Red Clocks (26 page)

“What’s that sound!”

“Oh no, the plane’s running out of gas!”

“My only choice is to fall into the sea!”

“I’m falling!
Flump
.”

“Flump.”

In a non-game
voice Shell says, “Gross, why is there dust all over your floor?”

Bex looks at the floor, then up at the wife.

“My mom says,” adds Shell, “that a clean house is the only house worth living in.”

That’s enough, Perfect. That is enough.

“I guess your mom doesn’t know much about dust,” says the wife. “Because if she did, then she’d know that dust has pollen fibers, which are very good for you.”

Bex smiles.

“How are they good for you?” says Shell.

This wallpaper is horrendous. Dark purple flowers on a brown ground. It shouldn’t be the first thing her girl sees every morning.

“When you breathe them in, they create more white blood cells in your body, which keep you from getting sick. Dust is
extremely
nutritious.”

By dinnertime her husband hasn’t appeared, so she serves the kids their
casserole, slides the dish back into a two-hundred-degree oven, hustles Shell out to Blake Perfect’s car, gives Bex and John a bath, tries to recall when Didier last gave them a bath. While she’s reading about the little fur family (
Warm as toast, smaller than most
) the front door slams and voices thud in the hall.

“Will Daddy come say good night?”

“I don’t know. That’s up to him.”

“Well, can
you
tell
him to?”

Downstairs she sees he has managed to find the casserole, which is piled, all of it, onto his and Pete’s plates. “This is hella good,” says Pete by way of greeting, slurping a forkful.

“Yeah it is,” says Didier. “Did you use more salsa than usual?”

“So there’s none left? I didn’t have any.”

“I figured you ate with the kids.”

“I waited for you.”

Didier looks down at his
plate. “Want the rest of mine?”

“I’ll make a sandwich.”

She slathers cream cheese on whole wheat, adds cucumber slices and salt. A virtuous sandwich. A sandwich that might need to be supplemented, later on, by soft-batch chocolate-chip cookies.

Soft-batch—scenic overlook—Bryan Zakile—

Something nips at the edge of her mind.

She looks over at the ficus, which, though brittle, is still alive
(didn’t she water it yesterday?), and the Medusa’s head plant, always chancy in winter, snaky green arms quick to rot without enough sun.

Something Bryan told her.

“I’m literally stunned,” Pete is saying, probably about a school matter the wife can’t be part of.

“I thought you hated it,” she says, “when people say ‘literally.’”

Shark-eyed glare. “I was referring to people’s misuse and overuse
of the term. In this case, I
am
literally stunned.”

“By what?”

“The news of my colleague acquiring a literary agent for her flaming piece of hogswaddle.”

The wife’s face aches. “Ro got an agent?” She will sell the story of the polar explorer, be paid, be reviewed, maybe even become—

“No, Penny Dreadful.”

“Good for her,” says the relieved, disgusting wife.

“And bad for literature,” says Pete.

Something is chewing now on her brain. Some hook, some link, two things she is meant to connect.

Bryan—the cookies—the Medusa’s head—

“I need to go smoke.”

“Sorry if I’m
boring
you, Didier,” says Pete, “but I happen to think it’s important to critique the hegemony of commercial publishing. Otherwise, they’ve got us where they want us.”

“Who?”

“The corporate tastemakers. The romance–industrial
complex. Dance, puppet, dance!”

“Go tell the kids good night,” says the wife.

“I will, right after—”

“By the time you finish that, they’ll be asleep.”

Didier throws the unlit cigarette on the counter and heads for the stairs.

In the bathroom she pees, wipes, stands, but does not pull up her underwear. She gazes past her sucked‑in stomach at the shaggy hillock. How many individual hairs are
on this mound? More than a hundred, or less? She pinches one and yanks it out. It hurts a little. She pulls another. Hurts. And a third. A fourth, a fifth. The wife lifts the seat and lays the hairs, one by one, on the toilet rim.

What is nipping at her mind?

Something about Bryan.

Going after him was a coward’s move.

She needs to figure out how she got to be such a coward.

But it’s more
than Bryan.

But what?

She looks at the kitchen calendar, where
T
has been written and crossed out, written and crossed out, written and crossed out.

Stands at the sink, scrubbing the casserole dish.

Didier and Pete come back in from their cigarettes.

“Want a beer, Peetle-juice?”

Little animal burnt black, trying to cross. Rubber and shivering.

“Can you believe she’s never heard of them?”

“Dude, the sum total of Ro’s musical knowledge would fit into Bryan Zakile’s jockstrap.”

Rubber and shivering.

“Do they make those in extra-small?”

Strapped jock. Jock of Bryan. Balls. Family jewels. Father. Mother. Cousin.
Cousin
—

“He actually uses a kids’ size.”

They don’t have any kids, so why not leave?

Cousin beaten to a paste.

Oh no.

The wife drops the casserole dish. It clatters
at the bottom of the sink.

Where is her phone—where is—“Where’s my
phone?
” Furiously shaking water off her hands.

“Right here on the table,” says Didier. “Jesus.”

She snatches it up and hurries into the dark dining room, dialing.

He picks up on the first ring. “Susan?”

Blood beats hard in her neck. “Listen, Edward”—talking faster than she ever talks—“you need to interview a new witness, his
name’s Bryan Zakile, he told me firsthand that his cousin’s husband hits her, and his cousin is Dolores Fivey. I think he could—”

“Hold on,” says Edward.

She is light-headed. Can’t find her breath.

“Did he witness the hitting himself?”

“Okay,
second
hand, but—”

“Also known as hearsay,” he says.

“Which is admissible if it constitutes materially exculpatory evidence, and if corroborating circumstances
clearly support the hearsay’s trustworthiness.”

