Red Clocks (21 page)

“But she’s not here.”

“Oh?”

“She’s at the conference.”

The biographer is clearly meant to understand what Mrs. Quarles means by
the conference.
“Oh?”

“You knew she was going, didn’t you?”

“To the—conference?”

“She told us you
nominated
her.”

“Of course. I must
have mixed up the dates.”

“I have to say,” says Mrs. Quarles, “she didn’t give us many details about this thing.”

“What did she tell you?”

“That it’s a Cascadia history conference for high school students, and only one student from any given school is nominated to attend.”

“That’s right,” says the biographer.

“Not as prestigious as the Math Academy, she said, but it will still look good on
her applications.”

Damp swoosh down the biographer’s throat, into her ribs.

Is the baby gone?

Her mouth is full of bits from the planned speech—chewy clichés.
I can give it a good home. I mean her. Or him. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.

“Yes,” mutters the biographer, “it’ll be impressive.”

“And they’re all staying at the same hotel in Vancouver? Is there adult supervision?”

The
biographer stands up. “I’m pretty sure they have supervision, yes. Sorry to interrupt your evening.”

“You’re
pretty
sure, or you’re sure? Mattie hasn’t been answering my calls. And I can’t find anything about the conference online.”

“That’s because of its, um, principles? The people who run it are committed to students spending less time on computers, so they work only on paper, through the
mail.”

Mattie’s mother is an intelligent woman, yet she appears to accept this.

The biographer walks slowly back to her apartment.

Archer Stephens may not be getting a namesake.

Her brother’s blue lips on the kitchen floor.

The gravelly whine in his voice when he said he wasn’t high.

“Yes, you are.”

“I’m not.”

“You are!”

“Jesus, I’m not—you’re so paranoid.”

But his pupils were the barest
dots in the pale green; mouth ajar; tongue slow. She knew the signs, was becoming something of an expert; and yet, and still, Archie’s denials undid her. Dad said, “You’re being duped!”—he was never much help, aside from the time he put up five grand for bail. She said, “I’m not paranoid; you’re pinned!” and Archie said, “Because it’s
sunny,
my friend.” Possibly it was not sunny at all, but the
biographer wanted to believe him. Her Archie, her dear one, no matter how buried, was still in there.

Shut up, she tells her monkey mind. Please shut up, you picker of nits, presser of bruises, counter of losses, fearer of failures, collector of grievances future and past.

At the kitchen table she opens her notebook to the
For which I am grateful
page. Adds to the list:

28. Two working legs

29. Two working hands

30. Two working eyes

31. The ocean

32. Penny on Sunday nights

33. Didier in the teachers’ lounge

34.

But fuck this shitty list. She’s sick of being grateful. Why the fuck should she be grateful? She is
angry
—at the amendment laws, the agencies, Dr. Kalbfleisch, her ovaries, the married couples, the term-house procedures. At Mattie for getting pregnant at the drop of
a trilby. At Archie for dying. At their mother for dying. At Roberta Louise Stephens for trying so hard.

Rips the gratitude list out of her notebook, lights it in the sink with a match. She hasn’t yet fixed the smoke alarm.

Mattie told her mother the conference was in Vancouver. She could have said Portland or Seattle.

By now she will have reached the border. If she manages to get across, manages
to find the clinic, manages to produce a convincing Canadian ID, the abortion will happen tomorrow.

She might not get across, of course.

She might be stopped.

Don’t hope she’s stopped, you monstress.

But she does.

Stares out a rain-lashed bus window at Washington State. Trees and trees and trees. A wet meadow or two. For the hundredth time she opens her passport. Date of expiration still valid. She is merely traveling, which is not a crime.

According to the online forums, you should carry evidence of your purpose in Canada. She and Ash created an email account for Delphine Gray—a sweet person
but not the best speller—and sent several messages to the daughter.
Can’t wait to see u Mattie, girl your going to love Raincouver, we will check out all the sites!

