“Daddy was a miser, see.” Lenny’s index finger twitched. She clasped her hands. “He wanted all the family money to stay in the family. But Mamma, she wanted to change her will to include Millie after Daddy died.” Peripherally, Lenny saw that Millie was looking ahead at Willard and Maxine. “But then,” Lenny said, “she up and died, too, before she ever got the chance. She sure did love Millie, though. Like she was her own kin. She’d ‘a’ wanted her to have this money.”
Lenny held her breath. She was almost positive Millie knew enough to play along if Maxine or Willard asked any questions. Millie, of course, knew Lenny’s mom could easily have changed her will before she died. She was the only other person who knew the truth about the suicide.
When the house cleared out after the memorial service, Millie had stayed behind. (At the time, the basement was still in the process of becoming the panic room Lenny’s mom had wanted her to build, so there’d been nothing to hide from Millie and no reason to be nervous about her hanging around.) Lenny had hoped Millie would be a comfort, but Millie was too interested in the what, where, how, and why of Lenny’s mom’s death to be anything but her exhausting self by pinging Lenny with ques-tions: “What could Aunt Margaret possibly have been doing out there in the woods during her writing hours?” “I wrote a story about heart failure, so I know nearly everything there is to know about it. I don’t accept that that’s how she died.” “What if someone killed her? They killed Uncle Ernie because of money, so why wouldn’t they have done the same to Aunt Margaret?” “It’s all highly suspect. I can’t comprehend why you wouldn’t want an investigation or an autopsy. Both!”
Lenny’s mom wouldn’t have wanted Millie to know about the suicide. “People will get the wrong impression if they know,” her mom had said, but Millie wasn’t “people,” and it was hard for Lenny to keep things from her. Millie was cunning, and she knew Lenny.
At first it was fun to watch her pacing the kitchen with a glass of wine, her eyes flitting around the room as she scraped around inside her head for answers, but Lenny was too sad to find humor in anything for very long and too tired to be evasive. She told the truth.
Millie swirled the wine in her glass and stared off into the living room, nodding. “Hm!” she finally said. “I wonder if there are others like her out there. Of a similar sentiment regarding death, that is. And still alive, obvi-ously. It could be a story, don’t you think? ‘You only die once, and for some, it’s an opportunity to do it right’? I may pitch it. They’ll most likely change the headline, because they always do…” She trailed off when Lenny started crying right in front of her.
Lenny didn’t know what she expected, or even what she wanted, from Millie. Condolences, at least.
Millie put her weight on one foot, then the other, and fiddled with her wine glass. “Oh.” She rubbed the narrow stem with her thumb. “I suppose it wouldn’t be a relief for you, would it? You must feel very privileged to be sad.”
Millie had never written the story. (Not because of Lenny, but because, she’d said, it wasn’t easy to find happy people willing to talk about death planning. The stigma was “too oppressive.”)
Lenny returned her attention to Willard and Maxine at the flick of something bright. Maxine was holding her tablet with its lit screen facing out.
“I don’t see your name listed here as a secondary guardian,” Maxine said. “You’ll commit to carrying the financial burden, but not to providing physical support?”
“Yes, ma’am. I don’t want to be a guardian, no.”
“Too bad. You’d be a shoo-in,” Willard said with a tsk, and Millie tensed so fully that Lenny saw it happen.
Maxine laid the tablet on the desk. “And how would you characterize Ms. Oxford’s potential as a parent?”
Millie looked quickly at Lenny, her unnaturally light blue eyes holding eye contact just long enough for Lenny to feel the pressure.