“Damn, Susan. After seven years?”

Splashing glow in her chest. She rushes on: “It would introduce some compelling
doubt,
at least—”

“Hold it. Mmh.”

Silence, while he thinks.

Her whole body is throbbing. This matters.

Edward says, “It would corroborate Ms. Percival’s claim that Mrs. Fivey disclosed her husband’s physical abuse. Which would in
turn suggest a motive for Mrs. Fivey to lie about the—mmh.”

“You should talk to Bryan tonight,” she says. “I’ll text you his number.”

“Wait a minute. You said, ‘He told me his cousin’s husband hits her.’ Most people have more than one cousin.”

“He didn’t specify, but it
is
Mrs. Fivey, Edward. It has to be.”

“When did he give you this information?”

“A couple of weeks ago.”

“And you’re only
telling me now?”

The glow cools. “I didn’t—connect them.”

“Mmh. I don’t know that any of this will make a difference. But give me his number. Good night.”

She sends the text and sits, twitching and exhilarated, in her grandmother’s chair in the dark.

Keeps asking for different blankets, but they say work with what you have, Stretch. She hasn’t been sleeping. Her throat hurts. She misses Temple, who would burn the bleachy blankets and boil a throat syrup of marshmallow root and say
Show them you’re not afraid
.

Except she is.

There is one man on the jury whose eyes are alive. He looks at the mender like she’s a person. He smiled
when Clementine told the courtroom “Gin Percival saved my vagina.” The other eleven watch her like she’s batshit.

Kook.
People like to throw around labels
.

Kooky.
Don’t let them define you
.

Kookaburra.
You are exactly yourself, that’s who
.

Temple, wish you weren’t gone.

The lawyer is excited today. His face is moving faster. He’s brought licorice nibs and lettuce, a brown loaf from Cotter,
butter in a ziplock. He explains about the new witness he’s calling—Lola’s cousin—who doesn’t want to testify, so must be considered hostile.

“He’ll just lie,” says the mender, ripping bread with her teeth.

“Not if I approach him the right way.” He takes the butter-smeared hunk she hands him and sets it on the metal bench, too polite to say no. “And if he says what I think he’s going to say,
then we recall Dolores Fivey to the stand.”

“Also me? I could tell them what she told me. After he broke her finger he said she better start taking calcium supplements.”

“You—” The lawyer smiles. “Not you.”

“Why?”

“You are so much your own person, Gin. And some people on the jury may feel … unnerved by that? People tend to be more comfortable with speech and behavior that does what they already
expect it to do. Yours doesn’t, and I respect that it doesn’t. But I have to think about the jury’s perceptions.”

She side-eyes him. Being fake? Talking down? With this lawyer, not easy to tell.

Clementine waves at her from the gallery. Cotter’s there too, and the pissed-off blond lady from the library who doesn’t lower her voice when talking to the librarian.

The mender can’t remember seeing
Lola’s cousin ever before. He looks like your basic man in a suit, dark hair cruelly combed.

“Mr. Zakile,” says her lawyer, “it is true you were a soccer star in college?”

The cousin’s mouth opens in surprise. “I don’t know about ‘star,’ but yeah, I made a contribution.”

“More than a contribution, I would say! According to the University of Maryland student newspaper,
The Diamondback,
you earned
All-Conference honors with your ‘exquisite ball control and panther-like aggressiveness.’”

“Objection,” says the prosecutor. “Where is Mr. Tilghman going with this?”

“Your Honor, I’m establishing context and background for this witness. Mr. Zakile, the
Washington Post
described you as ‘a revelation’ in a win over Georgetown, during which you scored three goals.”

Hesitant smile from the cousin.
“That was a great game.”

“Plainly, then, Central Coast Regional was fortunate to hire you as their boys’ soccer coach. I’m told you are an effective coach—would you agree?”

“We went fourteen and four last season. I’m proud of my guys.”

“Your Honor,
what?
” says the prosecutor.

The mender watches her lawyer lead Bryan Zakile to water. As the story of his own awesomeness—as athlete, coach, English
teacher, and citizen of the world—unfolds, the witness grows animated. Talkative. Of course he loves his family. Of course he wants to tell the truth as an example to his students. Of course he has no reason to slander Mr. Fivey. On the contrary (as her lawyer meekly points out) he has a motive to
protect
him, even if that would require lying, because Mr. Fivey has the power to fire him. At least,
he
had
the power. Now, of course, Mr. Fivey cannot fire him, no matter what Bryan says on the stand. That would look biased, wouldn’t it? That would look, frankly,
actionable
. So if Bryan had the freedom, as he now does, to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth—the freedom to act as befits a man of his character—what would he tell us about his cousin Lola’s relationship with her husband?

At two forty p.m. on January fifteenth she waits, sweating and trembling, outside the door of eighth-period Latin.

It will need to be a home birth, to circumvent hospital records. Mattie is young and strong and shouldn’t be in any danger. The biographer can drive her to the ER if something goes awry. She’ll find a midwife to help them. They will doctor the birth certificate.

The girl will have all summer to recover.

The biographer will handle Mr. and Mrs. Quarles somehow.

Mattie emerges, knotting the blue scarf at her throat. Her cheeks are fuller, but you can’t otherwise tell—scarves and big sweatshirts and winter coats do a fine job of hiding her.

“Quick word?” says the biographer.

Too cold for a walk. They duck into the music room, used for storage ever since
the music program was canceled. Posters of tubas and flutes hang over broken chairs, reams of copy paper.

“Are you checking to see if I’m all right?” says Mattie.

“Well, are you?”

“It smells like ham in here.”

The biographer only smells her own watery dread.

“Nothing has changed,” says Mattie, “since you asked me the other day.”

The biographer opens her mouth.