Vindicated, maybe, William felt standing above the muddy grave of his child. Now, Eugene pronounces a hard “G” with a softer “J” and when Mrs. Rose whispers to claim it as evidence of her noble endeavor William wants nothing more than to correct the child. Not for the sake of salvation but to prove that salvation doesn’t exist as defined by Mrs. Rose.
Eugene tries the “U” and “E” as separate sounds; the confusion is more genuine than any structure.
They arrive at a third-grade classroom, a large room at the end of a moist hallway. A plaque on the wall labels the room 3-B. William makes note of the absent Braille at which Mrs. Rose laughs like his comment was an intentional joke. “Blind,” she says. “We’ve dealt with worse I suppose.”
The classroom is silent. Children fill the room in a strict grid of desks stained the color of dirt. Eugene runs to a set of two outlying desks at the back of the room, separate from the community, pushed against a back wall, veiled by a glare. One desk dominates the others, and as William finds out—being squeezed from the back against the doorjamb—is necessarily so in order to accommodate Shelia.
“Excuse me,” she says. “Is everything alright?” Not a genuine muscle to the frown. She wipes the tears from William’s cheek with her thumb scratching him with her fingernail. “Sorry.”
His skin bleeds, though he takes no offense; by this time her bird is roughage for stray dogs.
Eugene perks at his desk when she walks. Mrs. Rose leads William away, to a teacher ’s desk at the front of the room—“I’m substituting today,” she tells the boy—and pulls a student chair close, motioning for him to sit. He bites his knees to fit.
“The Turners,” Mrs. Rose says and throws a short stack of paper to what’s left of William’s lap. “Janice and Anthony.”
Birthdates, eye and hair color, an address, hobbies, grocery lists, pet names, favorite colors, psychological evaluations including fears, fear of spiders, fear of confined spaces, fear of dirt—and this one is circled heavily—all in Mrs. Rose’s hand.
“Not a particularly happy couple,” she says. “But smart.” Page two is collaged in photographs. Mug shots, amateur shots of a house and the surrounding landscape, random roads, each with a caption typed too small for his distant eyes to read.
“They have a problem, William,” and she drinks coffee from a ‘World’s Greatest Teacher ’ mug. “And we are going to fix it.”
Page three is a sonogram, barely discernible as a child. William stares through it like a Rorschach test.
“It’s rare,” she says “to see one of those. The parents don’t usually care enough to get one, but every now and then, even this late in the game, they haven’t yet made up their minds.” She takes the photograph and places it in front of her on the desk.
“This one, though. Shouldn’t have wasted the paper.”
William begins to speak, but Mrs. Rose hushes him with a finger. A small boy has approached her desk holding a sheet of paper. The boy asks questions, points to empty blanks, makes guesses, and Mrs. Rose responds with encouraging words until he walks away. “That’s a good kid,” she says. “That one is on his way.”
“Why Eugene?” The child perks at his name and turns to the front of the classroom. William drops to a whisper. “Why kill Eugene?” He waves at the boy, who grins with teeth so crooked they alter the shape of his face.
“You know him,” she says. “I’ve seen you two together. He can play, run, form coherent sentences on good days, but any more than that and he’s full. You know this, William.”
He is a good kid, William wants to say, but he knows she puts no stock into just good.
“He’s faulty,” she says. “I’ve been doing what I do for a long time. I’ve seen the progress, and I’ve see the stalemates.”
“He’s a grown child.” William’s voice carries through the room. Children turn, stare, until Mrs. Rose waves them back around.
“And it pains to see him still slipping through.”
“But he is alive.” The sun heats the room, the air swelling. “Doesn’t that mean that he is supposed to be here?” Mrs. Rose’s logic. Now William’s logic.
“The system is faulty,” she says. “We are human and still evolving. It’s easier when they are younger, and I do wish the mother would have made this decision eight years ago, but she didn’t. It took a lot of convincing, a lot of messages. No help from you.”
