It must’ve been the right choice, because not even a month had passed before I met Jonas, the divorced historian. We were at the house of a mutual friend and he sat next to me on a couch, his leg barely brushing against mine. He was cheerful, nothing like the men I’d always fallen for in New York. We talked, and my skin felt elastic, I saw the human borders of his eyes, and it totally floored me because for the first time in my life I found myself wanting a child.
The desire dissipated almost immediately, but I accepted a date with him in the hopes of re-upping. We saw a special screening of the original Blade Runner in the old theater at Coolidge Corner, and he said all sorts of things I’d been on the verge of thinking myself. There it was again, that baby-hungry high. I felt an almost cultish desire to fuck him, which I did, the moment we got back to my place. Afterwards I looked in the bathroom mirror and almost cried. I felt as though I’d passed a life-saving test: I was not a sterile replicant, but a real irrational human after all.
I was lucky, because he turned out to be reliable, too. He drank a regular amount, just enough to give the appearance of being a regular man. He followed the news and showed up to work. I could see him, quite clearly, as a child, and this was something I liked very much. His one flaw might’ve been the volume of his voice, which was permanently set for the lecture hall. But most of the time, I hardly noticed that, because I liked the things he said.
Within six months I’d begun taking letrozole for ovulation induction, and he’d moved in and started a garden in my yard. From the kitchen I’d watch him hulk around in rubber clogs, transplanting tiny cabbages and kales, and it was hard not to think about the Briarwood groundskeepers I used to love, those strong men in mesh caps with color block t-shirt tans.
Not long after that we visited my parents. The Virginia Tech game was on, and we all watched it together, as we always had, and secretly still did, Mom on the chaise in her Hokie sweatshirt, Dad and Jonas in separate chairs, and me on the floor in various cow-faces and half-heroes to open up my hips. When it was over, Mom and Jonas went outside to check on some things in the garden, and it was at this point, with my right hip joint dropping audibly in figure-four, that Dad told me Mom was sick. Neither of them had the risk-factor gene, and even so, the moment he said it, I knew her condition was neurodegenerative. She often called me twice a day. She’d been repeating herself for years. I sat upright. Once I’d absorbed the news and stopped hating myself, I turned stone-cold scientific, interrogating him on every detail, stopping only when Mom came in, still wearing her bright yellow gloves.
“Mom,” I cried, rushing to her.
“I know,” she said, receiving the hug. “I know. Now where did Jonas go with that watering can?”
We wasted no more time. We went back to the fertility clinic the following week, to kick our treatments into the highest gear. Since then, it’s been a year, three transfers, and still, still, no baby. Which seems to be the punishment I deserve for not wanting one when I was young.
Later that morning, I made the guest bed while Mom sat in the revolving desk chair, preparing her first dose of insulin. She loaded the cartridge into her nasal gun and fired it, straight to her brain.
“Did you get it all?” I asked, hugging a pillow against my breasts. She liked the little black device, which reminded her of taking drugs for fun. She said it made her feel young again. Though she said dementia did that, too.
“Yes,” she said, turning the chair toward me. Her face was a little stunned, at that uncanny threshold between expressions. Not that different from a drunk face. Not that different from a baby’s face either. But then it resolved into the specific face that I now recognized as hers.
I perched on the edge of the bed. “I’ve been meaning to ask…do you remember Mitch Wilkins, from Monacan? The NFL star?”
Excitement washed over her, but then she caught herself mid-smile. “Oh no,” she said. “Don’t tell me you have his brain.”
“I’m afraid we do.”
“Poor boy.” She gripped the nasal gun in her hand.
“He had a heart attack at his dealership, a few months ago. One of his employees came in, they said he was an old friend, and apparently he was joking around for a while before he even realized. He thought Mitch was just napping at his desk.”
There was a pause while my mother gathered whatever parts of herself were necessary for a response. “You kissed him,” she finally said.
“Me? Oh no, he was twenty years older.”
“You did. You loved older boys.”
At this point, I had to marshal my patience. “We cheered for him on TV,” I told her. “But I never met him. I only bring him up because I thought you might have some stories. Didn’t you have him in class?”
My mother gave a private laugh. “He worked the grounds crew and he would come around and you would put on your scissor shorts and flirt.”
When I was fourteen or fifteen, I did cut the legs off my old jeans and strut around in front of the college-aged groundskeepers. It was one her favorite stories about me. But Mitch was obviously not on the crew, nor did I ever succeed in getting one of them to kiss me. I dropped y’all and ain’t like everyone else, but I read science fiction and refused to eat meat, which didn’t make me very popular in Monacan. That was something Mom liked to forget, even before she starting losing her memory. To her, I had always been extraordinary. No wonder we became best friends.
“Not scissor shorts,” I said. “Cut-offs.”
“What?”
“The shorts. We called them cut-offs.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her face went to its uncanny place again.
“The shorts, Mom. I used to wear cut-off shorts. But only on campus, where it was safe. I never had the courage to wear them anywhere else.”
