yours.”

  “At least tell me what kind it was?” she yells at the guard’s back.

  The other guards are eating the chocolate, she knows. Smearing it all over their faces.

  They took away her Aristotle’s lanterns too. Her neckcloth.

  “If we go to trial, it will help if you look as mainstream as you can,” said the lawyer. “Studies have shown that juries are influenced by grooming and attire.”

  Her grooming won’t change one inch of itself. She won’t let him bring her any department-store clothes. Her aunt yells from the freezer: Show those fuckshits how Percivals do! The mender has been refusing the instant mashed potato and pork nuggets; she eats her own nails and the brickling skin around them. The lawyer has promised to bring better food. He said, “I’ll have you out by Christmas.”

  Christmas, her favorite criminal. Stockings are hanged, trees chopped, geese shot, children threatened with coal.

  Christmas is next week.

  Medical malpractice: who’ll believe forest weirdo over school principal? Naturally that prick became a principal—plenty of little ones to boss around. Wasn’t enough for him to boss Lola. “You divorce me at your age, you’ll never get another man, it’s just numbers, babe, you’re at the wrong end of the numbers,” she told the mender he’d said.

  They think the mender harmed her grievously. Think she waved her broom at the moon and saved her own menstrual blood in a cat skull and dipped a live toad in the blood and tore off one of the toad’s legs and stuffed it into Lola’s butthole.

  Nobody knows why the dead man’s fingers—poisonous to ships’ hulls and oysters and fishermen’s paychecks—have come back to Newville. Nobody knows, so they’ve decided that it’s the mender’s fault. She hexed the seaweed. Called it to shore with her special weed-hexing whistle. And her reason? What reason, bitches?

  Some things are true; some are not.

  That Lola fell down the stairs, hard.

  That she fell down so hard her brain swelled up.

  That she fell down because she drank a “potion.”

  That the “potion” she drank before falling down was directly responsible for the falling down.

  That the providing of the “potion” counts as medical malpractice.

  That the newspaper headline says POTION COMMOTION.

  That the oil she gave Lola was for calming her scar.

  That the oil was topical, not meant to be swallowed.

  That, even if swallowed, elderflower, lemon, lavender, and fenugreek don’t make people fall down.

  That nobody will believe forest weirdo over school principal.

  “Percival!”—a guard through the screen box. “Get dressed. Your lawyer’s here.”

  The lawyer wears a suit, like last time. As if to make himself more real. As if, in a suit, he will appear forceful and real and not the plump weird trembler he is. Among humans, the mender prefers the weird and the trembling, so she likes him.

  From his briefcase he produces two boxes of licorice nibs. “As requested.”

  The mender breaks one open. Crams her mouth thick with the black taste, holds the box out to him.

  “Mmh. I don’t eat those.” He pulls out a bottle of hand sanitizer and squirts a palmful. “So your friend Cotter’s been checking on the animals and says everyone is fine.”

  “Did he make sure the goats aren’t going up to the trail?”

  The lawyer nods. Scratches the back of his neck. “So I’m afraid I have some tough news.”

  Mattie Matilda?

  Went to a term house—died?

  “The prosecutor’s office has appended a charge,” says the lawyer.

&
nbsp; “Appended?”

  “Added. They’re bringing a new charge against you.”

  “What charge?”

  “Conspiracy to commit murder.”

  Silver cold burn in her belly.

  “Because fertilized eggs are now classified as persons,” he says, “intentionally destroying an embryo or fetus constitutes second-degree murder. Or, if you’re in Oregon, ‘murder’ rather than ‘aggravated murder.’”

  “What did the music teacher tell you?”

  “Who?”

  “The—”

  “Stop talking,” he barks.

  She looks at him sidelong.

  “Ms. Percival, it is much better if you don’t tell me whatever you were about to tell me. Understood? The charge is being added by Dolores Fivey’s attorney. Mrs. Fivey claims you consented to terminate a pregnancy of hers. Any truth to that?”

  “No.”