The Fury Man. The Family Secrets. The Karma Debates. Neighborhoods of messages, now burned, once the interrupted desires to kill.
“What about miscarriages?” William asks. “What about natural selection?”
“If only,” she says. “Believe me, the numbers are on our side. More than anyone realizes. Most miscarriages go undetected because the thing is flushed out before a woman even knows she’s pregnant. But some bad ones are bound to get by.”
“Flushed,” he says.
Mrs. Rose smirks. “Even nature could use a boost.”
Another child approaches the desk, a large girl with brown hair and a combed part slicing her head from neck to brow. She hands a piece of paper to Mrs. Rose and points with her pencil. Their interaction lacks the affection of a natural student/teacher relationship. They part with another smile and a mechanical pat to the back.
“Another good one.” Mrs. Rose watches the child walk away. William squints into the sunlight pouring in through the windows. He sits in on a life before life. These children incubate, warming, growing, until at their prime and out they go to live a life according to one person’s reality. Shelia bites at her thumb, spitting what’s ripped into the air, as Eugene asks questions, begs an audience to hear him read, and erases mistakes from paper worn thin by incorrect guesses. Shelia watches her discarded dead skin and fingernails fall into the hair of children trained to ignore the hits. “I won’t do it,” William says, struggling to free himself from his tiny desk.
Mrs. Rose shakes her head. “I wouldn’t make you. I’ll get Mike or somebody. A veteran. He would love to deal with Eugene.”
“No,” he says. “Today. This thing with the tie, the parents.” She changes. Her eyes squeeze to slits. “Miss Shelia,” she
says, and Shelia with her always-confident stride comes to the teacher ’s side and awaits instructions. “Take over for a moment.” Shelia slides into Mrs. Rose’s desk. She busies herself folding paper and straightening paperclips.
In the hallway, Mrs. Rose corrects the off-center knot in William’s tie. She brushes dirt from his shoulder, dirt he imagines was never there to begin with, and she doesn’t stop. She points out wrinkles she says need to be ironed. She tightens his belt. “The Turner ’s kid won’t stay in utero forever,” she says moving to his hair. “It’s got to come out sometime.”
“Let it come,” he says.
“They don’t want it. A pinnacle cannot exist with weak will anywhere. You know this better than most people do. How happy would you have been knowing that your child was only half-wanted? Half-loved? Just plain half. It’s completion we want, William. A single child will one day represent the whole. And the whole, representative of a single child.”
“I won’t do it.”
She pulls him into a further corner in the hallway, a small womb, a cove occupied by a water fountain and various flyers advertising bake sales and sporting events, PTA meetings adjacent an itemized list of hallway etiquette. “I don’t want to give you an ultimatum, William. But I will. You killed your child. Through the eyes to the law, that’s murder. They are ignorant eyes, yes, but they are the eyes that govern.”
The cove tightens, William can’t breathe. This place is two heartbeats from crushing him and all he can do is hope to outlast the pressure.
“This is bigger than you or me,” she says. “This is bigger than this school, bigger than the strangers, bigger than whatever it is that you and Eugene have. This is bigger than ego. These are two people, parents, who want what’s for the world via what’s best for a child. We can give them that.
”
“By tricking them?”
“Trick isn’t the right word. We won’t be clever about it. We are not politicians. We give them an option, and should they like what we say they take it. Simple.”
William grows numb.
“They are expecting us tonight. They need our advice,” she says, “our confidence. All they have left is adoption.” “But there is no adoption,” William says.
“Good.” She gives William’s dress a final brush. “Now try not to move around too much today. Don’t mess up your presentation.”
William is alone, watching Mrs. Rose walk back into the tight room. “Wait,” he yells and reaches into his pressed pocket. “I want to know what this is.” He pulls out a note, formed to the curve of his heated pocket, the pink thank-you note he’s carried for days.
