Red Clocks

by Leni Zumas

  Didier was once jealous of Chad, the third-year student she’d gone out with a few times before meeting her husband.

  If she were ever to tell him I slept with Bryan, would he spring into action, agree to counseling, fight to get her back? Or would he say, without looking up from the screen, Congratulations?

  She is too chickenshit to leave her marriage.

  She wants Didier to leave it first.

  In the summer of 1868, aged twenty-seven, Mínervudottír left Aberdeen, taking with her an extra month’s salary (the shipyard director’s wife liked her) and, shoved deep in her suitcase, four silver candlesticks.

  Went to London.

  Sold the candlesticks.

  Obtained a reader’s ticket to the British Museum Reading Room, which required no membership fee.

  Bought a notebook with a brown leather cover.

  This notebook filled with facts.

  THE DAUGHTER

  Behind the Dumpsters she lights her first cigarette of the day, which is normally the best one but they haven’t been tasting right lately. Soft chemical bloom on the roof of her mouth.

  Why do some walruses in Washington, DC, who’ve never met the daughter care what she does with the clump? They don’t seem bothered that baby wolves are shot to death from helicopters. Those babies were already breathing on their own, running and sleeping and eating on their own, whereas the clump is not even a baby yet. Couldn’t survive two seconds outside the daughter.

  The walruses are to blame for Yasmine.

  Who sang at church.

  Whose church was African Methodist Episcopal. Whenever the daughter went to services with the Salters after sleepovers, she felt strange.

  Yasmine said: “Well, Matts, I feel strange all the time.”

  Ignorant white girl.

  It starts to rain. The daughter lights a second cigarette and decides to skip math, even if it means annoying Mr. Xiao, whom she does not want to annoy and who’ll say, next time he sees her, What the hell, Quarles? Nouri Withers will be in math, and who needs a glimpse of that mess. She closes her eyes, sucking, rain pittering on her lashes.

  “Trying to get cancer?” Ro/Miss is standing right in front of her.

  “No.” The daughter grinds the cigarette under her boot.

  “Pick that up, please.”

  The daughter tucks it into her peacoat pocket to avoid the inelegance of walking over to the Dumpster and struggling to lift its crusty lid. Her peacoat is going to reek of dead cigarette.

  “Tell me what’s going on, Mattie.”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’ve never gotten a B minus on a quiz before.”

  “I studied the wrong chapter.”

  “Are you still upset about the whales?”

  The daughter spits out a laugh. Looks across the soccer field at the jagged evergreens, the sky darkening behind them.

  “You can talk to me, you know. I’ll help if I can.”

  “You can’t,” says the daughter.

  “Try me,” says Ro/Miss.

  I’m too scared to go to Canada because of the Pink Wall but the witch went to jail and I need a plan and I don’t have a plan and what would you do if you were me?

  But what if it’s in her teaching contract—mandatory reporting of child abuse and, in her case, child murder?

  The daughter is not a murderer.

  They’re only cells, multiplying.

  No face yet. No dreams or opinions.

  You didn’t have a face once either.

  Ro/Miss reports her, and Principal Fivey kicks her out of Central Coast Regional.

  Math Academy not thrilled about that.

  Colleges not thrilled about that.

  Mom and Dad least thrilled of all.

  “I have class in a minute,” she says, “and Mr. Xiao said he’s going to rip the next person who’s late a new turd cutter.”

  “Emotional health takes priority. I’ll handle Mr. Xiao.”

  Maybe she can.

  “It’s nothing,” says the daughter.

  “Try me.”

  Ro/Miss wouldn’t care if it’s in her contract. She’s fiercer than that.

  The daughter says, still watching the trees: “I’m pregs?”

  “Oh Jesus—”

  “But I’m taking care of it.”

  “In what way?” snaps Ro/Miss, engine-red, freckles pulsing like brown stars.

  She’s angry?

  “It’s being dealt with,” says the daughter.

  “How can you be smoking?”