For the clinic, she has a British Columbia driver’s license bought from Clementine’s boyfriend. Ash is lucky to have an older sister to advise her, giant brothers to defend her. A big rowdy fish-scented gang.

She keeps her bag on
the aisle seat so that no friendly passenger can inquire about her destination. Rolls a licorice nib on her tongue. The sugar and chemicals ride her veins to the clump. Half Ephraim, half her.

She went to Vancouver once with Yasmine’s family. Mrs. Salter, who represented Portland (District 43) in the Oregon State Legislature, was giving a speech on housing rights. The daughter remembers a city
in a bowl of mountains and dark silver water. Bored at the hotel, she and Yas started their list of cardiac weights. The heart of a Canada goose weighs seven ounces. Of a caribou, seven pounds.

The bus judders to a halt. The daughter opens her eyes. Dark-green forest, steel-colored sky, a chain of tollbooths crowned with red maple leaves.

“Everyone off,” shouts the driver. “Take all belongings
with you and remove your suitcases from the luggage compartment.”

A woman calls, “Can I leave a sweater to save my seat?”

“No, ma’am, you may not.”

“What is this,” she says, “the Soviet Union?”

The passengers are herded through the icy air into a low wooden building next to the tollbooths. Pale young men in olive-green uniforms sit behind the desks. A muscular dog led by an officer trots across
the linoleum, nails clicking.

Do they have pregnancy-sniffing dogs?

Seekers are transported back in Canadian police cars, or buses—the daughter isn’t sure. When they arrive in their home states, they are charged with conspiracy to commit murder.

An officer scans her passport. “What’s your destination in Canada?”

“Vancouver.”

“Reason for your trip?”

“Visiting a friend.”

“For what purpose?”

“Vacation,” says the daughter.

The officer looks at the passport again. Looks at her forehead, then at her chest. “You’re how old, miss?”

“Almost sixteen. My birthday’s in February.”

“And you’re traveling alone to Vancouver—for a vacation?”

Her face is getting hot. “My friend lives there. She used to go to my school in Oregon but moved to Canada a few years ago and I’m visiting her.”

Don’t
offer too many details,
say the forums.

“What’s your friend’s name and address?”

“Delphine Gray. She’s picking me up from the bus station.”

“You don’t know her address?”

“Sorry, yes, I do. Four-six-one-eight Laburnum Street, Vancouver.”

“Phone number?”

“We always talk online, so I don’t—I don’t need her number. It’s so much cheaper to talk online. But I have an email from her printed out,
if you want to see it?”

“Why did you print out her email?”

“It has her address on it.”

“You said she was picking you up from the bus station.”

“I know, but just in case? Like if I need to take a cab.”

“Wait here, okay?” says the officer.

You can’t say it was rape or incest—nobody cares how it got into you.

The daughter watches the Soviet sweater woman and her husband pass their check. A
middle-aged white couple breezes through after them. Older Asian woman: breeze. Younger black guy: less of a breeze. They ask him extra questions, which he answers in a flat, irritated voice. But he, too, finally heads back outside.

“Matilda Quarles?” says an officer with frizzy blond curls. “Would you come with me?”

“Where?”

“Just come with me, please.”

“My bus is leaving in a minute.”

“I understand that. You need to come with me.”

“But what if I miss my bus?”

The officer crosses her big arms. “Do we have a problem here?”

“No, ma’am.”

Was disappointed to learn the girl’s name—such a well-behaved name. The mender’s own is no better. People have asked, over the years, Is it actually Virginia? Jennifer? No, just Gin. Are you named for a relative? No, for the alcohol. Oh, how funny, but really, where does it come from? But really it came from the alcohol, her mother’s preferred.

The mender would have named the girl
Temple Jr.

