“I know. But sweetheart, you’re happy and grown and in love, so I know you’ll be just fine. And besides, you would miss me whether I died by choice tomorrow or against my will ten years from now.” She picked up a shrimp and moved it like a puppet. In a deep shrimp voice, she said, “You have to allow people be every bit as true to who they are as you should always be to yourself.”
“Oxford.”
The whiny, nasal voice pulled Lenny from the dining room, but she could still smell the spicy cocktail sauce.
“Millicent Oxford.”
TWENTY THREE
The bureau counselors sitting before Millie wore matching lilac suits. Baby rattles decorated their green ties. A soft yellow ceiling lamp shined a cone of light over their shared desk and two brushed nickel name plates. One read WILLARD. The other, MAXINE.
“We don’t expect perfection,” Maxine said.
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you do expect,” Millie said. “With all due respect, of course.”
Willard said, “It’s a simple question, Ms. Oxford. This is an enormous responsibility with any number of potential outcomes. Not all of them are…pleasant. You might have regrets, later down the road.”
“Yes, regrets,” Maxine nodded.
“Some people report feeling depressed,” Willard said. “Some experience anxiety. Drinking. Not as much now as there was before, thanks to licensing, but uncertainty is a tricky little demon, isn’t it, and it just loves to hide behind denial. Are you in denial, Ms. Oxford?”
“No.”
“Do you drink?”
“No.” But she did very much crave a drink, and a cigarette, too.
“You might start. Do you smoke?”
“No.”
“There are also medical risks to the carrier pre-childbirth,” Maxine said. “Ectopic pregnancy. Placental abruption. Gestational diabetes.”
“Despite all your best efforts—and I’m sure you’d put forth your best efforts—your child could be born with special needs,” Willard said. “The demands on you could be…demanding, and for all the years of your life. Yet, here you sit.” He looked at a tablet on the desk. “What’s more, you’re involving others, asking them to commit their time and energy to this future child. What we want to know—again, Ms. Oxford—is why.” He leaned back in his chair. “Some tragedy in your childhood, maybe.”
“Tragedy?”
Maxine squinted. “Abuse?”
Millie sad, “No.”
Willard said, “Alcoholism.”
“No, sir.”
“Was it your father?”
“Was what my father?”
Willard gestured at Millie’s crotch with a wave of his finger.
“I understand these questions may seem offensive,” Maxine said. “Non sequitur: It’s been two years since the death of your mother, and you’ve been on the wait list since that time. It strikes me that your initial request for an evaluation might have been influenced by grief, which is transitory, or by an oath you made to your dying or dead mother who, as you know, won’t be here to witness whether you have a child. Does either reason sound legitimate to you?”
Millie wasn’t sure whether Maxine meant legitimate as a reason or legitimate as a guess. She thought of her mother lying in bed with a dwindling roll of paper towels in her arm to catch the red phlegm, and the only thing she had said about parenting since Millie was young: “It may have been unfair of me to shape your perspective of childbearing, but it was necessary. It comforts me to know that if you do have a child some day, it will be your conscious intent and not what many so ludicrously reduce to a biological imperative. In rational, thinking human beings, if you can imagine.” She took a shallow breath, and then another. She looked at Millie—straight at her, for the first time since Millie was a teenager sitting at the kitchen table—and Millie waited, steeling herself for something she suspected her mother must have been saving for when she was close to death. A sentence that would explain the last twenty-seven years. Just one, because her mother had never offered more than one sentence at a time (unless lecturing about the media), and Millie hardly expected dying to change her completely. Knowing that did nothing to stop the rush of hope that her mother would tell her she was proud of the writing she’d done and that she’d always loved her “quite a bit.”
The short, unbidden fantasy made Millie’s face so hot her cheeks itched.
Her mother said, “—Or an immature impulse, as it was for your father. Have you heard from your father?”
Millie had handed her mother a new paper towel sheet for her bleeding cigarette mouth and said no.
