“I don’t know about that,” Kizzy said. “Maybe I haven’t described it in the best way.”
“Once you’re better I want to run a few more tests on you, to see if you’ll ever even get your strength back. And if you won’t, I really don’t see the point in you coming.”
And with a small nod Josephine went back to washing the dishes.
“You can’t make me have children,” Kizzy said. “It’s my decision and I’m saying no.”
Josephine stopped washing the dishes again. “You’re viewing all this as if it’s a curse. Don’t you see what a gift you have? Some women would literally kill to have the ability you do.”
“Well, I didn’t ask for it and I don’t want it.”
“Why not?” Josephine asked. “You don’t even know what it will be like.”
“I don’t need to know. I know what my mother was like and she wasn’t happy.”
“You don’t have to be like her.”
“You don’t get it,” Kizzy said shaking her head.
“No, you don’t get it. You think you’ll be like your mother and you hated her.”
“That’s not it at all.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Josephine asked grabbing onto Kizzy’s shirt.
“I’m not going to be your slave,” Kizzy said, trying to twist away.
Josephine shook her head, tears swelling in her eyes, holding on tight to Kizzy’s shirt. “Please don’t do this.”
“Just let me go!” Kizzy said.
“Don’t make things more difficult than they need to be.”
Kizzy finally shoved her away, but it was more of a punch to Josephine’s chest. Kizzy stood there, the blood pulsating in her face. “Why are you trying to control me?” she yelled. She hadn’t yelled at a person since an argument she had with her mother, all that time ago.
Josephine bit her lip and shook her head and started to walk away. Seeing the woman leave without resolving the argument that she had started in the first place drove Kizzy insane. Something in her snapped.
“You just feel guilty for what you did!” Kizzy yelled.
Josephine stopped at the door, frozen by Kizzy’s words.
“Are you ashamed we’re almost all dead? Because of you!” taking a step towards Josephine.
Josephine threw down a towel and tried to run to her lab, but Kizzy grabbed her arm.
“I’m not going to pay for your mistake. You screwed the human race, fix it yourself.”
Josephine turned and slapped Kizzy across the face.
Kizzy stood there shocked, her face burning.
Josephine stood there a few feet from her with a wild, yet with a confident look on her face. Completely still, ready for a fight.
At the door stood Leo and Diego, home from their walk around the perimeter, equally shocked.
Josephine turned, went to her lab, and closed herself in.
“Umm… What the heck happened while we were gone?” Leo asked.
Diego stood in the doorway. “Are you alright?”
“I… I don’t know,” Kizzy said.
“I can’t believe she did that,” Diego said.
“It was my fault,” Kizzy said, holding her stinging face. “I think.”
“It’s not okay to slap somebody.”
“I provoked her.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Diego said.
“Yes it does,” Kizzy said, getting upset all over again.
“Diego, why don’t you go and take another check around the yard,” Leo said.
Diego sighed and walked back out the door.
Leo went to the kitchen and got some ice for Kizzy’s face and put it into a plastic bag. She held the bag loosely against her cheek. Leo poured some bourbon for the both of them and sat down at the table.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he placed the glass in front of her.
“For what? You didn’t slap me.”
“I’m saying it on her behalf. She’s gone through a lot and being down there by herself all these years. Well, I’m just surprised it didn’t drive her crazy.”
Kizzy felt the sting of her cheek and was about to say she disagreed with Josephine’s mental health assessment, but she bit her tongue. “I just don’t get why she’s so dead-set on me having kids.”
“She has her reasons,” Leo said.
“Such as?”
“Besides the fact that she screwed the human race?”
Kizzy winced with embarrassment.
“The truth is, kid, she wishes she was in your position.”
“What do you mean?”
“She invented the Enoch Pill accidentally. She was trying to find a cure for infertility.”
Kizzy stared at him blankly.
“She wasn’t able to have kids of her own. Her body was... broken in that way. She was trying to find a cure for that when she discovered the Enoch compound.”
“Are you saying...” Kizzy trailed off, trying to connect all the dots.
“She wishes she could be a mother,” he said. “And she can’t understand why you don’t want to. For the record I think she’s right in saying that you should have kids. But I also think you’re equally right in saying that you don’t want to. We can’t make you do anything.”
“So what should we do then?” Kizzy asked.
“We exhaust all the possibilities before we cross that bridge. We get to Uncle, we turn him on, ask him for help, and go from there.”
Diego came back in from outside. “You’re having a drink without me?”
“I’d never dream of it,” Leo said with a smile and went to get another glass.
Kizzy noticed Josephine come out from the lab, carrying a new laptop. Kizzy lowered the ice from her cheek. Josephine came into the kitchen and set the laptop on the table in front of her. “I’m not doing this to manipulate you.”
“Josephine...” Leo said. “Not the best way to start a conversation.”
“I don’t want her to think I’m being devious is all.” She turned back to Kizzy. “I just want to open your mind a little bit.”
“What is it?” Kizzy asked.
“It’s a neat little program,” Josephine said. “It combines DNA and it shows what the children of any two people would look like. You want to try it?”
Kizzy looked to Leo, unsure of what to say. At the very least she was curious.
