Red Clocks (4 page)

Can’t see the ocean from her apartment, but she can hear it. Most days between five and six thirty a.m. she sits in the kitchen listening to the waves and working on her study of Eivør Mínervudottír, a nineteenth-century polar hydrologist whose trailblazing research on pack ice was published under a male acquaintance’s name. There is no book on Mínervudottír, only passing mentions
in other books. The biographer has a mass of notes by now, an outline, some paragraphs. A skein draft—more holes than words. On the kitchen wall she’s taped a photo of the shelf in the Salem bookstore where her book will live. The photo reminds her that she is going to finish it.

She opens Mínervudottír’s journal, translated from the Danish.
I admit to fearing the attack of a sea bear; and my
fingers hurt all the time.
A woman long dead coming to life. But today, staring at the journal, the biographer can’t think. Her brain is soapy and throbbing from the new ovary medicine.

She sits in her car, radio on, throat shivering with hints of vomit, until she’s late enough for school not to care that her eye–foot–brake reaction time is slowed by the Ovutran. The roads have guardrails. Her
forehead pulses hard. She sees a black lace throw itself across the windshield, and blinks it away.

Two years ago the United States Congress ratified the Personhood Amendment, which gives the constitutional right to life, liberty, and property to a fertilized egg at the moment of conception. Abortion is now illegal in all fifty states. Abortion providers can be charged with second-degree murder,
abortion seekers with conspiracy to commit murder. In vitro fertilization, too, is federally banned, because the amendment outlaws the transfer of embryos from laboratory to uterus. (The embryos can’t give their consent to be moved.)

She was just quietly teaching history when it happened. Woke up one morning to a president-elect she hadn’t voted for. This man thought women who miscarried should
pay for funerals for the fetal tissue and thought a lab technician who accidentally dropped an embryo during in vitro transfer was guilty of manslaughter. She had heard there was glee on the lawns of her father’s Orlando retirement village. Marching in the streets of Portland. In Newville: brackish calm.

Short of sex with some man she wouldn’t otherwise want to have sex with, Ovutran and lube-glopped
vaginal wands and Dr. Kalbfleisch’s golden fingers is the only biological route left. Intrauterine insemination. At her age, not much better than a turkey baster.

She was placed on the adoption wait-list three years ago. In her parent profile she earnestly and meticulously described her job, her apartment, her favorite books, her parents, her brother (drug addiction omitted), and the fierce beauty
of Newville. She uploaded a photograph that made her look friendly but responsible, fun loving but stable, easygoing but upper middle class. The coral-pink cardigan she bought to wear in this photo she later threw into the clothing donation bin outside the church.

She was warned, yes, at the outset: birth mothers tend to choose married straight couples, especially if the couple is white. But
not all birth mothers choose this way. Anything could happen, she was told. The fact that she was willing to take an older child or a child who needed special care meant the odds were in her favor.

She assumed it would take a while but that it would, eventually, happen.

She thought a foster placement, at least, would come through; and if things went well, that could lead to adoption.

Then the
new president moved into the White House.

The Personhood Amendment happened.

One of the ripples in its wake: Public Law 116‑72.

On January fifteenth—in less than three months—this law, also known as Every Child Needs Two, takes effect. Its mission:
to restore dignity, strength, and prosperity to American families.
Unmarried persons will be legally prohibited from adopting children. In addition
to valid marriage licenses, all adoptions will require approval through a federally regulated agency, rendering private transactions criminal.

Woozy with Ovutran, inching up the steps of Central Coast Regional, the biographer recalls her high school career on the varsity track team. “Keep your legs, Stephens!” the coach would yell when her muscles were about to give out.

She informs the tenth-graders
they must scrub their essay drafts clean of the phrase
History tells us
. “A stale rhetorical tic. Means nothing.”

“But it does,” says Mattie. “History is telling us not to repeat its mistakes.”

“We might reach that conclusion from
studying
the past, but history is a concept; it isn’t talking to us.”

Mattie’s cheeks—cold white, blue veined—go red. Not used to correction, she’s easily shamed.

Ash raises her hand. “What happened to your arm, miss?”

