Red Clocks (23 page)

“Sorry?”

“Don’t be the free milk.”

In the chilly waiting room, she eats chocolate-covered peanuts from the machine.

Mom has called twice to ask about the conference. Listening to her messages (“So proud of you, pigeon!”)
makes the daughter’s nose run.

The daughter is ashamed to be ashamed of Mom when cashiers say “You and your grandma find everything you were looking for?”

This is the worst day of her life.

Second worst: when her father mistook Representative Salter for the school bus driver.

Is the failure of this trip a sign? She has tried twice now. Maybe she should just stay pregnant. Skip the Math Academy
and push it out and give it to some couple with gray hair and good hearts. It’s the legal way. The safe way.
Think of all the happy adopted families that wouldn’t exist.

She could skip the Math Academy and push it out and quit Central Coast Regional. Finish high school online. Let her mom help her wash and dress and feed it. When the daughter tries to picture herself as a mother, she sees the
wall of trees by the soccer field, swaying and faceless.

She doesn’t want to skip the Math Academy.

(She kicks Nouri’s gothsickle ass at calculus.)

Or to push it out.

She doesn’t want to wonder; and she would.

The kid too—
Why wasn’t I kept?

Was his mother too young? Too old? Too hot? Too cold?

She doesn’t want him wondering, or herself wondering.

Are you mine?

And she doesn’t want to
worry she’ll be found.

Selfish.

But she has a self. Why not use it?

Thanks Mrs. Costello for coming early. Kisses John’s perfect ear. Gets on the road.

Twice almost turns the car around.

She hasn’t been inside a courtroom since law school. This one is sultry with rain drippings raised to a boil by the heaters. At the front table sit Edward and Gin Percival. The wife can’t see their faces. Fluorescent light bounces off Edward’s shaved head. No sign of
Mrs. Fivey, but Mr. is in the front row, checking his watch. Eight forty-five a.m.

The wife takes a seat against the back wall. In the jury box are seven women, five men, middle-aged and elderly, all white. Edward should have asked for a bench trial. Temple’s niece won’t make a good impression on any jury around here.

“Gin Percival,” says the gnomish judge, “you will stand while the charges
against you are read.”

She gets to her feet. Dark hair in a bun, orange jumpsuit loose at her waist. She’s gotten thinner since the wife last saw her, on the low metal stool at the library.

The bailiff intones:

“One misdemeanor count of Medical Malpractice by Commission against Sarah Dolores Fivey.

“One felony count of Conspiracy to Commit Murder in acceding to terminate the pregnancy of Sarah
Dolores Fivey.”

How much time could she get? The wife can’t recall anything about sentence lengths.

She can recall reading aloud “manslaughter” as “man’s laughter,” and Edward being the only person in class to agree it was funny.

Unable to see Mr. Fivey’s face, she pictures its mortification. Everyone knows his business now. The principal’s wife and her backwoods abortion. No matter how this
case turns out, the Fiveys will leave tarnished.

From the prosecution table rises a slender red-haired attorney in a pin-striped suit. She takes her time strolling to the jury box, palms together at her throat as though in prayer. She looks younger than the wife.

“Fellow Oregonians, you’ve heard the charges against Gin Percival. Your job is simple: to decide whether there is sufficient evidence
to convict Ms. Percival of these crimes. During the course of this trial, you’ll be shown a vast array of facts that establish her guilt on both counts. Listen to the facts. Base your verdict on the facts. I know that the facts will lead you to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Gin Percival is guilty of the crimes she’s been charged with.”

“Vast array”—lazy phrase. Repetition of “crimes,”
“charge,” “guilt,” and “facts”—predictable move. Edward can take her.

He clears his throat. “Thank you, Judge Stoughton, and thank you, members of the jury—you’re performing an important civic duty.” He pauses to scratch the back of his neck, under the collar. “Mmh. My counterpart has told you that your job is simple, and I would agree. But I beg to differ with her assertion that the evidence
will clearly show you much of anything. Because there is virtually no evidence. You will be presented with hearsay, speculation, and circumstantial evidence, but no
direct
evidence. And your job, which is, indeed, simple, is to see that there is not enough evidence to convict my client beyond a reasonable doubt of these spurious charges.”