  How can she be angry?

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Oh really?”

  “The smoke won’t—”

  “What do you plan to do, Mattie?”

  “Terminate,” says the daughter.

  Ro/Miss frowns.

  “It’s just an embryo, miss. It can’t make an offer on a house, even though it has the legal right to.”

  Not even the littlest twist of a smile at hearing herself quoted. “What happens if you get caught?”

  This is not the Ro/Miss she loves.

  “I won’t get caught,” says the daughter, buttoning her peacoat. The rain is coming down harder.

  “But what if you do?”

  “I won’t.”

  What happened to the Ro/Miss who says we have better things to do with our lives than throw ourselves down the stairs?

  “You know they’ll charge you with a felony? Which means juvenile detention until you’re eighteen, then—”

  “I know, miss.”

  She would be sent to Bolt River.

  Who is this monstrous imposter?

  Ro/Miss pushes back her parka hood and starts raking all ten fingers through her hair, scalp to ends, scalp to ends, like an actor playing a mental-hospital patient.

  “I got the name of a termination house,” lies the daughter. “It’s supposed to be good.”

  Raking, raking, scalp to ends. “Are you kidding?”

  “Um, no?”

  “Term houses charge a shit ton,” says Ro/Miss, “and take shortcuts because nobody, obviously, is regulating them. They use out-of-date equipment, don’t disinfect between patients, administer anesthesia without”—the first bell rings—“training.” The fingers stop, mid-rake.

  “Please don’t tell my parents or Mr. Fivey?”

  Tears in Ro/Miss’s eyes. As if this moment needed to get any worse.

  “Are you going to tell them?” bleats the daughter. “Please don’t!”

  It is weird to be scared of a person you’ve always been the opposite of scared of.

  Ro/Miss pulls her hood back up. Tightens the drawstrings around her scrunched, streaming face. “I won’t.” She wipes her eyes with a parka sleeve. “This is just—This is really, I don’t know—”

  “It’s okay,” says the daughter, touching her elbow.

  The elbow stays against her hand.

  Ro/Miss blinks and shudders.

  They stand hand to elbow for what feels like a long time. They are both getting soaked and the daughter’s arm starts to hurt.

  The second bell rings.

  She says, “I have math?” and unhands the elbow.

  “Sure. Yes.” Sniffles. “But Mattie…?”

  The daughter waits.

  The teacher shakes her head.

  They walk together along the soccer field, not talking, and up the steps, not talking, and through the blue doors.

  She shouted “Help” in three languages.

  Slit lambs hung in the shed, throats red.

  THE BIOGRAPHER

  There are four oranges in a bowl on her table. She throws them one at a time at the kitchen wall. Two bounce, one splits, one splatters. Opens the fridge: soft cheese, broccoli, chocolate pudding. Flings the cheese and pudding out the window into the neighboring yard, hears no splat because the wind is up. Recalls that chocolate is fatal to dogs. Has never seen a dog in that yard.

  Words I hate:

  33. hubby
>
  34. sammie

  35. diagnosis

  36. pregs

  She will leave the oranges where they are. Head off soon to this goddamn eve of Christmas Eve dinner.

  Mattie will head off soon to her abortion.

  That’s one more married couple ahead of the biographer on the wait-list who’s not getting a baby.

  Which is not Mattie’s problem.

  She rubs her cold forearms.

  Her veins are buried. Archie’s were collapsed.

  A friend of Archie’s wore black wire-and-mesh wings to his funeral.

  The biographer once watched, on television, a church group chanting “Hurray!” outside the funeral of a politician’s wife who had used IVF to acquire two children and thereby had summoned (said the church’s press release) her own death by cancer. She and her husband coveted things that were not theirs, they reared up in fury, decided to show God who was boss, and meddled in matters of the womb. The politician’s wife was now a resident of hell. Flee her example.

  The biographer’s ex-therapist asked, “Are you claiming not to need a romantic relationship in order to shield yourself from disappointment and rejection?”

