Sundry Days (10 page)

Chapter 17

David

In Sickness

At first I wasn’t really worried. Not when she tossed and turned so much in bed I couldn’t sleep either.  Not when she ran to the bathroom in the hall to vomit.

I wish we didn’t have to share a big bathroom with everyone on our floor. Rebekah has to bind up her breasts and throw on clothes even if it’s the middle of the night when she has to go.

Maybe she ate something bad at dinner. The food’s not great here, but I ate what she did and I don’t feel sick.

“You okay, Rebekah?” I ask when she stumbles back to bed.

She doesn’t say anything.  Her lips are closed tight, her face scrunched up like she’s in pain.

“What’s the matter? Tell me.”

“My stomach hurts. Real bad.”

“Like period cramps?” She doesn’t have her period, and she usually doesn’t get cramps. But who knows. I reach over to massage her belly.

“No. Don’t touch me, David. It hurts. Really hurts.”

Now I’m really scared.

“I think I’ve got appendicitis. I’ve got all the symptoms.” She starts crying, curling herself up into a ball.

“What are we going to do?” she wails.

“We’ve got to get you to a doctor. The medical center’s not far. We don’t have a choice.”

“No! Are you crazy?  The first thing they’ll notice when I take down my pants is I’m a girl. Then they’ll cut off your balls, cut out my appendix, and send me back for marriage rehabilitation. It’ll be the end.”

She’s sobbing now. I don’t think they’ll do what she says—not in that order, anyway, and not that quickly. But she’s right. That’ll be the end.

What are we going to do?  I stroke her head lightly.

Shit. Fuck. Hell. Damn. What are we going to do? I can’t let her suffer. I can’t let her die.

“We have to get you to the medical center.”

“No! I told you no, David! I’m not going there. Help me put on my shoes,” she orders.

I do what she says. I’m shaking. I’d rather someone cut off my hand, both hands, than have Rebekah hurting this way. But please, not my balls. What the fuck. Cut off my balls. We don’t have a choice. This is serious.

“Listen, David,” she says, taking a breath, fighting the pain. “We’ll go to Keira’s. She lives above her store. Maybe she knows a doctor who won’t turn us in. The doctors at the medical center would turn us in for sure. We can’t go there. We’ll go to Keira’s.”

I don’t understand how this could happen so suddenly. In a few days we’d be out of here.  On our way to somewhere safe. What kind of a fucking trick is this for The Designer to play on us? If I even believe in The Designer. Then I start praying.  Praying in my head to The Designer, as Rebekah and I stumble out of our room.  It’s dark. The middle of the night.  I carry her down the stairs. Then we stumble outside with my arm around her, holding her up.

The sun-cycle still has a charge.  But Rebekah is in so much pain she can barely get on.  She clings to my back, and I reach one arm around to hold her.

Hell, I wish this wasn’t happening.

“Please,” I pray in my head to The Designer who may, or may not exist. “Please let Rebekah be okay. Please don’t let her die. Please let us get help. Please let Rebekah be okay. Please let Rebekah be okay.”

It’s almost a chant in my head. But it’s keeping me focused as we ride to Keira’s place. Keira. She’s just a real old lady. What are we thinking?

“Please let Keira help us,” I pray. “Please let Keira help us. Please let Keira help us. Please let Keira know a doctor who can fix Rebekah. Please let Rebekah be okay. Please let Rebekah be okay.”

When we get to Keira’s store, I start pounding on the door.  Pounding, pounding.  It’s dark. She’s probably sleeping upstairs and can’t hear. Then, finally, a light comes on, and Keira opens the door.

I carry Rebekah in, set her down, she leans on me, and between the two of us, we tell Keira what’s wrong—that Rebekah’s pretty sure that she’s got appendicitis.

Keira tells me to carry Rebekah up the stairs to her little apartment, and put her in the recently vacated bed.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she says.

This is bad. What are we going to do? Rebekah is moaning and sobbing. I’m sobbing, too.

“Please,” I pray, as I watch her writhe in pain. “Please let Keira bring someone who can help my poor Rebekah. Please don’t let her die. I promise I’ll be a better person. I promise I’ll never doubt again that you exist.  Please don’t let her die.”

I don’t know how long it is before Keira returns with the doctor. She carries a big bag of medical instruments and supplies, and looks to be about my mother’s age, maybe a little older.  Though she doesn’t look like Mama, she puts me in mind of her. Which somehow makes me feel better.

Rebekah moans as the doctor pulls off her pants and examines her.

She talks soothingly to Rebekah.

“You’re a good diagnostician, my dear,” she says. “You do have appendicitis. Your appendix has to come out. It has to come out now. But not to worry. I’ve done this operation countless times. You’re a nurse. Maybe you’ve seen it done. It’s not a complicated procedure.  I’m going to help you. And Keira and your young man are going to help me help you. Hush now. Soon you won’t feel a thing.”