She hadn’t heard from him then, and she hadn’t since.
Maxine said, “Ms. Oxford.”
“We can give her a minute,” Willard said.
Millie said she didn’t require a minute, but thanked him for his consideration. She admitted to being confused by their hesitation to ap-prove her on the spot for an evaluation. Her mother had been a prominent figure, and her letter of request for an evaluation had named her late aunt Margaret and uncle Ernie, two of the state’s leading philanthropists, as part-time guardians throughout her childhood. She explained that her good friend Lenore Mabary, daughter of the state’s leading philanthropists, not only devoted herself to “the abandoned” but had also recently built Millie a small house on the Mabary property, which was tangible evidence of the support Millie could expect to receive as a carrier.
“Yes, Ms. Oxford,” Maxine said. “But everyone in your letter, excepting the young Ms. Mabary, whose support, I understand, will be solely financial, is dead. Your child will have only you. We kn—”
“And…what’s his name?” Willard consulted the tablet. “Hugh.”
“We know,” Maxine continued, “what the people around you have done, Ms. Oxford, but what have you done?”
Millie’s hands and feet turned cold. She wanted to scream that she had been a writer for the Daily Fact since she was eighteen, thank you—and without having attended college or any formal writing classes!—, but the only person who had ever cared about the newspaper was her mother. Millie blamed her mother, now, for having made her believe writing for the Fact was an achievement unattainable for most, one that made Millie unique, deserving of respect and reverence (words her mother had never uttered, but that Millie had naturally inferred). Strangers who made eye contact with her on the street had done so, she’d once assumed, because they’d read something she’d written. The only reason they never spoke to her, she’d of course believed, was that she intimidated them.
It had taken Millie until three and a half weeks after the funeral, when her mother was no longer confined to a bed and asking Millie to read to her, to recognize what little to average value the general public assigned newspaper writers. Everyday readers rarely, if ever, noticed bylines. The man who claimed to love her, a writer himself before he became an editor, took her writing for granted. Lenny, who more than anyone else should have delighted in her dearest friend’s talents and accomplishments, would merely smile politely and say, “Not yet, but I will,” any time Millie asked whether she’d read her latest story.
To Willard and Maxine (and the rest of them), Millie had done nothing of value. As herself she was, therefore, nothing of value. Not interesting enough as a person to have captured her mother’s attention, and not lovable enough to have retained the affection of the one man who was (ostensibly) biologically predisposed to love her. She wasn’t warm, she was objectively unattractive, and she wasn’t funny (although Lenny did sometimes laugh at her). She was intelligent, but Willard and Maxine hadn’t indicated intelligence mattered, nor had the world at large. “What have you achieved,” or as Millie understood it, “What makes you worthwhile,” was not a question ever, ever directed at someone like Lenny, who was openly affectionate, extraordinarily wealthy, and observably beautiful. Had Willard and Maxine, or any stranger, noticed upon encountering Millie for the first time that she was carrying, they also wouldn’t have
been inclined to direct such a question at her. The bulge beneath her shirt would have told them everything they needed to know. This person, it would tell them, is to be admired and adored.
Millie remembered she was supposed be formulating an answer to their question. Because she couldn’t think of a single logical reason to want or have a child, she told Maxine and Willard what she’d once heard Lenny’s mom say: It was a feeling. A very strong feeling. Something “deep in her belly.” She’d simply always known she wanted to be a parent.
“Oh, you want to be a parent,” Maxine clapped. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“Your application says biological only,” Willard said.
“I’m sure she didn’t know she could check both boxes if she wanted to, Willard. Did you know that, Ms. Oxford?”
Millie did know that. She shook her head no.
Maxine’s face lifted in an exaggerated grin. “Wonderful! Then you are open to adoption?”
Millie had prepared for this question. She’d researched body language and what others looked for when trying to determine whether something was a lie. She would not hold eye contact for too long, one of two major tells, and she wouldn’t fidget or touch her face while speaking.
