“How many have you known, Gabriel? How many people just disappeared overnight? Too many to count?”
Gabriel nodded and continued to stare through the floor.
“They are all at the bottom of the ocean somewhere. Some of them were lucky enough to be dead before they were pushed overboard into those frigid, dark waters, their hands and feet bound, their ankles tethered to sandbags.”
“Stop! Enough! I get it!”
“Your own mother and father…”
Gabriel’s head shot up and his face was fierce. He was at once furious and horrified, but remained paralyzed in the moment, unable to do anything but listen to the old man as he continued to speak. Lamar’s words pulled at his stomach from the inside. His heart was racing.
“Your mother was put on a boat about fifteen years back, just after she filled her quota with your youngest brother. They never make it long after the last child is out, if they make it that far at all. Your father was about five yea….”
Gabriel sprang out from the divot he had sunk into and clasped Lamar by the throat, hovering above him and pushing him down into the overstuffed white pillows. His hot breath pushed rapidly through clenched teeth, and it seemed to Lamar that at any moment this young man might learn to breathe fire.
“That’s… enough… son…” Lamar struggled to push the words from his lips as his visage blended from red into violet.
“I’m not your son!”
As these words left Gabriel’s mouth and then entered his own ears, he suddenly remembered himself. Focus returned to his eyes, and then shame. The tension in his face eased, although large veins still throbbed between his eyebrows and his hairline. His grip lightened, and then ceased altogether. Without a word, he backed himself down into his seat on the sofa and tried to collect himself.
Lamar pulled himself back up, and they both sat in silence as he regained his breath, the color draining slowly back out of his face as the minutes passed. When he felt once more up to the task, he spoke.
“No. No, you’re not my son. But you are the closest I ever came.”
“Lamar… I’m… I don’t know what I…”
“Don’t. Don’t apologize. I knew I was working you up. I wanted to see you that way, to see the passion. You must learn to let it fuel you, but don’t give it the wheel. I may have just witnessed the most human instant of your life, Gabriel; it was certainly the most humanity I’ve seen in decades.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No. You don’t get to be sorry. We don’t have time for sorry. You felt it. You felt the loss that you bear. Strange that the things we lack should come to place the heaviest weight upon our backs.
“Of course, you have always known that you had a mother and a father, that at some point two people came together and created you. But to hear about them, and to hear that you have two younger brothers, to know of the family you have lost… that changes things. It matters.
“We have done a truly morbid thing, Gabriel. We have willfully created a nation of orphans. Every man you see on the street is a question mark to himself, carrying the name of a city he has never been to. Every notion he has about who he is, every fleeting glimmer of his self-image, is without foundation. Every man feels it missing. It matters.
“You’re told that it shouldn’t matter, but it matters.
“And it mattered to Eli.
“Cecil is his son.”
Chapter Twelve
Claire wasn’t sure what she thought of the snow.
Had she been asked the previous winter, she probably would have said that she enjoyed a bit of fresh snow in the winter, that the way it clung in soft blankets to the limbs and needles of the pine trees reminded her of the fairytales that were read to her when she was a Seed in the Building Blocks program.
She might have said that she could smell it, though she would not have been able to say what it smelled like.
She might have basked in the stillness of it.
The thought had once struck her in the irrationality of her youth… somewhere between her sweet gullibility as a Sapling and the skeptical pragmatism of her adolescence… that Nature would occasionally grow weary of the scuttling sounds of all its critters going about their day, and would send a layer of cold white crystal to dampen the noise and to muffle the echoes.
And Nature, she had been certain, would have given instructions to all of its winged creatures, that they were only to sing their songs from far away perches, somewhere off beyond the wind.
Mother Nature. That was the name often used by her teachers, and her caretakers before them. Mother. Claire had rejected the title before even growing old enough to give it careful consideration. Nature was not maternal. Nor was it paternal, for that matter. It was just there. Everywhere. And it paid no mind to these silly humans. It certainly never thought of them as its children, if it ever thought at all.
‘Mother’ was a title of possession. It was a desperate wish, the vain desire to bring nature into the family. It would seem that at some point mankind had decided that Nature would be less terrifying if it were treated as a woman… a loving, gentle caregiver. It wasn’t. If someone were to be caught alone with their mother overnight, they would likely not freeze to death in her arms. Nature was not this protective.
It was an immense source of creation; this much was undeniable. But it was also an awe-inspiring cause of destruction that took on countless forms. Its winds would push trees to the ground and expose their roots to the frozen winter air. Its lightning would ignite vast fires in the dry summer timber. Its spring floods would drown the very crops it had seen fit to sow in the autumn prior.
Nature cast each of the organisms of its conception out into the world and then turned its back in indifference as it moved on to its next endeavour.
Perhaps I won’t be so different from Nature after all, thought Claire now. Maybe Nature is a woman, a mother… and she’s a cold bitch.
On this particular day Nature was largely still, looming lazily in the soft cold breeze that swept up off of the harbor’s dark still waters.