She tried to imagine Millie being attentive to someone (or something) else’s needs. Instead, she saw Millie grabbing twice as many dog treats as Lenny so Murphy would sit by her, and then pushing Murphy away when she lost interest. Millie taking notes while abandoned children answered questions for a story, and then walking away from them—some in mid-sentence, some crying—when she had what she needed. Millie writing the Chester Walton story in her head throughout the…event. Millie at twenty hustling to the food table at a shelter Christmas party to beat a little boy named Jimmy to the last sugar cookie. (“Oh!” she’d said, pink crystals packed into the corners of her mouth. “I didn’t know anyone else wanted it.”) Millie on one of their rare double dates using questions to interrupt private looks between Lenny and Floyd, laughing charmingly at the men when she had their attention, and punishing Hugh with flattering comments directed at Floyd if Hugh happened to talk one-on-one with Lenny.
Maybe none of that meant she would be a bad parent. Lenny thought there must be all kinds of people who didn’t care about anyone but their own children. That Millie had tried to pressure Lenny into getting pregnant for a referral, and that she had only ever mentioned carrying, but not parenting, didn’t have to mean she’d be anything but a wonderful mother to her own child.
Anything was possible.
Anything but Millie making it all the way through the evaluation process, Lenny reminded herself with a relieved sigh that Willard responded to by sticking a finger in his ear. Lenny doubted Millie would even get as far as the dog. (Hoped, for the dog’s sake.)
Maxine tapped a fingernail on the table and raised her eyebrows at Lenny.
Lenny said, “I reckon she’ll be the best mamma imaginable to any little baby, ma’am.”
TWENTY FIVE
No one but a person of measurable value would ever have reason to be in so elegant a space as Lenny’s bedroom. Millie had always admired it. Even when it was still her aunt Margaret’s writing office, dressed down with a plain couch and cluttered desk, there was no hiding its extravagantly high ceilings, grand wood beams, or tall, wide windows overlooking the forest—and now the pity house Floyd had built in a clearing. (“Floyd’s team can build a house in their sleep. And we already own the property, so you’ll only have to pay a portion of the taxes,” Lenny had said. Millie had of course accepted, because even with their combined full-time incomes from the medium-sized paper, she and Hugh still only made enough to rent an apartment in a questionable neighborhood).
Had the Mabary mansion been left to her, Millie would have made the office her bedroom just as Lenny had. However, she’d have installed a more comfortable bed. Millie didn’t know why, with her excessive wealth, Lenny would bother with anything less than memory foam. There were times when Millie would raise her pelvis to Floyd’s mouth, and the rough pillow-top material would grate her elbows through the sheets. It wasn’t painful, necessarily, but it was a distraction.
Millie tapped Floyd’s head. “Come up,” she said, and he did, caging her shoulders between his arms as he moved on top of her.
“Do you love me?” Millie said.
“I love Lenny,” he breathed against her forehead.
“Yes, Floyd. Everybody loves Lenny. But do you love me, too?”
“Sure,” he said. “Yeah. Oh… Oh, oh, what’re you…oh, yeah. Oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah!”
Millie wanted a cigarette when they finished, but Floyd always made her surrender the pack when she walked in the door. Lenny didn’t allow smoking inside, and Floyd said he didn’t trust her to not sneak one. In lieu of smoking she picked at her fingernails, which annoyed Floyd. He slapped a hand on top of hers and said, “Quit it.”
“Nothing I did would bother you if you truly loved me.”
“Lenny bothers me all the time.”
Millie rolled to face him and didn’t pull up the sheets to cover her breasts. “How so?”
Floyd shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Come on.”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me.”
Floyd adjusted his feet
under the blanket. He sighed and tucked a hand behind his head. “I mean, okay. You know Bertram.”
“The black one?”
“That’s Pike. Bertram is the—”
“The calico.”
“The black and white one. Anyway, she feeds him with a spoon, sometimes.”
“Soup?”
“Cat soup?”
“Well, Floyd, I don’t know.”
“Naw, what do you think? It’s the regular shit from the can.”
Millie adjusted her arm and the slant of her back to draw more atten-tion to her breasts, which were substantially smaller and therefore much classier than Lenny’s. “That is annoying.”