“What? Oh.” The biographer’s sleeve is pushed way up above the elbow. She yanks it down. “I gave blood.”

“It looks like you gave, like, gallons.” Ash rubs her piglet nose. “You should sue the blood bank for defamation.”

“Dis
figure
ment,” says Mattie.

“You got straight disfigured, miss.”

By noon the cloudy throb behind her eyebrows has
dialed itself back. In the teachers’ lounge she eats maize puffs and watches the French teacher fork pink thumbs out of a Good Ship Chinese takeout box.

“Certain kinds of shrimp produce light,” she tells him. “They’re like torches bobbing in the water.”

How can you raise a child alone when all you’re having for lunch is vending-machine maize puffs?

He grunts and chews. “Not these shrimp.”

Didier has no particular interest in French but can speak it, the tongue of his Montreal childhood, in his sleep. Like being a teacher of walking or sitting. For this predicament he blames his wife. During his first conversation with the biographer, years ago, over crackers and tube cheese in the lounge, he explained: “She says to me, ‘Aside from cooking you have no skills, but at least you can do
this, can’t you?’—so
ici. Je. Suis
.” The biographer then imagined Susan Korsmo as a huge white crow, shading Didier’s life with her great wing.

“Shrimp are sky-high in cholesterol,” says Penny, the head English teacher, deseeding grapes at the table.

“This room is where my joy dies,” says Didier.

“Boo hoo. Ro, you need nourishment. Here’s a banana.”

“That’s Mr. Fivey’s,” says the biographer.

“How can anyone be sure?”

“He wrote his name on it.”

“Fivey will survive the loss of one fruit,” says Penny.

“Ooosh.” The biographer holds her temples.

“You okay?”

Thudding back down into the chair: “I just got up too fast.”

The PA system sizzles to life, coughs twice. “Attention students and teachers. Attention. This is an emergency announcement.”

“Please be a fire drill,” says Didier.

“Let us all keep Principal Fivey in our thoughts today. His wife has been admitted to the hospital in critical condition. Principal Fivey will be away from campus until further notice.”

“Should she be telling everyone this?” says the biographer.

“I repeat,” says the office manager, “Mrs. Fivey is in critical condition at Umpqua General.”

“Room number?” yells Didier at the wall-mounted speaker.

The principal’s wife always comes to Christmas assembly in skintight cocktail dresses. And every Christmas Didier says: “Mrs. Fivey’s gittin sixy.”

The biographer drives home to lie on the floor in her underwear.

Her father is calling again. It has been days—weeks?—since she answered.

“How’s Florida?”

“I am curious to know your plans for Christmas.”

“Months away, Dad.”

“But you’ll want to
book the flight soon. Fares are going to explode. When does school let out?”

“I don’t know, the twenty-third?”

“That close to Christmas? Jesus.”

“I’ll let you know, okay?”

“Any plans for the weekend?”

“Susan and Didier invited me to dinner. You?”

“Might drop by the community center to watch the human rutabagas gum their feed. Unless my back flares up.”

“What did the acupuncturist say?”

“
That
was a mistake I won’t make twice.”

“It works for a lot of people, Dad.”

“It’s goddamn voodoo. Will you be bringing a date to your friends’ dinner?”

“Nope,” says the biographer, steeling herself for his next sentence, her face stiff with sadness that he can’t help himself.

“About time you found someone, don’t you think?”

“I’m fine, Dad.”

“Well, I
worry,
kiddo. Don’t like the idea of you
being all alone.”

She could trot out the usual list (“I’ve got friends, neighbors, colleagues, people from meditation group”), but her okayness with being by herself—ordinary, unheroic okayness—does not need to justify itself to her father. The feeling is hers. She can simply feel okay and not explain it, or apologize for it, or concoct arguments against the argument that she doesn’t
truly
feel
content and is deluding herself in self-protection.

“Well, Dad,” she says, “you’re alone too.”

Any reference to her mother’s death can be relied on to shut him up.