It had snowed steadily throughout Claire’s shift that day. She had watched from her window as the large globs of white floated down to rest upon the sleeping rhododendrons outside her office. By now the snow had gathered on the path before her, which had been swept clean only this morning and would be swept once more later this evening.
There were about four or five centimeters of dry powder underfoot, and while this was certainly not enough to impede her movement in any sense, it was enough to make groaning, crunching sounds beneath her boots as she made her way across the park terrace and into a small shopping district.
This crunching sound made her feel heavy, and the insulated silence that otherwise surrounded her served only to amplify the sound of each step she took. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. She felt like a giant. Crunch. Crunch. A clumsy, round-bellied giant, with frightened villagers scurrying about underfoot. Crunch.
Claire smiled to herself. She enjoyed it when her brain would decide on these morbid little detours, and so she went on trampling townsfolk beneath the soles of her winter boots until she had exited the park and was standing before the entrance to a small clothing shop. As she neared the door, a voice caught her from behind.
“Claire? Is that you?”
She turned.
“It is you! You look wonderful, just as I remember!”
It took only a moment to identify this man beneath the heavy hood of his dark grey jacket, despite the many years that had come between the two of them.
“Terrence? Wow! What are you… How long has it been? How are you doing?”
“I’m doing great! Just working and… well, not much.”
“Yeah, I read your articles any time they pop up. I love your writing.”
“You do? That’s nice of you to say.” He shrugged. “Personally, I would love the chance to write something a bit more entertaining… some historical fiction, maybe. But, you know. They tell me to
write the news and so I just write the news.”
“Well, you do a good job of it. And I’m sure any novel you happen to write would be fantastic.” She was smiling without forcing it, which was a rarity for her when she was speaking with anyone besides Owen.
“Ahh. Flattery. Keep it coming.”
They both laughed, and Terrence was quick to offer another bit of small talk to keep that laugh from being the end of their conversation.
“So how long has it been now? Ten years? Maybe more?”
“Definitely a bit more,” she answered. “I don’t think we’ve spoken since the last split back in the academy. I didn’t even know that they had put you into journalism until I started to see your work pop up on my tablet in the mornings. I really do like your writing, Terrence.”
“Thanks. Thank you, really. And what about you? They have you doing anything exciting?”
“Hardly,” she scoffed. “Programming… for the military. Not as exciting as it sounds.”
“That’s funny. Doesn’t sound exciting at all.”
They both laughed again, and now Terrence looked up at the storefront before them.
“Hey, isn’t this maternity-wear? You’re not… are you?”
Claire dragged the zipper down the front of her thick winter coat and pulled it open. Her belly showed large and round beneath a thick blue sweater.
“No way! You are! That’s amazing!” Terrence did his best to make his surprise sound as positive as he could, but Claire still picked up on the wistful edge in his voice. His eyes were locked on her swollen midsection and he seemed suddenly quite distant. Claire zipped her coat back up.
Terrence realized he had been silently transfixed on her, and he scrambled now to move the conversation forward once again.
“So… is it anyone I know?”
“No. I would be very surprised, anyway. He’s army. Or he was. Anyway, it’s his first time in this area. He’s good for me, though. I guess the Program knows what they’re doing after all.” Claire suddenly felt that her smile required some effort as she spoke to Terrence of another man, and so she felt it best to let it slip away from her.
“The Program… Claire Venezia… who would have thought? Well, I’m happy for you, Claire. I’m just up in Voss, about an hour from here, but I’m in town a few times a month for editorial meetings and the like. Now that I know you’re down here, maybe we could grab some lunch some time?.”
“I’d like that,” she returned. “Look me up whenever you have an available day.”
“I will. Definitely. Goodbye, Claire.”
“Goodbye, Terrence.” She turned and headed into the shop, wondering to herself at how the word “definitely” could sound so much like “never.” Terrence continued on his way down the sidewalk and turned at the next corner.
A small brass bell rang from the top of the door as she entered. She looked up at it, smiled, and reached up to jingle it once more with her finger. It’s the little things, she thought. This little bell was a time capsule, holding in stasis an era that had passed out of the world well before she had come into it. She wondered if she might not have felt more at home in that era. She jingled it again and heard a soft chuckling back behind a clothing rack.
She turned toward the laughter and saw an older woman, maybe sixty, grinning widely at her. Claire felt a bit silly and smiled an embarrassed smile.
“You remind me of my cat with his toys,” the woman said in a bright voice.
Claire laughed.
“So you keep a cat? That’s rare these days. Did you have to apply?”
The woman nodded. “And it was a fair wait, but he’s worth it,” said the woman. Her hair was short and light grey and tightly curled. There was just enough of it to hide the stems of her glasses where they rested over her ears. “His name is Arthur, after my partner… before he was sent off on his R’n’R.”
“Mmmm.” Claire hummed lightly, sadly, unaware that she was doing so.
“Well anyway,” the woman’s voice snapped suddenly upright and she was smiling brightly. “My name is Heidi. What can I help you with today? Sizing up?”