“I considered it quite seriously.” Millie scratched her nose, froze, then scratched it again and asked for a tissue. “We both—Hugh and I—did.” She blew air into the soft cloth, bore it as convincingly as she could into a nostril, and then crumpled it in her fist. “But after months and months of painful conversations, we came to the conclusion—the excruciating conclusion—that it would be irresponsible of us to not parent biologically.” Earnest eye contact with Willard, then Maxine. “We would, of course, prefer to give a loving home to a parentless child who’s spent years sleeping on a dirty cot, but it would be…as I said, irresponsible. May I explain?”
Willard and Maxine sighed and leaned back in their chairs.
The explanation, as Millie explained it, was that she and Hugh felt it was their civic duty to inject proven intelligence and decency into the gene pool. Hugh had been raised by his biological parent and was an upstanding newspaper editor with an innate tendency toward fairness. She was an award-winning reporter (she’d twice earned Reporter of the Month, and the entire staff—including Millie—had received notification via intraoffice email) whose daily mission was to inform the public and hold people accountable. Although she and Hugh had agreed in the midst of one of their emotional discussions that some of the shelter children were probably good people, there was no way to be certain, she said. Had they not been born to parents who could so easily discard them?
“A dro—A destitute product of the birth explosion murdered Ernie Aronne, as you know,” Millie said. She sniffed for effect, having never mastered producing a tear. “Or Uncle Ernie, as I called him. According to the police report, the woman shot him right in the face for simply sitting in the passenger seat of his wife’s sports car.” She waited for a reaction. There was none. She swallowed. “My own mother was so upset by the degrading state of the world that she smoked herself to death, which in turn destroyed my father.” She had no knowledge that he’d heard of her death. “He left the country,” Millie assumed, “and has never been seen again. Without his influence, the businesses my mother spent her entire life building have failed.”
“Oxford Spirits,” Maxine said.
Willard said, “Ah, yes. Eyesores. Addict dens.”
Yes, Millie said, yes. But she and Hugh could aid in the gradual correction of society by adding their own healing offspring to the existing disease.
Maxine absently tapped a finger on the desk. Willard’s eyes were closed.
“That was my conclusion,” Millie said.
Willard opened his eyes and scratched inside his ear. He and Maxine made notes on their tablets. Willard tapped his screen and the tablet slid out a piece of paper he pushed across the desk. It was a standard evaluation agreement form with unchecked boxes beside BIOLOGICAL and ADOPTIVE.
“You’re a go for evaluation,” Willard said. “Before we schedule you, we’d like to ask you one more time to consider adoption. All you’d have to do is check both of those boxes, there. Just the adoption box would be fine, too. You never know, you could get one of the teenagers and it’d be gone in a few years. Short commitment.”
“The box you check has no bearing on the outcome of the evaluation, of course,” Maxine said. “We simply need to know in advance so that if you pass we can be expeditious in forwarding accurate information to the chip command unit.”
Millie had no intention of downgrading to adoption. Adopting meant never impregnating, which meant never being seen while impregnated.
“As I said,” Millie lowered her head in apology, “I would love to adopt a precious, needy child, but—”
“Yes, we’re sure you would.” Maxine reached for the form and put a check inside the box beside BIOLOGICAL, initialed it, and then had Willard and Millie initial it. (Millie clenched her teeth and forced the smile out of her mind, because she was supposed to be sad, so sad that her commitment to a better world prevented her from adopting.)
Maxine duplicated the form in the desk copier and handed one to Millie while filing the original in a drawer. Willard instructed Millie to keep her copy in a safe place. She would need it with her when she returned for her evaluation.
Maxine pressed a button. “Donald, send in Ms. Lenore Mayberry, please.”
“Mabary,” Millie said.
“Correction, Donald. Ms. Lenore MAYbahry.”
Millie asked why the referral slip couldn’t simply be emailed, which seemed more efficient.
“Doesn’t even have a child, yet, and already she wants us to babysit for her.” Maxine gave two bats of her eyelashes.