She doesn’t remember the pain but knows there was pain; and Temple saying “Over soon, over soon” while she rocked the mender; and eating cherries Temple had dug the pits out of; and her stomach feeling spongy and collapsed. She doesn’t remember the baby. They kept it elsewhere in the hospital. Every two hours the nurses brought in a manual pump to express colostrum, then milk, from
her engorged breasts. The agency woman came with papers to sign.

People used to believe that new roses were born from the cinders of burnt roses, new frogs from rotting dead ones. Which is no stranger than believing the mender gave Lola a potion that made her fall down the stairs, or that the mender’s mother is out there, somewhere, alive.

When the mender was a baby, her mother stayed clean.
“She never used drugs while she was breastfeeding,” said Temple. “Which doesn’t exactly warrant a medal, but—you were important to her. Don’t forget that, okay?”

A bad mother who was sometimes not bad. Who could still be out there, living off flowers in a tower, yarn in a barn.

Mother and mender and girl: descended from Goody Hallett of Eastham, Massachusetts, who tied lanterns to the flukes
of whales.

On her way to meet Bryan, the tsunami siren goes off. She pulls over on the cliff road. The wail, forlorn and animal, lifts and crests, swings down and up and over again. A haunted wolf. Once a month it goes for three minutes, followed by chimes (all clear) or a piercing blast (evacuate). If an earthquake blows up the sea, a sucking wall of water will come at them, and minutes will matter.

The sprites are on the hill, higher than any wave could reach, playing camping with their father.

The ocean is a green pane. Pillars of rock shaped like chimneys, seals, and haystacks rise from the water.

She hears the chimes. Safe, sound.

She could be caught: a text sent to the wrong phone.

Or she could confess. Watch her husband’s face when she says
I slept with Bryan.

She keeps the house
and he gets an apartment in town, carpools to school with Ro. The apartment will have a second bedroom for the sprites, who’ll stay with him on weekends. During the week things won’t be much different, no help with bath and bedtime as usual; same with the mornings, when she alone handles the boiling of oatmeal and dressing of bodies and brushing of teeth. But the weekends—the wife will have those
to herself.

Or Didier could stay in the house, for now. The drafts and dripping taps and ugly wallpaper. The house has been in her family for generations; she read her first chapter book in its dining room, got her first period in its bathroom, watched Bex take her first steps on its porch. But for a while now she’s been letting it go.

Too chickenshit to leave first, she will blow up her life
instead.

Wenport is a dreary townlet adjacent to a pulp mill, and no one from Newville goes there except to buy drugs. Sometimes the wife asks herself which of her children is more likely to buy drugs one day, and the answer is always: Didier.

She parks right in front of the coffee shop. It wouldn’t be Didier himself spotting the car, of course—he is crouched in a tent of blankets in the living
room, being fed marshmallows fakely cooked on a fake fire—but Ro? Pete Xiao? Mrs. Costello?

I thought I saw Susan’s car the other day …

Was Susan in Wenport with Bryan Zakile?

The coffee shop is too warm. The wife slips off her jacket and sweat darts to her cheeks. It is three minutes after two. The only other customers are two trench-coated boys playing cards.

“Can I getcha?” says the barista.

Almond pastries glisten under the glass.

“Tall skim latte, please,” says the wife.

“For your info, ma’am, we are an independent business with no ties to multinational corporations. I.e., a mermaid-free zone.”

“What?” The wife has one eye on the door, one eye on the boys. They could be Didier’s students. Or Bryan’s.

“You need to order a
small,
” says the barista.

“Then can I have a small skim
latte. And a water.”

“Water is self-serve.”

She settles at the table farthest from the boys, facing the door. Ten minutes after two.

One boy cries, “Your griffin spell doesn’t frighten me, sir!”

Seventeen minutes after. No texts or missed calls.

At twenty after, she will leave.

At twenty after, she finishes all the water in her cup.

She will leave in one minute.

At 2:24, Bryan appears.
Not in a hurry at all. “Well,
hi
there,” he says. “How’s your day going?”