Now she was irritated. “Stop changing the subject,” she insisted, as though she’d already commanded me once. “It’s hard to follow and I don’t appreciate it.”
“It’s the same subject, Mom—”
I stopped only when her face grew furious, like a hastily thwarted child’s. She turned away, and with a wild pang, I wanted a do-over, and not just of this conversation. I wanted, in a way, to be pregnant with my unruined mom. I’d give again what I’d already given at the clinic: an oval of my most immortal skin, to be minced, and pumped with proteins, and reprogrammed into viable eggs. We’d fertilize them, we’d run all the tests, we’d make sure she got the best-chance brain. And then they’d implant her, and then she’d be born. She’d begin memory therapies long before symptoms presented, with mindfulness training from a very young age. This time she’d actually get to use her Ph.D., finding fulfillment as a professor like my dad. They’d teach somewhere else—not Virginia—so she wouldn’t have to drink through her prime. She’d keep her mind, she’d age in a normal way, and it would all unfold with a tactile slowness, this corrected, second-chance life. This mother who was actually my child and therefore not my mother at all.
A few days before my parents arrived we’d had the final blood test and scan to make sure my endometrium was ready. It looked like a tulip resting on its side, which meant it was thick enough, and the transfer could proceed, so we treated ourselves to a fancy dinner in Cambridge, at a new restaurant we’d read about online. Our meal was comprised entirely of small bites. One dish was literally just an egg in an oyster shell.
“To number four,” Jonas said, which was how we referred to the embryo we’d selected from our surviving nine, in effect our fourth-round child. The first had perfect grades, but failed to implant immediately, your classic first-round bust. The second stopped growing within weeks. The third was a replay of the first.
“I’m not feeling good about it,” I told him.
“You never feel good about it.”
“That’s because it’s never worked. And the embryo quality decreases every time.”
“But one day it will work,” he said, uninterested in facts. “Irrespective of h
ow you feel. We’re manipulating things a bit, so it makes sense that it’s all been a bit fragile. But we’ve talked about this; it’s a numbers game. Eventually, the conditions will be right.”
“Actually, studies have shown that reduced stress and positive visualizations can help.”
“That’s what I’m saying, you have to stop feeling bad about it.”
I poked his airspace with my tiny fork. “That’s not what you said. You said feeling good won’t make a difference.”
He laughed. “I know, I know. But what I meant was—well, okay, I did that wrong. Maybe what I meant was that you never feel good about it, and maybe that’s a problem.”
“That is literally the opposite of what you said. It’s also not very nice.”
Instead of talking, he slurped his oyster egg, a choice I found uncomfortable, because Jonas loved to talk. He almost never stopped, not even when he was eating.
“What?” I asked. “What?”
He frowned, and the lines that had been imprinting themselves on his forehead grew deeper. I was making him old. Every day with me was aging him.
“You just make it so hard,” he said, and I felt a perverse flicker of satisfaction, because at least we were on the same page about that.
“Maybe this will be our silver lining,” I said, suddenly annoyed with him for knowing me so well. “We tried. So when we fail, people will feel bad for us, instead of thinking we’re child-loathing monsters.”
“Who would think that? Not any of our friends.”
He was so damn naive. You’d think he studied some forgotten period of history in which everyone had enough protein, and no one suffered pain of any kind, and civilization meant emotional fulfillment for every creature, not just Ivy League academics. But he didn’t! He studied American capitalism.
“Maybe it’s for the best,” I said. “You see how stressed I am now? Imagine me with a baby! I’d be miserable. And the kid would hate me, too. Better to save us all that pain.”
“That’s ridiculous and you know it. For one thing, you’re wonderful. Number two, in your scenario, there isn’t even a kid to be saved. And c), the entire argument is specious, because who ever promised you a life without pain?”
“Be quiet. You’re mixing your terms.”
“When have I ever been quiet?” he boomed, triumphantly. People looked over from their boring dates, forcing me to shush him through my laughter.
He mimed a zipper across his lips, and I found myself wanting to kiss him. He really hadn’t done anything so terrible. He’d only believed something would happen that hadn’t.
“I just hate to see you tearing yourself down,” he said, after we’d grown calm. It was one of his favorite laments: the self-sabotage of intelligent women. “You’re a goddamn titan, and instead of using your strength to endure this, you’re using it against yourself. Do you think your mom did that? No fucking way. She didn’t have stem cells to manipulate or even IVF and she kept trying until she got you.”
“This is not about me or my mother. It’s about my toxic body.”
I had him there. Or so I thought. “You’re relentless,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re completely determined to fail.”
“Well, lucky me, it’s working!”
“All right,” he said. “Maybe we should talk about your mother instead.”
It was a cheap move and he knew it. But Jonas’s bullishness was even more relentless than my despair. He barreled on, delightedly. “Look, obviously you know more about this than I do, but I’ve been reading about her treatment and the early studies are pretty optimistic. I think we’re going to see some changes in her. I think she’ll get to meet her grandkid.”