She brings the note close. She glances over the words, stares through the sentiment and destroys its ironed press with a closing fist. “Yeah, I get those sometimes,” and she drops it to the bottom of an empty wastebasket.
“So much greater than ego,” he says under reborn breath as Mrs. Rose returns to 3-B. The balled message lays lonely at the bottom of the basket. He reaches down, feeling the strain of a back burdened by days of misdirection and opens the note. He presses it flat against the heat of his thigh and returns it to his pocket.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The lawn suffers under the sun. The house holds strong against the heat, paint bubbling in places and buckling in others, but the walls remain firm. William imagines this house demolished in ten years because it offends the neighbors.
The similarity between the Turner ’s house and his own pre- ash home surprises, but more than the structure’s likeness is the woman’s physical similarity to pre-birth Julie; her gut intrudes. William steps around it when invited inside. Her husband, Mrs. Rose told William, is a quiet man so when William reaches out for a shake the man reluctantly agrees, a feeling William understands and if only he could tell him how much.
“Already a nuisance,” Mrs. Rose says acknowledging William’s detour around the woman, a seven- or eight-month pelvis he guesses considering not just the size, but the drag in her step as well. This is something hindsight allows him to realize about Julie and the simple image is enough to wet his eyes.
“My fiancée just gave birth,” he says to the woman, never parting gaze from her abdomen. She looks up with a half-smile. “And now the baby is somewhere in Wisconsin, I believe. Adopted by a beautiful couple.”
The husband, silent until this moment, is eager. “Any regrets?”
Mrs. Rose answers: “Of course not. Pregnancy is a gift often afforded to those who desire something different. But a gift it can remain nonetheless—for someone else.”
“It’s true,” William says. “Any number of people could use your child. Any couple, any family, any stranger would love to have your child and do with it whatever they want.”
Janice and Anthony—Jan and Tony, William thinks, but the comfort afforded by brevity is not a luxury he anticipates gaining—they hug each other a little tighter. “I’ve got to admit,” Janice says, “we were surprised when you called. We never expected adoption agencies to fight over our child.” She looks to her husband who forces a familiar smile, one hiding uncomfortable secrets. In another life, William and this man were the same.
“We care that much.” Mrs. Rose accepts an offered seat on the couch. Janice takes a large chair for herself leaving the two others to share what’s left of a single cushion. Anthony, Mrs. Rose, and William are tight, sides smashed and space for only whispers and shallow breath.
“Don’t,” she softly says.
William feigns comfort. “Don’t what?”
Janice has stood from her chair, lumbered to the kitchen with hardly a sound and through the empty doorway offers coffee. Coffee sounds great, the strangers say, a chirp to each voice.
“You’re not finished,” Mrs. Rose whispers. “Don’t try to change her mind now.”
William attempts to respond but is interrupted by a “thank you” as Mrs. Rose accepts a mug of what smells like coffee, but when William receives his own, decides tastes like mud.
Janice Turner sits again in her chair stressed enough over its lifetime to warrant several layers of grey tape. “I have to admit,” she says, “The idea of letting my own blood out there into the hands of a complete stranger scares me a bit.”
“It should,” William says chewing his coffee.
Mrs. Rose grinds her teeth behind a grin. “Eight and a half months will create some bonds,” she says. “The trick is to know what your body thinks it knows. Know what is best.”
William swallows. “But be aware of the finality of this. It’s not something you can undecide. Giving away your own flesh and blood—the decision will stick with you.”
Mrs. Rose sets her mug to the table, spilling coffee over its lip. “A decision I know both of you can handle,” she says.
William swallows more coffee and thinks strategy.
“But I will be able to keep in touch, right?” Janice asks. “Like letters and phone calls.”
“Unfortunately, dear,” Mrs. Rose says spinning the mug through its own mess, “that just isn’t possible. But believe me, once you have gone through with this, the world will be too bright to worry about someone else’s child.”