We move Rebekah to the kitchen table, which Keira has draped with a clean sheet. It’s not a big table. Her legs dangle over the side, bend at the knee and are supported on chairs. Whatever the doctor has given Rebekah, it’s knocked her out completely. She pours stuff over Rebekah’s belly to disinfect it. She pours stuff over everyone’s hands, too.

I do what the doctor tells me to do. Bring more light. Hold this. Do that. I watch as she cuts through Rebekah’s beautiful skin. I see the blood pooling. I don’t faint. I watch. I don’t watch. I watch. I pray. And after what seems like an interminable time, Rebekah is finally sewed up, bandaged, and gingerly carried back to the bed.

Well.

I start praying again. This time thanking The Designer, over and over and over until I fall asleep on the floor next to the bed.

Keira insists that Rebekah remain in her bed for as long as it takes her to recover.  I don’t mind at all sleeping on the floor as long as I’m close to Rebekah. Keira takes the couch in her tiny living room. She says it’s comfortable.

“The Designer knows I’ve spent enough of my waking hours in a bed,” she laughs.

Keira is a widow. Has been for a long time. That makes sense, I suppose. All of her husbands would have been considerably older than she was, and she’s very old. She’s lived alone, over her store, ever since her last husband died.

I don’t understand how a woman could be a pleasure shop lady, or how her husbands, no matter how old they are, could abide having a wife who spends her working hours pleasuring boys and men.  But that’s how things are in the Coalition. How they’ve always been.  Men aren’t supposed to be jealous.  They’re supposed to share.

That’s not me. I’m very possessive. I could never share Rebekah. I don’t know what happened to make me this way, but my life has always been tangled with Rebekah’s. I couldn’t live without her.

Keira is wonderful to us. She’s an amazingly generous person.  I’ll always be grateful to her, and, of course to Dr. Guettel—who says to call her Elizabeth. She saved Rebekah’s life.

Rebekah is in some pain still, but nothing like she was before the operation. She’s also groggy from the medication Elizabeth has her take, and more than a little grumpy.

“Leave me alone, David,” she says when I fuss over her.

“No. I don’t want you to help me to the bathroom.”

“No, you can’t watch while Elizabeth changes the dressing. Go in the other room.”

Keira tells me not to feel bad. Elizabeth, too.  They assure me that Rebekah will be herself in a few days. She’s just not a very good patient.

It will be at least a couple of weeks until we can travel.

I clear out our room in the dorm, and go to see the administrator who helped us enroll.  He’s sorry about Rebekah, but says there’s really not much more he can do for us except wish us well. He gets our certificates, and says he’ll tell anyone who needs to know that my husband Beks had a family emergency and we had to leave before the graduation ceremony.

I figure the most direct way for us to get to Thunder Bay is by crossing the lakes. First, we’ll have to get to Sarnia, which is about 125 miles from here, at the southern tip of Lake Huron.  There we’ll book passage on a schooner or some other vessel. We’ll have to sail the length of Lake Superior as well.

I have no idea how we’ll get to the settlements beyond Thunder Bay.

“They do exist,” Elizabeth tells us when she comes to check on Rebekah.  “There have been reports for years about the awful things that go on in the cults between Thunder Bay and Winnipeg.”

“What awful things?” I ask.

“No awful things most likely,” she says. “But it doesn’t go over well here to imagine people living the way people must have lived before The Great Flood. Like they’ve gone back in time. Barbaric. It’s been four or five centuries since monogamy has been acceptable—or feasible. And we fear what we don’t understand.  People always have.”

Monogamy supposedly upsets the natural balance of things. If there’s only one female for every five or six males, it’s considered immoral for one female to mate for life with just one male.

“There are rumors that the monogamists kill most of their boy babies. Or that they castrate surplus boys and use them as slaves,” says Elizabeth. “I don’t believe it.”

“I don’t either,” says Keira. “Still, they must have the same worries as we do about the lack of females. A woman can have ten husbands or she can have one husband. The number of husbands doesn’t change the number of times she can give birth. Or not.”

Keira never had any children. She feels bad about that. Maybe that’s why she became a pleasure shop lady. She started earlier than most.

Like Harry and Todd, she treats us as if we’re her children. Which feels kind of nice, if I’m honest.

“Listen, young man,” she tells me. “You treat Rebekah right. Always. You thank The Designer every day for what you have.  No one knows what the future holds. That’s the only thing we do know for sure. And sometimes, there’s not a thing we can do to fix what’s wrong. But as long as you’re alive there’s hope.”

Rebekah is getting better.  I crawl in bed with her this night, careful not to hurt her.  I don’t want to do anything but hold her. And she lets me. She settles herself in my arms and sighs.

“We’ve been so lucky, David.”