“Yeah, well, it’s just the cat has a hard time with the food, sometimes. It’s too soft, or.”
“You don’t have to defend her.”
“I feel like I do.”
“What else?”
Floyd pressed his head deeper into his pillow. “I don’t want to say any more.”
Millie stroked his hair. “Floyd, you’ve been exiting my body for the last five minutes. How could you possibly do any of this if Lenny were com-pletely faultless?”
“Fault’s not the word.” Floyd pulled up the sheet to cover Millie’s chest.
She pulled it back down. “Goodness. I had no idea you found me so offensive.”
“Not offensive.”
“Please tell me just one more thing.” There had to be more that could make Lenny difficult to love. Millie pulled up the sheet again. “Better?” She gave him empathetic eyes. “I’m not asking for me, but for you. Who else can you talk to about the woman only you and I know so well? I’m here for you, Floyd.”
Floyd picked up the clock from the bedside table, looked at the time, then set it back down and flopped onto his back. He blew at the stringy hair on his forehead. After a minute he told Millie about a time he’d come home after fourteen hours of finishing a house. He said he and Lenny hadn’t seen each other in two days, they were so busy all the time, and he’d been excited to see the light on when he pulled into the driveway.
“She’s usually sleeping, or too busy for me, you know, so I thought I’d get a chance to hug her, or kiss, or…and we’d, you know, sit and talk, something.”
He knew the sound of his truck carried into the house, so he’d expected to find her waiting in the foyer. Instead, not even the dogs were there, and no one came at his keys falling on the hallway table. He followed the light to the living room and found Lenny sitting on the couch with De—
He stopped.
“Who? Who was she on the couch with?”
“Uh, De—dead…dead asleep cats,” he said finally, and, “She didn’t even get up, ‘cause she had…she had all three on her lap, not to mention the dogs on both sides. I just guess I sort of hoped she’d interrupt—whatever—to come, you know, out, but all she did was say hi from the couch. I mean, she smiled, and it was a really nice—Look, she didn’t mean anyth—”
“Obviously the animals are more important to her than you are,” Millie said. “I would never treat you that way.” She stroked Floyd’s earlobe, stopping when she heard something at the closed bedroom door. “Sh.”
“Cat. He scratches.”
“Why don’t you get rid of them?”
“The cats?”
“And the dogs.”
“Serious?”
“They’re animals, Floyd. Simply explain that they’re having a negative impact on your relationship. Bring them to her shelter, and she’ll have plenty of opportunities to spend time with them. Or leave the back door open. Animals can take care of themselves.”
Floyd climbed out of bed. “Time to get up.” He put on his pants. “Anyway. You don’t get it.”
“I don’t get what?”
“It’s not like that all the time. Or, I don’t know, maybe it is, or—like you said—what am I doing with you?” He picked up her shirt and tossed it on the bed. “C’mon. I have somewhere to be.”
“That isn’t exactly what I said, Floyd.” She had hoped an orgasm would relax her before the evaluation, but Floyd was being obnoxious, and now her shirt was covered in cat from having been on the floor. She picked off the hairs one at a time. “If you had a child together, the animals would come second,” she said. “You know how Lenny is with children.”
“She said she doesn’t want one.”
“And you believe her? Floyd, everyone wants to be a carrier. People who say they don’t are simply being nonconformist. Secretly, they want the license and the status.”
“And the kid.”
“Oh. Yes. Well, obviously I assumed that went without saying.” Millie turned over her shirt to pluck the hairs from the back. “Are you capable?”
“Yep. Doesn’t matter. She won’t get licensed, so.”
“When did you last have sex?”
“Not your business. Put your shirt on.”
“If she accidentally got pregnant,” Millie said, checking her sleeves for fur, “if her hormone failed, for example, or had been paused for some unknown reason—no system is perfect—and you happened to have intercourse with her—today, for example—and she ended up impregnated, she would feel compelled to apply for a license.” Millie put on her bra. “Most likely.”