William considers the word “dear ” and how it conveys the exact nurture over nature line that Mrs. Rose forever straddles. There is nothing behind the word, no substance, no solid form, but she uses it with such poignant conviction that to distrust her at this moment would be to distrust a mother, a father, or any of the endless generations before.
“It may sound harsh now,” she continues, “but I promise you will understand. Looking back won’t even be a concern.”
The wife smiles and turns to her husband who hasn’t moved more than a face twitch and a few words since the round of handshakes. He remains still, nervous, as William, a qualified judge, determines by his tight knuckles and paling complexion. William reaches around Mrs. Rose and puts his hand to the man’s shoulder. “Sometimes the adopted parents have plans for your child. Plans they don’t want you to know about so communication is entirely out of the question.” He says this drifting from Anthony to Janice and finally to Mrs. Rose. “It’s rare, sure, but it happens often enough to justify a little suspicion.”
Mrs. Rose grabs the mug, turns hard, the cup swinging at the end of her arm. She catches William’s shoulder mid-sentence. Speaking: “this is true, but…” and the cup hits, drowning William’s chest in lukewarm coffee. The small meeting erupts, and Mrs. Rose, always the equilibrium, hushes the chatter and points William to a bathroom in the back. “He’ll come right back,” she says as he stands, and by the time she gets through “but until then…” William is in front of a noisy faucet blasting water loud enough to drown every remaining word.
After blotting the brown deeper into his shirt fills his hands with water. A sweaty pool drips through his fingers. He allows a moment to admire the endless ripples living in his cupped hands before splashing his face. The water works itself in through his nose, spills from his mouth, and hangs on the lip, and it is not until he pulls up from the sink, dabs his forehead with a towel that smells like skin, and looks into the mirror that the water falls in a few tiny splashes against the rusty drain. The living room voices muffle behind these tiny echoes.
Each minute splash carries with it a condensed version of himself. He lifts; the mirror proves his father ’s legacy. William has his tense cheekbones, his long ear lobes, and deep brown eyes—but protected by two thin lids. He thinks to consider this a weakness conquered, a defect one generation less, but…
What sounds like “…and we will have you sign some papers…” creeps under the door.
He would consider the eyelids a strength if he weren’t able to close them right now, to shut down the world around him with a simple squeeze. His father was the world’s observer, the world�
��s mentor, and William can’t even muster the courage to open his eyes and save…
“…because if you don’t want your child the chances of its happy life are reduced dramatically…”
He can’t even save one child.
“I’m not saying the child will be weak, just that if you leave it to us…”
Words he has heard before. Words he has latched onto and claimed as kindred logic. William has seen the world, its ugliness, its depravity, and he has agreed that it makes no sense to raise a child here.
“…the child will have a chance.”
Leave it to us and it’s not the child that has the chance, but the world around it. So goes the doctrine of Mrs. Rose, and here William hides, a perpetuator, a middleman. A beginning. A middle. Far from an end.
“…the most important thing to me is an environment that promotes health…”
His stomach boils. He can taste fire in his throat. “…strength…”
His knees weaken. He falls below the mirror. “…intelligence…”
William thinks first to vomit in the sink, a pool of himself still standing in the clogged drain, but instead pulls himself to the toilet.
“…and courage.”
Embarrassment runs deep, even when alone. William settles on this idea for a few seconds, willing the world around him to accept the image of a man swimming in his own insides, but when two clients and a principal with motivations far outside the realm of compassion open a bathroom door, their faces contorted and noses pinched, embarrassment no longer satisfies as an appropriate condition. Try fear. Try cowardice.
Mrs. Rose moves in. “Why hide it?” she says. “You should have just come out and told us you weren’t feeling well.” She turns back to the Turners, grinning apology, the kind designed to cover the integrity of the parent over the deed of the child.
“I’ll clean him up,” she says already on her way down. The Turners leave as Mrs. Rose turns on the faucet, wetting a small length of toilet paper. “It smells like someone died.”
Stranger Will Page 17