  “All right, good.” He fusses in his briefcase for a notepad and pen. “Did she ever mention being pregnant? Or that she was seeking an abortion?”

  That clock never had a kernel in it.

  “Lola’s lying,” says the mender.

  “Why would she lie?”

  “Get a doctor to look at her. Womb’s been silent.”

  The lawyer looks up from his pad. “Not a talkative womb?”

  He is helping her when she has no money to pay him, so she fakes a laugh. “She was never pregnant.”

  “Well, she can testify that she believed she was.” He reaches under his suit sleeve to rub a forearm, then applies more hand sanitizer. “Per our last conversation, I haven’t been able to find any evidence that implicates Mr. Fivey in domestic violence. No hospital records, no police reports, no concerned friends or doctors. Zero.”

  “But he snapped her finger bone,” she says, “and burned her arm and punched her in the jaw.”

  “Without any corroborating evidence, we can’t present this information in court.”

  I am descended from a pirate. From a pirate. I am—

  “Ms. Percival, I want you to understand that conspiracy to commit murder carries a mandatory minimum prison term of ninety months.”

  Seven years, six months.

  “And that’s the minimum. They could add more at sentencing.”

  “But I didn’t,” she says.

  “I believe you,” says the lawyer. “And I’m going to make the jury believe you. But we need to go over every single detail of your acquaintance with Mrs. Fivey.”

  He wants to know what Lola paid for the scar treatments. If the prosecution can prove that money or goods changed hands, then the jury might plausibly leap to believing that the money or goods were prepayment for a termination. By accepting the compensation, the mender conspired to commit murder.

  “This is the narrative they’ll build for the jury,” says the lawyer. “We need to hack away at it. Anything that can throw this narrative into doubt, we’ll use.”

  “I can’t remember,” says the mender. Telling about the sex would make it worse. The world’s oldest method of payment.

  In seven years and six months the chickens and goats will be dead, Malky will have forgotten her, and the powderpost beetles will have eaten the roof clean off.

  The skin on the explorer’s hands grew hard from housemaid duties.

  She grew bored of the payments sex walks with Harry Rattray, the Scottish tutor, in Victoria Park.

  THE WIFE

  The high school auditorium, muggy and tinseled.

  “All of the other reindeer. Used to laugh and call him names.”

  “Santa?” asks John.

  “Soon.”

  “Santa doesn’t come to holiday assembly,” corrects Bex, hell-bent on accuracy.

  Didier, on the other side of John: “Pipe down, chouchous.”

  The wife glances around for Bryan. Pauses at the silver-sequined breasts of Dolores Fivey, which seem smaller, like the rest of her, shrunk down in those long weeks at the hospital. Not so sixy anymore. Penny, yawning. Pete, checking his phone. Ro, sagged down in her seat, looking enraged.

  “As they shouted out with glee, ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, you’ll go down in history!’”

  Applause, bowing, then Bryan strides onstage in a Grinch-green sports jacket. She can’t see his dimple from here.

  “Thank you, choir!” he booms. More applause. “And thanks to all of you for joining us at our, ah, seasonal celebration.”

  Didier leans over John to whisper: “That man is dumb as a melon in a sock.”

  “May everyone’s holidays be merry and bright,” says Bryan. Where will he be having Christmas dinner? He must eat like a shire horse, big as he is.

  Outside the auditorium she stands with Didier and Pete, postponing the moment when she must snap the kids into their seats, drive back up the hill, unbuckle them, rinse apples, spread almond butter onto whole-grain bread, pour cups of milk from cows who eat wild grasses only.

  Pete: “That record didn’t come out until 1981.”

  Didier: “Excuse me, but it was 1980, exactly two months after he hanged himself.”

  Yet he can’t remember to give the kids their fluoride supplement.

  “And exactly a hundred years,” adds the wife, “after our house was built.”

  “I bet Chinese laborers hammered every nail in it,” says Pete, “for criminally low wages. My people got fucked in Oregon. Railroad workers especially, but also the miners. Ever heard of the Hells Canyon Massacre?”