Leo shrugged as if to say, ‘Why not?’
“Only if you want to,” Josephine said.
“Okay, I’ll try it,” Kizzy said.
“Are you sure?” Josephine asked.
“Yeah, why not?” Kizzy smiled the tiniest bit.
“You and Diego can go first,” she said.
Josephine had Kizzy press her finger to the touchpad of the laptop and it scanned for her DNA. Her double helix popped up onto the screen.
“That DNA,” Josephine said with wonder in her voice, shaking her head in disbelief. “Okay, now Diego.”
Diego did the same and their DNA strands were combined on the display and up popped the picture of a little girl, with a label reading five years old. Her face was half Diego’s, half her own. Kizzy stared at the girl with a sort of curious indifference. She didn’t feel a thing. It looked like a combination of the two of them, so what?
“Wow, that’s pretty cool,” Leo said, taking a sip of his drink.
“It is, isn’t it?” Josephine said with a tremendous grin. “And look, you can age the child too.”
She moved the touchpad and the child magically grew older before their eyes until she was finally about Kizzy’s age. Kizzy stared at the picture. It had her forehead and nose and Diego’s eyes, and skin tone directly in between them. It made Kizzy feel hollow inside, as if she wasn’t important at all in the grand scheme of things. As if she was just another cog in the machine of mankind. Just another stepping stone for her genes as they traveled through time.
Everyone else laughed at the picture. Kizzy had no idea why they were getting such a kick out o
f it. It was borderline terrifying for her. It was in that moment she realized that all three of them would be living forever, while she had an expiration date. The dread that she felt, that someday she would die and exist no more; they didn’t feel it. The feeling of being temporary and replaceable was hers and hers alone. And they were laughing at that reality in some way.
“What about you and Diego?” Kizzy asked to Josephine, eager to lose the dreadful feeling she had.
“But, I ...” Josephine said.
“Oh, come on just try it,” Diego said.
Josephine shrugged and pressed her finger to the touchpad. The program combined her and Diego’s DNA and a picture of a beautiful little child popped up onto the screen. Josephine looked at the picture with a twinkle in her eye, covered her chest, and sighed. “Such a cute kid.”
“Leo’s turn,” Diego said.
“This is stupid,” Leo said.
“You and Josephine next,” Diego said excitedly. Kizzy had rarely seen him this enthused over anything before.
“Yeah, do us,” Leo said sarcastically.
Josephine had Leo press his finger to the touchpad and had the program combine their DNA. The picture of a child popped up and Josephine just stared at it. Her eyes went misty and she didn’t say a word.
“Well, me and Kizzy is the only combo left,” Leo spoke up, apparently eager to break the silence. “Might as well get this over with. We both have Irish ears, so it doesn’t bode well for our kids.”
Josephine combined Kizzy’s and Leo’s DNA in the program, but the computer beeped an error message.
Josephine stared at the screen for a short moment, then nodded with a terse look on her face. She slammed the screen down. Everyone jumped away in shock. With both hands Josephine flung the laptop from the table, sending it crashing to its death on the hard stone tiles.
She marched back into her lab and slammed the door closed.
“Umm?” Leo said out loud. His eyes were opened as wide as they could go. “What was that all about?”
Kizzy was almost shaking, afraid from the sudden burst of rage. She was frozen, holding her glass tightly in her hands. It reminded her of her mother.
Diego was the only one who seemed cool with everything. “Should we go and ask her what’s up?”
“I guess that’s my job.” Leo said. He stood up and tiptoed over the broken computer pieces, to Josephine’s lab and knocked on the door. “Can I come in?”
There was no answer.
He tried to turn the knob. It was locked. “Jo can you let me in please... so I can know what the problem is?”
No answer.
“Now this is really annoying talking to myself. If you’re angry about something... God dammit let me in.”
He grabbed the door knob and rattled it. He turned to Kizzy and Diego, a crazed look in his eyes. “Why don’t you kids go and wait outside?”
Kizzy and Diego walked out onto the front porch.
“What do you think all that was about?” Diego asked.
Kizzy shrugged and rubbed her arms from the autumn’s bite. “She’s nuts.”
They heard the door to Josephine’s lab open. She had let Leo inside.
Kizzy looked to Diego. Secretly, she really wanted to know what the issue was. Diego smiled and they silently snuck back inside, as quietly as possible. As they approached they could hear Josephine screaming. Diego kept his distance, but Kizzy was a little braver and approached all the way to the door and put her ear up right against the wood.
“How could you?” Josephine yelled.
Leo answered, his voice wasn’t raised at all, he seemed confused. “I seriously don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“She’s your daughter, you dumbass.”
The floor seemed to fall out from beneath Kizzy’s feet. Leo was her father? How? He was the man from the black and white photograph, the person who was supposed to have all the answers for her? She hadn’t recognized him without the hair on his upper lip and the sunglasses and the fact that in real life he was in color and moving around.
Leo was quiet for a moment. “What?” he asked finally, as if he didn’t understand the statement at all.
“You slept with your ex again.”
“She’s can’t be my daughter.”
“Well, science disagrees with you.”