“What, you hacked her? Paid someone, or?”
“I know it’s something you want. She told me. I also know she loves you and wants you to be happy. What would make you happy, Floyd? I’m not saying she has been hacked and I’m not saying she hasn’t, but one way to be sure she hasn’t is to advise her to call the monitors. You could do that instead, advise her to call the monitors, if you chose.”
Floyd stood at the end of the bed, his pale chest a sick white in the gray light from the window. His large, flat nipples were the color of ash. He said, “They’ll probably flunk you straight out if you’re late.”
“It takes ten minutes to get there,” Millie said, but he was right. It wouldn’t do to cut the timing close. She slid her arms through her shirt sleeves. Buttoning the buttons, she said, “They use authentic, twenty-three carat gold foil on the decorative license.” She pulled her hair away from her face and secured it in a band. She knew about the foil, she said, because several years ago the Fact had received a sample certificate from the licensing bureau’s publicity department for a story Millie had been writing. “I already have the perfect frame for it, and I’ve selected the best wall space in the living room. It’s where Hugh’s father’s painting is now. You’ve seen it. The certificate is going to look absolutely beautiful there.”
Millie stepped into the licensing center at ten minutes to nine. Hugh was already there, his bright blue tie a beacon guiding her to the far side of the crowded waiting room. Millie signed in at the reception window and stepped through applicants (and clearly at least some secondary guardian applicants) whose ages Millie estimated to range from as young as eighteen to as old as sixty. They leaned into one another, touched hands to legs, and laughed and joked. One in a tight group of five held out a plastic container of dark and light nuts that hand after hand reached in for. Millie noticed that their clothes were stained at the cuffs and collars, and in some cases were torn. (“We aren’t concerned with the financial status of licensed individuals beyond their ability to provide nutritious meals, medical care, state-approved education, and weather-appropriate clothing to a child or children,” licensing bureau spokesperson Bernard Marshall had said in a televised interview shortly after licensing guidelines were released to the public.) Millie’s clothes were inexpensive, but they were at least intact and stain-free. Obviously the person in that group who was seeking the primary license needed an entire family to contribute financially as well as physically.
Millie straightened her back as she approached Hugh, who looked up, saw her, and immediately smiled. But then, with each swing of her arms, his smile faded a little bit more until it disappeared and his eyes returned to his reader.
Millie sat beside him. “Have you see
n our competition?”
He said, “We aren’t competing.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Their success doesn’t mean our failure, or vice versa. We can all pass. We can all get licenses.”
The happy family laughed over their container of nuts. Millie leaned into Hugh. “It’s as if they brought every person they know.” She was convinced the evaluators would look upon her more favorably if she had more people with her, but upon further consideration, she wasn’t sure. Did more FCP volunteers indicate a stronger network, or a weaker applicant? It was impossible to know. “Well, it won’t work, no matter how many reinforcements they bring to manipulate the system,” she said. “Did you see their clothes? All together they can’t even afford detergent.”
“I’ll bet our free house they have more money combined than we do.”
“We have Lenny.”
Hugh turned off his reader and folded his hands over it. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is some underhanded plot to improve their chances. You probably should be worried. They have five people, and you only have one. Maybe the licensing board’ll give a lot of long, hard thought to that when comparing you to them.”
“Hugh!”
“You have one person,” he said again. “But one person who loves you completely. One, Millie.”
“Why would you say something like that, and more than once?”
“I think I’m hoping one day you’ll hear me.”
“What about Lenny? She loves me. Floyd does, as well. By the way, did I ever tell you he used to rummage through the school trash cans? It’s no wonder Lenny has no interest in applying for a license. They have the money, certainly, but someone who eats garbage hardly deserves to—”
Hugh slammed his reader into an empty chair. He grabbed Millie by both arms and forced her to face him. He held his nose so close to hers that the breath from it warmed her upper lip.
The Age of the Child Page 21