  “No,” says the wife.

  “Well, you should look it up.”

  Pete’s scorn for her is always just barely concealed. Pampered white lady who doesn’t have a job, lives on family property—what does she do all day? Whereas Didier regales him with stories of his trasherjack childhood in Montreal public housing and is revered.

  Her phone vibrates: an unknown number. She prepares her telemarketer line: Remove me from your call list immediately.

  “Susan MacInnes?” The name she had for thirty years. “It’s Edward Tilghman. From law school?”

  “Of course, Edward—I remember.”

  “Well, I should hope so.” He hasn’t lost his primness, or his nasal congestion. Book-smart and life-dumb Edward.

  “How are you?”

  “Tolerable,” says Edward. “But here’s the thing: I’m in your village.”

  She looks around, as though he might be watching from the auditorium steps.

  “I’m representing a client in the area, and I wanted you to know I’m in town. It would be somewhat awkward if we just bumped into each other.”

  “Do you have a place to stay?” she says.

  Edward would be a clean houseguest but a finicky one; he’d want extra blankets and would remark on the drafts, the dripping taps.

  “The Narwhal,” he says.

  “Well, you’re more than welcome to—”

  “Thank you. I’m already ensconced.”

  She has followed his career, a little. He was an excellent student, could have gotten hired in a minute at a white-shoe firm. But he works at the public defender’s office in Salem. Must earn practically nothing.

  “You should come for dinner one of these nights.”

  When he sees her he’ll think She’s blown up a bit. Used to be a slender thing, and now—although it happens, he’ll think, after they reproduce. Fat hardens.

  “Mmh. That’s a thought.” That was one of his trademarks, she recalls: soft grunting.

  There have been reports of bedbugs at the Narwhal.

  “So…?” but she realizes he has hung up.

  Didier bumps his shoulder against hers. “Who that?”

  “Guy from law school.”

  “Not Chad the Impaler, I hope.”

  “Just a nerd I worked on the law review with.”

  True to form, her husband asks nothing further.

  John whimpers, yanking on her hand. She didn’t remember to bring the porcupine book or the bag of grapes. And there are stre
aks of her own feces in the upstairs toilet. She’s grown afraid of the toilet brush, damp and rusted in its cup.

  Bryan is surrounded by eager, jostling boys; they must be his players. Isn’t the season over?—but of course they wouldn’t stop adoring him when the season ends.

  Ro, too, is thronged by students. She has wiped the rage off her face and is gesturing theatrically, making them laugh. They love her—and why not? She’s a good person. The wife would like to be a good person, a person who’ll be happy if Ro gets pregnant or adopts a baby, who will not hope that she doesn’t.

  When Ro sees the wife’s children, is she jealous? What if she never conceives? Can’t adopt? What will be her life’s pull light then? When the wife goes down a street, John in the stroller and Bex holding her hand, purpose is written all over them. These little animals were hatched by the wife, are being fed and cleaned and sheltered and loved by the wife, on their way to becoming persons in their own right. The wife made persons. No need to otherwise justify what she is doing on the planet.

  Huge brown eyes, sunlit hair, perfect little chins. All small children are cute. You know that, right?—D.’s reliable smashing of her happiness. Okay, yes, kids are built adorable so they won’t be abandoned to die before they can survive on their own; but it is also true that some kids are more adorable than others. Jambon sur les yeux, Didier likes to say. You’ve got ham over your eyes.

  Lifting, settling, buckling.

  Specks of rain on the windshield.

  Soon, the sea.

  “Starving!” calls Bex.

  “Almost home,” says the wife.

  Almost to the sharpest bend, whose guardrail is measly. Hands off the wheel. They would plow through the branches, fly past the rocks, tear open the water.

  The newspapers tomorrow: MOTHER AND CHILDREN PERISH IN CLIFF TRAGEDY.

  “Momplee,” says Bex, “do reindeer sleep?”

  As they approach the bend, she eases her foot off the accelerator.