I looked at my egg, which was gelatinous and perfectly filled its shell, a marvel, really, of cooking chemistry. You could put an egg in anything and it would spread as far as it could. If the vessel was small, like this one, it would cling. It took me a moment to realize I was unhappy with this idea, and with everything to do with eggs.
“Easy for you to say,” I told him. “Your body’s not the one on trial here. Your parents are obscenely healthy and young. Of course you think everything’s going to be fine—because you’re looking at all the wrong evidence!”
“Oh no,” he said. “Don’t cry. No, baby, I’m sorry, don’t cry.”
Saturday afternoon I got called into the lab to receive a fresh donation. As I logged it, I kept thinking about my mother’s reaction to the news about Mitch. However sad it had made her, and however mixed her memory of who he was, at least his name had elicited some emotion.
In a way it was easier to be at the lab than it was to be with her, so before I left I spent some time at the microscope. My favorite slides in the Wilkins case number came from the amygdala. Stained purple, they featured only mild pathology: a single tau tangle lounging in the northwest corner like a wayward star on a national flag. Against my better judgment, I deactivated the locater on one and put it in a slide mailer. I thought Mom might like to see.
Sunday we awoke to a distraction. It had snowed overnight—in May. This was happening more often in recent years, especially in Boston: iced lilacs, graduation caps tossed with flurries. But rarely did it stick.
We decided not to let a few inches spoil our plans, which involved a walk in the Mount Auburn Cemetery. Mom wore my old parka and her braid under earmuffs; if it weren’t for her grays she would’ve looked like a teenager. Dad stayed back to write, probably relieved to have some time to himself. We’d be fine, we assured him, we’d be back in a couple of hours.
We visited the abolitionists, Harriet Jacobs, Julia Ward Howe, and a staggering number of stones labeled “Mother” and “Father.” More than anyone else, more than senators, more than slaves or soldiers, even, this was who’d died in the nineteenth century: people’s parents. It was heartbreaking. Even more heartbreaking was how often “Baby” died, too.
At Howe’s stone, Mom began to hum “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” She was having a good day, her gray-blue eyes open wide, as though sampled from the post-storm sky.
We also saw newer graves. As recently as 2005, someone had buried the poet Robert Creeley. Look at the light of this hour, read the back of Creeley’s modest headstone, each word on its own little line. We looked. It was noon, but the sun held itself back behind the trees, shyly, not wanting to overwhelm us.
“I suppose the meaning changes,” Mom said. “Depending on the day.”
After our cemetery walk, we headed to the old Middle Eastern bakery. It was crowded inside, with only a few places to sit, but we persevered, because I’d promised Mom rose-flavored cakes.
“Sit here,” I told her, pointing to a little crevice between the spice racks where the bakery had stashed an extra stool.
“Such a boss, such a boss.” Even on her good days, she had taken to repeating herself like a sportscaster, or the automated voice on trains. But she sat when I handed her my backpack. For so many years, she’d been the one to boss me, to sit me down with a bag or a pad of paper or a set of instructions for not moving while she went about her alluring and important adult life. I’d resented her then, semi-consciously, wondering why I couldn’t be the one in charge and have her defer to me. What we were experiencing now was not quite the reversal I’d imagined, but that was mostly because she had become a new person, no longer the mom who’d bossed me. We’d each lost something and we’d each gained something, but nothing had been reversed.
I was only gone for a moment to give Jonas our order, and when I returned, she was not sitting where I’d left her. I had so expected to see her inquisitive new-person face, her braid pushed up in the hood of my parka, that I couldn’t quite believe she wasn’t there. I looked at the empty stool, and on the ground beside it, my backpack, somewhat longer than necessary.
“Jonas,” I said, securing the backpack to my shoulders. “Jonas.”
We had never lost her before. But I realized now that I’d been waiting for it to happen. It had al
most been a fantasy of mine. And now that the inevitable had occurred, the world recalibrated itself. It was as though losing Mom was already our constant problem, and I saw how foolish my father had been to resist tagging her just because he had an ethical objection to treating her like a cow.
We ran out into the street, looking everywhere, and with each passing instant saw more of the map, but no flashing dot that was Mom. She had her untraceable magic, and we, mere mortals, were screwed. We would have to find her on foot.
We crisscrossed the neighborhood like children playing police. I checked yard after yard, popping through alleys, most of the time emerging to find no one, not even a resident who might’ve seen which way she’d gone. More often, I found Jonas instead.
“Maybe she went back to the cemetery!” I called after we intersected, clueless, for the third or fourth time. The afternoon cold was settling into my body and my toes were fusing into blocks.
“We can try,” he told me. I’d never seen him so far from a laugh.
We took off together, the backpack bouncing on my shoulders, my fused feet landing sturdily on the road. Inside the cemetery gates, paths struck out in every direction—Clematis, Asclepias, Columbine—tormenting me with their poisonous suggestions. It was a labyrinth; the whole point was that you never got out. But our feet remembered the way and we soon found Mom at Robert Creeley’s grave, just standing there, looking toward the sun, which was now a little further along on its course.
Look
at
the
light
A Short Move Page 30