TWENTY FOUR
Lenny looked around the room while the licensing people studied her documents. Big windows framed green trees. The walls were mauve. A perfectly straight line of framed photographs circled the room, four on each wall. All of the faces behind the glass were parents with children or carriers in the late stages, and all of them had straight, white teeth.
Millie sat next to her with her hands in a tight knot on her lap.
“I don’t see any paperwork reflecting rent payments,” Willard said.
Lenny explained that Millie and Hugh had only recently moved in and that she and Floyd were giving them time to get settled. The first three months had been rent free, and their first payment wasn’t due for two weeks.
Lenny didn’t want them to pay at all, but Hugh insisted even though they didn’t ask for the house. Lenny had heard something on the radio about peak levels of violent crime in Prospect, where Millie and Hugh were sharing an efficiency apartment, and she’d tasked Floyd with getting it built as fast as he could. Within six months, and with the help of the entire crew he’d taken over from Lenny’s dad, Floyd had cleared a wide path through the trees, cleared even more trees for a lot for the home, and built the small, simple, but sturdy two-story Dutch colonial one hundred yards from Lenny’s back door. It was far enough away for their respective privacy, but—unless Millie veered off the crude driveway or rough field to wade through the trees—close enough so that Lenny would always see Millie coming. (This was just a fact. It wasn’t the reason she’d asked Floyd to build the house—or to build it in that spot. Lenny could have offered to help pay for an apartment in a nicer neighborhood miles away, but nicer didn’t usually mean safer unless it was a remote neighborhood like Forest Retreat Estates. Building Millie a house on her own property was the first thing Lenny had been able to do that had felt like a meaningful return favor. It was a bonus that Lenny could sit in the living room with Deborah, or whoever might live in the basement in the future, without worrying Millie would suddenly appear in the big back window, the cigarette she’d taken the long way around the house to finish smoking burning between her fingers.)
“And will this Floyd Lowe be in any way involved in the life of Ms. Oxford’s child?
” the one behind the MAXINE name plate said.
“I don’t think so,” Lenny said. “But he likes children, so he might play with it. Is that fine?”
“That’s fine,” Willard winked.
“Most of your wealth, Ms. Mabary, appears to be a sizeable inherit-ance,” Maxine said.
“And she insists on driving an old, rusty van,” Millie said. “She could have bought at least ten brand new AV vans with what Aunt Margaret left her.”
Maxine looked up. “You raise an interesting question, Ms. Oxford. As you characterized the relationship in your letter of application, you were all but blood related to this family. Why did the woman you call your aunt not leave you some of her fortune?”
Millie opened her mouth, but said nothing. She turned to Lenny.
A lifetime of what Lenny knew must have been unimaginable loneliness and rejection changed Millie’s features for a flicker of a second. In that shortest of moments, the Millie Lenny had known since birth was hardly recognizable. Lenny had seen the forced frowns Millie used when she wanted something, but this was different. It was as if she couldn’t pull together the strength she needed to lift her lips into a flat line. Her face was usually ruddy, but now her cheeks and nose filled with deep pink, and her shoulders, her back, and even her forehead seemed to sag. The bursting energy Lenny had always seen in Millie’s eyes was, in that flash of unguarded emotion, replaced by such lifelessness that her irises dulled.
She had a strong urge to smooth Millie’s hair (but didn’t) and was suddenly prepared to do or say anything (short of applying for a license, herself) to help. For once, it had nothing to do with what she owed her aunt Kat or Millie.
Lenny cleared her throat. She had only ever told kind, little lies, usually by answering “Yes” or “No,” depending on what the person wanted to hear. And she’d kept a secret, like anyone else, but that wasn’t lying. It was loyalty to the secret. Intentionally putting together a string of words and pretending they were facts, though, was something she’d never done, and it made her throat swell. She silently asked her dad for his understanding (and knew he would have given it to her).
The Age of the Child Page 20