His sentences are too long. He should have said “bogus”
instead of “spurious.” This is rural Oregon.

“Thank you, and I look forward to working with you over the coming days.” He sits, wipes his face with a handkerchief.

Gin Percival keeps staring at the wall. Will Edward dare to put her on the stand? By all accounts—and from what the wife has smelled at the library—she’s a bit unhinged.

Has the wife become a person who believes all accounts?

Sort
of, yes, she has.

She has been too tired to care.

The Personhood Amendment, the overturning of
Roe v. Wade,
the calls for abortion providers to face the death penalty—the person she planned to be would care about this mess, would bother to be furious.

Too tired to be furious.

The past future Susan MacInnes could have been a battling litigator who brought milestone cases to the higher courts.
Edward is battling; he has marched into the mess. The wife can hardly bring herself to read about the case.

Bring yourself
.

At the library, Gin Percival’s hair sometimes had twigs in it, and she gave off an oniony scent. The wife felt repelled by her animal dishevelment; yet she is coming to see the value in being repellent.

Bryan was a pitiful diversion, an excuse. This is an inside job.

Whatever frees Gin Percival to leave her hair twiggy and wear shapeless sack dresses and smell unwashed—the wife wants that.

Two days, two nights every week to herself.

Tell Didier you are leaving
.

Before having kids, she envisioned motherhood as a jubilant merging. She never thought she would long to spend time away from them. It is hideous to admit she can’t bear the merging 24‑7. Same guilt
that’s kept her from putting John in daycare: she doesn’t want it to be true that she wants to be apart.

The judge says, “Prosecution may call its first witness.”

Mrs. Costello, never one to put much faith in science, believes Gin Percival cursed the waters, charmed the tides, and brought the seaweed back. Half of these jurors may think the same. And if a witch can charm the tides, what else
is she capable of?

The pin-striped suit stands up. “Your Honor, we call Dolores Fivey.”

In law school, the wife excelled at trial performance. She used to get rounds of applause. But here in the gallery, watching the judicial choreography, she feels no desire to go back to law school. If she puts John in daycare it will be for other reasons, as yet unknown.

Lola’s tits aren’t so fat anymore, they look drained, cells collapsing like houses of butter. She’s wearing them thrust up hell-for-leather, but they are ghosts of their former selves. Butter ghosts. She sits in the box in her push‑up bra and a blue suit with long sleeves to hide the scar—less of a scar (thanks to the mender) than it would have been.

“Mrs. Fivey,” says the prosecutor,
“please tell us how you came to be acquainted with the accused.”

The lawyer leaps up. “Objection. Your Honor, I ask that the prosecution refer to Ms. Percival using the less inflammatory term ‘defendant.’”

Drowning in his robes, the walnut-faced judge says, “Sustained.”

“How did you meet the defendant?”

Lola won’t stop staring at her hands. The mender loves those hands, small and graceful,
the nails filed square. They held the mender’s ass timidly at first; then not timidly. They found their way into her wet scabbard.

“Mrs. Fivey?”

In a frightened voice: “I went to her for medical treatment.”

“Even though the acc—sorry,
defendant
is not a medical doctor? Or any kind of doctor, in fact? Even though she does not even have a high school diploma?”

“Objection,” says the lawyer. “The
prosecution is testifying.”

“Withdrawn. Why did you seek medical treatment from the, ah, defendant?”

“I needed,” says Lola, then stops.

“Mrs. Fivey?” says the prosecutor. “What did you need?”

“Medical treatment.”

“Yes, that’s been established. What specific treatment was it?”

Lola shrugs. Twists her hands on the rail of the witness box.

“Mrs. Fivey?”