There was Usman for six months in college. Victor for a year in Minneapolis. Liaisons now and again. She is not a long-term person. She likes her own company. Nevertheless, before her first insemination, the biographer forced herself
to consult online dating sites. She browsed and bared her teeth. She browsed and felt chest-flatteningly depressed. One night she really did try. Picked the least Christian site and started typing.

What are your three best qualities?

1. Independence
   
2. Punctuality
   

Best book you recently read?

Proceedings of the “Proteus” Court of Inquiry on the Greely Relief Expedition of 1883

What fascinates
you?

1. How cold stops water
   
2. Patterns ice makes on the fur of a dead sled dog
   
3. The fact that Eivør Mínervudottír lost two of her fingers to frostbite
   

But the biographer didn’t feel like telling anyone that. Delete, delete, delete. She could say, at least, she had tried. The next day she called for an appointment at a reproductive-medicine clinic in Salem.

Her therapist thought she was moving fast.
“You only recently decided to do this,” he said, “and already you’ve chosen a donor?”

Oh, therapist, if only you knew how quickly a donor can be chosen! You turn on your computer. You click boxes for race, eye color, education, height. A list appears. You read some profiles. You hit
PURCHASE
.

A woman on the Choosing Single Motherhood discussion board wrote,
I spent more time dead-heading my
roses than picking a donor
.

But, as the biographer explained to her therapist, she did
not
choose quickly. She pored. She strained. She sat for hours at her kitchen table, staring at profiles. These men had written essays. Named personal strengths. Recalled moments of childhood jubilance and described favorite traits of grandparents. (For one hundred dollars per ejaculation, they were happy to
discuss their grandparents.)

She took notes on dozens and dozens—

Pros:

1. Calls himself “avid reader”
   
2. “Great cheekbones” (staff)
   
3. Enjoys “mental challenges and riddles”
   
4. To future child: “I look forward to hearing from you in eighteen years”
   

Cons:

1. Handwriting very bad
   
2. Commercial real-estate appraiser
   
3. Of own personality: “I’m not too complicated”
   

—then narrowed it to two. Donor 5546 was a fitness
trainer described by sperm-bank staff as “handsome and captivating.” Donor 3811 was a biology major with well-written essay answers; the affectionate way he described his aunts made the biographer like him; but what if he wasn’t as handsome as the first? Both of their health histories were perfect, or so they claimed. Was the biographer so shallow as to be swayed by handsomeness? But who wants
an ugly donor? But 3811 was not necessarily ugly. But was ugly even a problem? What she wanted was good health and a good brain. Donor 5546 claimed to be bursting with health, but she wasn’t sure about his brain.

So she bought vials of both. She wouldn’t stumble upon 9072, the just-right third, for another couple of months.

“Do you feel undeserving of a romantic partner?” asked the therapist.

“No,” said the biographer.

“Are you pessimistic about finding a partner?”

“I don’t necessarily
want
a partner.”

“Might that attitude be a form of self-protection?”

“You mean am I deluding myself?”

“That’s another way to put it.”

“If I say yes, then I’m not deluded. And if I say no, it’s further evidence of delusion.”

“We need to end there,” said the therapist.

Then she would
be called in to help boil the puffin.

Walks home from the library the long way, past the school. The three o’clock bell is big over the harbor, flakes of bronze dropping slow to the water, bell in her mouth, bell in her scabbard. The blue school doors open: boots and scarves and shouts. Part-hid behind a bitter cherry, the mender waits. A string of Aristotle’s lanterns—the spiky teeth of sea urchins—hangs on her neck as
protection. Last week she stood here an hour until the last child came out and the doors stopped; but the girl she was waiting for did not appear.

The mender herself performed quite poorly at Central Coast Regional, which she left, fifteen years ago, without a diploma.
Fails to meet minimum standards. Acts deliberately uninterested in what goes on in class.
Oh bitches, it was no act. Her brain
wasn’t even in the room. In class the mender made sure never to talk except to fled souls or a bulb moon blown down into the stomach of the ocean. Her brain cells thrumming in their helmet went off to the forest road, where lay mole mother torn open by owl, her spent babies like red seeds; or to frondlets of sea lawn dragged into mazes by crabs. Her body stayed in the room, but her brain didn’t.