  “Would you ask that question of a male client?”

  “You’re not a male client.”

  “But would you?”

  “Maybe, sure.” He folded spotty hands on a baggy corduroy lap. “I am simply wondering to what extent your campaign to have a baby is a defense against the pain of being alone.”

  “Did you say campaign?”

  “I’m recalling the period when you were sleeping with—Zeus, was it?”

  “Jupiter,” she said.

  “Jupiter, and you told me that you’d just as soon support the death penalty as have a relationship with him. And yet you were fucking him.” He said “fucking” with a relish that disturbed the biographer even more than “campaign.” “There’s of course also the issue of your brother, who abandoned you in rather a gruesome fashion.”

  The biographer never set foot in his office again.

  Things I have failed at:

  1. Finishing book

  2. Having baby

  3. Keeping brother alive

  She starts dialing Susan, to cancel. Then thinks about being alone all night, smelling the broken oranges.

  Bex meets her on the porch steps. “You’re not dressed up,” accuses the girl, herself stuffed into a burgundy pinafore and black patent leathers. “It’s Christmas Eve eve!”

  “Sorry,” says the biographer, clenching her fists.

  “I made popcorn for the reindeer.” Bex points to a salad bowl on the lawn.

  In Mínervudottír’s day, sleeping bags were made from reindeer hides, the hairy skin good for warming wrecked men huddled on bergs.

  “For my Christmas I asked for a kitten, but my mom says Santa can’t bring a kitten, which is a lie because a girl in my class got one for Hanukkah.”

  The biographer sits beside her on the damp step. “Well, Santa doesn’t deliver Hanukkah presents, only Christmas presents.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s how it works.”

  “But I want a Hanukkah present,” says Bex, fingering a burgundy button.

  “You’re not Jewish.”

  “I want to switch to Jewish. Also, what’s a cunt?”

  The biographer leans to examine the eye-shaped pattern carved into the railing. “Um, have you asked your mom?”

  “No, because it goes in the special box.”

  “Did you ask your dad?”

  “He said let’s talk about it later. Look it up on your phone.”

  “My phone can’t look things up; it’s too old. ‘Cunt’ is just another word for vagina.”

  In Faroese: fisa.

  “Okay,” says Bex, taking her hand.

  The tinsel has been hung halfheartedly; the eggnog resembles a bodily fluid; Susan looks as though she’d rather be anywhere else. They’ve been invited to gather because it’s what you do, and Susan is a person who does what you do. At the teachers’ picnic last summer she said to a fellow mother, “You don’t truly become an adult until you have kids.” The fellow mother said, “Totally.” The biographer, standing nearby with a mustard-glopped hot dog, said, “Seriously?” but this went unheard. Susan is an expert in adulthood. Kid things, cooking things, knowing which fork to use for fish in a high-end restaurant things. And the Korsmos live in what is basically a mansion, even if it was built as a summer home, because a summer home in the 1880s was fancier than today’s average winter home. Susan’s parents own it, but the deed will doubtless come to her.

  You don’t even want a house, the biographer reminds herself.

  Didier is bent over an open oven, squirting pan juices on a sizzling hunk of meat. “Get ready for some fine damn beef,” he greets the biographer. John comes barreling toward the oven, but his father yanks him up in time (“No scorched babies on my watch”) and sets him down (“Go find your porcupine book”), and he scampers away. “You know, I wanted to name that kid Mick. I should’ve argued harder. John Korsmo is a real-estate agent, but Mick Korsmo is a badass.”

  “Except,” says the biographer, “that pretty much every one-syllable word that rhymes with Mick has a negative, lewd, or derogatory connotation. Ick. Sick. Lick. Prick.”

  “Wow,” says Didier.

  “Kick. Brick. Trick—”

  “Why is brick negative, eh?” he says. “Unless it’s a brick of heroin, although that, to some people, would be very positive indeed.”

  Straw.

  Camel.

  She’s really in no mood.