“Science can be wrong sometimes,” Leo said.
“When did it happen?” Josephine asked.
“Look, it was so long ago.”
“You think that makes it alright?”
“No, it makes it hard to remember.”
“I never so much as flirted with another guy all the time we were together,” Josephine said.
“Is that my fault?”
She let out a loud fake laugh and marched towards the door. Kizzy scurried back into the hallway. The door swung open and Josephine stormed out. She either didn’t notice them, or was just too angry to care, and went straight out the front door. Leo came walking out, his steps slow and deliberate, his hands shoved into his pockets. He glanced at Kizzy.
“Hey,” he said.
Kizzy’s heart skipped. Was this the moment she had been waiting for nearly all her life? The moment where she would lose the emptiness that existed within her?
“Why don’t you go make sure she’s alright. Maybe she needs another woman to talk to.”
“But...”
“Please,” Leo said.
Kizzy stood there for a second, deflated. Finally, she nodded and walked out after Josephine. As she went her brain swirled. She tried to imagine Leo and her mother together; cooking together, eating together, sitting in silence together the way she and Diego had during all those days in the wilderness.
How had it happened, her coming into the world? How could Leo have not known about her? How on earth could you possibly have a child and not know about them? Perhaps it was something she would never understand.
What made it all so strange was that at one point Leo and her mother had chosen to be together and then decided to leave each other. That blew her mind. She and Diego were together by happenstance and were happy. But maybe that was why. Perhaps a choice you make can become sour in your rearview mirror. While luck, good or bad, you just have to live with. Maybe that was why Leo and her mother seemed so different, so unlike Leo and Josephine who seemed to belong to each other, before all this came to light anyway.
Josephine was sitting out in the back seat of the busted cop car, looking down at her lap. Kizzy approached and opened the door on the other side. Josephine was crying, the tears rolling down her cheeks. Her lips were red, her eyes were swollen. She glanced up at Kizzy, a look of shame on her face, then looked back down. Kizzy climbed into the back seat and put a hand on the crying woman’s shoulder.
They sat in silence for a long time and Kizzy began to wonder how long she should keep her hand up there on Josephine’s shoulder. Eventually she removed it and sat with her hands cupped in her lap.
Josephine sat completely silent. What she was thinking? She must have had a whole long story to sort out in her head, like a pile of tangled string. A strand of a truth here and ball of lies there. Each disassembled piece brought the truth closer to light. Finally, after a long while, she spoke.
“He was the officer assigned to protect me,” she said, “when the Enoch Pill was in production. Suddenly, I was this super important person, the type of person that needed to be protected and he came here to the house and stayed in the guest room. He told me that he was divorced, or getting a divorce. And we started to develop feelings for each other. I started looking forward to all the shifts that he’d be assigned here. We’d watch movies every night. And he’d always let me choose. At the end he always seemed to know what the hidden meaning of the film was. I could only ever see it for exactly what it was, exactly what they said. But he seemed to know what they were trying to say. He seemed to always know what people were trying to say.”
Over the gravel and into the hou
se, Leo sat at the counter confessing out loud. He couldn’t care less if anyone was there to hear it. It just so happened that Diego was there to take it all in.
“My marriage was on the rocks,” he said as he swirled his drink. “We were on a long break. A real long break. So long that the word ‘break’ didn’t even really begin to cover it. And Jo tells me she needs time to focus on her work and that she can’t handle a relationship, especially with the pill coming out. I assumed, stupidly, that it was an end to what we had... so I decided to give it one more shot with my ex-wife. And apparently my shot got past the goalie.”
“What does that mean?” Diego asked.
Leo was surprised that anyone was even listening. He furrowed his brow and tried to think of a good translation. “It means I got lucky in a very unlucky way.”
Outside Josephine continued. “You can’t trust men. No matter what they say, and trust me they’ll say whatever it is you want to hear, but at the end of the day they just do what they want.”
“We always screw up,” Leo said. “Don’t forget that Diego. Write it down somewhere for yourself. So you can look at it and remember what screw-up potential you have. We try and try and try, but in the end...” He imitated an explosion with his hands.
“He told me he had just gone home to pick up some things,” Josephine said. “To end it for good.”
“No one would have ever known the difference,” Leo said. He sighed and shook his head. “And 99 times out of 100 that would’ve been the case. But this one time... and now there’s this walking, talking evidence that ruins everything. It has to be the unluckiest thing to ever happen to anybody.”
“I don’t know if I can ever forgive him,” Josephine said, but then she shook her head and looked at Kizzy with a teary smile. “But in some messed-up way if he hadn’t made that mistake there would have never been you Kizzy, and without you there would be no hope. Goodness, that was like the luckiest thing that’s ever happened to the human race.”
Kizzy thought that was a bit of an overstatement. Josephine had been the one who had made the mistake biggest mistake in human history. Kizzy was just a mistake.
“I’m sorry I put so much pressure on you,” Josephine said. “I was just so relieved that the pressure wasn’t completely on me anymore. You felt the weight of the world for a few weeks. I’ve had it for almost twenty years.”
The Enoch Plague (The Enoch Pill Book 2) Page 15