“You will answer the question, Mrs.
Fivey,” says the judge.

“A termination.”

“A termination of what?”

“Of …”

“Please speak up, Mrs. Fivey.”

“Of a pregnancy? I thought I was pregnant but I wasn’t.”

In exchange for testifying, the lawyer explained, Lola gets immunity. Won’t be charged with conspiring to murder.

“And did Ms. Percival agree to provide an abortion?”

She looks at the prosecutor with her beautiful, painted‑on eyes.
Then back down at her hands. “Yeah, she did.”

Lola has reason to lie. She’s a cornered animal. The life she saves will be her own.

There is nobody to contradict her but the mender herself, who is a forest weirdo, a seaweed-hexing kook.

This predicament is not new. The mender is one of many. They aren’t allowed to burn her, at least, though they can send her to a room for ninety months. Officials
of the Spanish Inquisition roasted them alive. If the witch was lactating, her breasts exploded when the fire grew high.

Doesn’t need to be convinced. What’s one absence? She has always been the good girl. Spotless record. Besides, she can’t think—her eyes keep closing. She wants to sleep for a year.

“Cool,” says Ash. “I’ve never seen a testimony before.”

When the Quarles family moved to Newville, Ash was the only person willing to hang out with the daughter. She warned her that Good Ship uses ghost
pepper (which can numb your lips permanently) in its hot and sour soup. She took her to the lighthouse. She taught her to find creatures in the tide pools—ass-mouthed anemones, ribbed limpets whose shells fit into dents in the rock called home scars.

They drive north in slashing sleet. Order mochas at the drive-through espresso hut. Lick the quaking towers of whip.

“New scarf?”

“Christmas,”
says the daughter.

“The purple one looked better.”

Yasmine wouldn’t like Ash much; but she is all the daughter has.

She lights a cigarette. Everything out the window is gray, the sky and the cliffs and the water, the cold curtains of rain. The cops at the hospital kept asking “How did she do it? What did she use?” and the daughter couldn’t answer.

“So, um, I have a question,” she says.

Ash
holds out two fingers. The daughter puts her cigarette between them.

“Can you ask your sister for the number of a term house?”

Ash exhales, hands the cigarette back. “No way.”

“But the ones online, you can’t tell if they’re real or traps. Can’t you just
ask?
”

“Fuck no. Clementine wouldn’t tell me, anyhow.”

“She might, if she knew I didn’t—have much time left?”

“Yeah, but no. Too dangerous.
Clem knows a girl who got such a bad infection at this place in Seattle she had to get emergency surgery and almost died.”

“Was she arrested?”

“Of course.” Ash reaches for the cigarette again. “But her dad hired this famous lawyer. The girl told my sister the term house was sickening. She saw a plastic bucket of another girl’s stuff just sitting there. A
clear
plastic bucket.”

Hot spike in
the daughter’s ribs. Taste of pennies on her teeth.

Yasmine didn’t die either. But she lost so much blood she needed transfusions. All night the daughter and her parents waited at the ER with Mrs. Salter, who rocked back and forth in her pink ski jacket. The lights squeaked. The daughter had to pee horribly but wanted to be there when the doctor brought news.

Yasmine’s uterus was so badly damaged
it had to be removed.

The cops came while she was still in the hospital.

The witch wears an orange prisoner suit, not the stitched sack, and her hair looks brushed, which in the forest cabin it did not. Good thing she can’t see Gin Percival’s face, in case the face looks scared. The daughter, scared all the time now, wants there to be people who aren’t.

Clementine is scheduled to testify as
a character witness. The rest of Ash’s family thinks Gin Percival contaminated the waters. More fish are turning up dead in the nets, and the dead man’s fingers are messing up the hulls of boats.

“Please silence your electronic devices,” says the little judge.

At this moment Ro/Miss is taking attendance and doing the bit where she repeats the names of the missing (“Quarles …? Quarles …?
Quarles
…?
”) in reference to an old movie the daughter hasn’t seen.