“That’s it.” Claire found herself mirroring Heidi’s chipper cadence. It was a way of speaking that seemed a universal habit for anyone trying to move past any mention of a Reassign and Relocate.
“I need new pants and tops, or else this thing’s not gonna have any more room to grow.”
“Well, we can’t have that. Those pants look to be mediums?”
Claire nodded.
“Well then large it shall be. Any color in mind?”
“Anything but pink or purple.”
“Ha ha. Ok then. I’ll just be in the back for a minute to dig up some options.”
Claire nodded again and turned to the racks on the wall nearest her. She picked and prodded at a few sweaters. Suddenly it hit her. A sharp pain in her abdomen. It relented for a few seconds and then came back in a fury. She doubled over and caught her knees with her hands, her face already filling with a sudden heat. A million small white dots filled her field of vision and her head swam. Something wet was sticking to her from the seat of her pants and working down the inside of her leg. A third wave of agony filled her.
Claire wailed through the pain, and Heidi popped promptly out of the back room to see what the commotion was. She grabbed a stool and rushed it over to Claire, who was bent down with a beet-red face, a sticky string of saliva hanging from her lip.
“Oh oh! I’ll call for help! You sit down if you can!”
Heidi made for the phone behind the counter in the back of the store.
Claire reached down past the stretchy waistband of her pants and came up with dark red fingers, and then flopped backwards and down into the chair that Heidi had placed behind her.
The pain wouldn’t relent, and everything that Claire could see and smell and hear merged into one boundless white mess of static and nothing and everything.
***
“I’m here. I’m here. Everything is fine. Just fine.” Owen was speaking with an inflection that was absolutely foreign to Claire. She had never heard his voice waver this softly, and she realized that he was holding her left hand and squeezing it firmly in pulses.
“Everything is OK. Everything is just fine.” It sounded like some superstitious mantra, some wishful repetition.
“Could you…” she stopped to clear her throat and tried again. Her voice was weak and airy. “Could you stop saying that, please?”
Owen smiled and she could hear it in his voice. “Sure. Of course. But everything is… well, the doctors all seem a bit confused.”
Claire pulled her eyes open and placed her free hand over her swollen belly.
“The baby… is it…?”
“She’s just fine, from what they can tell. They’ve done an ultrasound and some blood work. They were sure when you came in… from the way you were when they found you, and from what that old lady said happened before you passed out… they were sure that it was a miscarriage. But it wasn’t. The heart sounds fine. I was here when they did that bit. Sounded like the inside of a washing machine to me, but the docs said it was fine.” Owen’s tone returned closer and closer to normal the more he spoke.
“You said ‘she’.” She smiled softly. “It’s a little girl in here.” She was gently stroking the area next to her navel with her fingertips.
“Yeah! Ha! I guess they slipped up. They normally don’t let you know, do they? I guess they think you’ll get attached enough without knowing. Don’t wanna add to it any.” Owen was looking at his feet when he said this last part, and even though he didn’t see her cringe as the words came out, he immediately wished it were within his power to un-say them. He kept his mouth moving in the hope that he hadn’t said anything too stupid.
“But yeah, the docs, they don’t know. I heard ‘em arguing in the hallway, throwing together all sorts of words I’ve never heard before. ‘Partial placental abruption’ and ‘preterm labor’ and ‘ectopic so
mething-or-other’… and apparently nothing seems to fit the bill quite right, but they all agree that you should stay in bed, for at least a w…”
“I want to keep her!” Claire nearly shouted it out, and when Owen looked up her eyes were flooded with tears. She looked damaged, and he had no idea what he could even begin to say to scare that broken look from her face. She sniffled and snorted a few times and blurted, a little softer this time, “I want to keep her! I know I can’t, and I know the Program says that I should have expected this. I know. I mean, I read the fucking literature! So I understand that it’s not logical, but I want my little girl!”
Owen squeezed her hand.
“Claire… it’s absolutely logical. It’s biological. But…”
Owen searched for the right words, but quickly came to terms with the fact that there were no right words. There was only the repetition of the things they’d been told throughout the course of their lives.
“…but it’s just not in the cards. I’ve been to other lands, places where families still get to be families. They have something. They do. They would kill for each other. Die for each other. But isn’t that exactly the point? These people act without reason, and often against their own best interests. To help each other. To save each other. They jump in front of the knife for each other…”
The room fell silent for a time. Owen feigned staring out the window, even though it was dark outside and the only view the window offered was the reflection of this over-lit hospital room. He turned back to Claire and continued.
“There is some nobility in it, in the personal sacrifice of a mother for her child, a brother for his sister. But the result is a giant fucking mess. Those societies are hopelessly torn, and unable to work together on a large scale. When we show up to… well, there isn’t really that much work for us to do.
“Families cling together in little clumps and are easy to dissolve, one by one. Every man’s child is a weapon against him. If you want to leverage a father, you threaten his child. This is how you break allegiances to any sort of organized resistance, because at the end of the day each man is more loyal to his own blood ties than he his to himself, let alone to the other men he has made commitments to.
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