  “Didier, is there any particular reason you mention heroin so much?”

  He frowns. “Do I?”

  Keep your legs, Stephens.

  “Well, yes, actually, and somebody important to me died from it, so I would appreciate it if you’d stop glamorizing it when I’m around.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” He frets an oily strand of blond hair between his fingers. Purple lids hood blue-gray eyes. Beau-laid. “A boyfriend?”

  Her face pounds with heat. “Somebody important,” she says.

  “Such as a boyfriend?”

  “So we have a deal?” she says. “No more romanticizing?”

  “Okay, but hold on, eh—I need to hear more.”

  “Another time.”

  “I’ll get it out of you eventually,” he says. “I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your story down!”

  Didier hapless. Penny yawning. Bex whining about kittens. Mattie’s luck. The semeny eggnog. The cysts on her ovaries. Her dad eating soft vegetables at Ambrosia Ridge Retirement Village. Susan believing the biographer is not yet an adult. Every Child Needs Two coming true in three weeks.

  They’ve tucked into Didier’s roast when a late-arriving guest is ushered in, a pudgy white guy with a shaved head. “Everyone,” says Susan, “this is Edward Tilghman. We were in law school together. By the way, you didn’t need to dress up.”

  “I didn’t,” he says, brushing rain off his suit jacket. “These are my work clothes.”

  “Edward has a client in town,” explains Susan.

  The guest settles in between Penny and the biographer, takes a sip of water, and shakes out his napkin.

  Something warm and moist hits the biographer under her left eye. She finds it in her lap: a slice of meat.

  Another wet little slap—Bex is hit too.

  “Cunt!” says the girl.

  “Goddammit, John,” says Didier, “if you can’t sit at the table without throwing food, you’re not going to sit at the table.”

  Susan stares at her husband. “Why does she know that word?”

  “How should I know?”

  Bex sings, “Cunty McGee was a happy little cunt.”

  “Goodness,” says Edward.

  “Not a nice word, Bexy—” But Didier is laughing.

  “Does it go in the special box?” she asks.

  “What special box?�
��

  “Nothing, Momplee.”

  “Mommy,” cries John, “a boy and a fish is friends.”

  Penny asks, “Whom are you representing, Edward?”

  “He can’t divulge,” says Susan.

  “Their names aren’t confidential,” says Edward. “This isn’t Alcoholics Anonymous,” and Susan takes the shock of correction square in the face.

  “But the fact of representation,” she insists, “is privileged in some jurisdictions—”

  “A woman named Gin Percival.” Edward helps himself to a plop of parsnip.

  “The witch!” says Didier. “She’s been doling out the wrong kind of family planning.”

  “Ucchh, shut up,” says Susan.

  “Momplee, that’s rude and you should say sorry.”

  “I think Daddy should say sorry. For being an idiot.”

  Didier is watching Susan with an expression the biographer has never seen on him before.

  Penny stands up and claps. “Time for all children who live in this house to prepare a welcome letter for Mr. Claus! All children of the house, please come with me to the letter-writing station.”

  “We have to be excused first,” says Bex.

  “You’re frigging excused,” says Susan.

  The kids follow Penny to the living room, and Susan carries plates to the kitchen. Didier, wordless, heads out to smoke.

  The biographer feels bad that Gin Percival is in jail, but not as bad as she should. Gin can’t help her anymore, and the biographer can’t be sympathetic right now.

  Unless a pregnant woman or girl decides, in the next three weeks, that she’d actually really love for her baby to be raised by a single mother on a high school teacher’s salary, then the biographer will be removed from the agency’s list. To restore dignity, strength, and prosperity to American families.

  She can remain on the fostering list; but ECN2 stipulates that in single-parent homes, foster placement cannot lead to permanent legal adoption.

  She sneezes, wipes her nose on the pink linen napkin.

  Edward leans away from her and says, “Could you please cover your mouth?”

  “I did cover my mouth.”

  He moves three chairs away.