“Well, your appendicitis scared the shit out of me. But you’re right. We’re lucky. Do you pray, Rebekah?”

It’s the first time I’ve ever asked her anything like that. We don’t generally talk about religion or The Designer. But I’m curious.

“I pray for you,” she says.  “I prayed for you when I thought I was going to die. I didn’t want to leave you.”

I kiss the top of her head, her forehead, her nose, her mouth. But gently. I don’t want to have sex. Not now. Not until she’s completely well.

“I love you so much it hurts,” I say.

“Yeah. Love can hurt. But not as bad as appendicitis.”

We both think that’s pretty funny, and fall asleep holding hands.

Chapter 18

Susannah

Life Goes On

Tom. Andy. Ryan. Seth. Sam. John.

John. Sam. Seth. Ryan. Andy. Tom.

My life consists of pleasuring men. I may as well be a pleasure lady. Open my own shop. Maybe I will once I’m no longer fertile. What difference does it make?

Tom. Andy. Ryan. Seth. Sam. John.

John. Sam. Seth. Ryan. Andy. Tom.

“You’re depressed, Susannah. There are drugs you can take. Good ones, smuggled from Winnipeg. You need to snap out of it,” says Mama, always the helpful, loving parent.

“Leave me alone.” Why can’t she leave me alone?

David.

What’s become of my baby? My firstborn? The infant I suckled? The little boy I cuddled on my lap?

“Susannah. Listen to me. You’re stronger than this. You’re a well-educated, intelligent, sensible woman. You’ve wallowed long enough. You have a family to take care of, other children who need you, husbands who need you.  You had the right to feel depressed. I concede that. But not forever. Life goes on. Get over it.”

“Leave me alone,” I tell her again. As if my mother ever listens to anyone but herself. “Why are you here?  You have no feelings, so of course nothing ever bothers you. I’m doing the best I can.”

“You have to get pregnant again. It’s expected.”

Expected. Yes. We have to do everything that’s expected of us.

“I can get you some of Danny’s sperm. It’s being collected and stored. I have contacts, access. You can have a girl,” she tells me in a confidential tone, as if this ray of wonderful news will suddenly break through the dark clouds that surround me.

So far, Danny has sired just two girls—Rebekah and the new one. But the Coalition is still banking on the red-head theory. Still aiming to give it a good test.

I cover my head with my hands and refuse to look at her or hear the nonsense she’s spouting. Eventually she leaves.

No matter how terrible I feel, I haven’t deprived my husbands of sex. It’s the least I can do. They’re good men. It’s not their fault I want to crawl into a hole and die. They take what they can get. And they worry about me.  Some more than others.

Tom. Andy. Ryan. Seth. Sam. John.

John. Sam. Seth. Ryan. Andy. Tom.

“Why won’t you go for counseling, Susannah? It might help. You of all people should know that,” says Tom. “You need help.  I can’t help you. None of us can here. But we all love you and want you to feel better. Professional counseling could help.”

I cry in his arms after we have sex. But I won’t take Tom’s advice. I can’t. I’ll deal with this myself. Or not. But I’m not going to go have a heart-to-heart with some know-it-all family counselor—like I used to be—who can’t possibly know how I feel.

Posters have been made of Rebekah and distributed throughout the Coalition. They’re displayed in public buildings. Wherever official business is conducted. We didn’t inform the authorities that she and David ran away. But they found out. How could they not?

Questions were asked when Rebekah didn’t show up for her pre-marital counseling sessions and evaluations. We were all interrogated but didn’t get into any real trouble for not reporting Rebekah’s absence immediately. Mama has pull.

She’s since come forward and spoken openly about her family’s heartbreak and shame. It’s actually helped her become more popular politically. Anna Gardener is now that powerful, sympathetic member of Parliament who is pushing for stronger protections for women, and harsher penalties for men—like her grandson—who do the unthinkable. She doesn’t want others to suffer like she has. Bah!

Sometimes I really hate her.

It’s been a long time, more than a year, since David and Rebekah went missing.

I’ve seen the posters of Rebekah. She’s not the only young runaway who’s being sought. But she’s probably the only one who dresses like a boy, and has severely cropped red hair. She’s also the only one who’s absconded along with Anna Gardener’s grandson. There’s no picture of David, but his description is included along with hers on Rebekah’s poster.

Where can she and David go and not be found?

I knew it was unlikely that they’d head to the coast of Tennessee, seeking shelter with Dora. Why would they do that?  But John and Danny thought it was a possibility. So they made the trip together. It took a very long time.  They had to go to Pittsburgh first. From there they took a serpentine river journey to Knoxville.  Very dangerous. Very grueling. And after all that, they found nothing.  Not Rebekah and David. Not Dora. Not the archaeological outpost.

That part of the continent is nearly deserted, John says.  There is still flooding along the coast when the storms come. No one they encountered knew anything about Dora or her so-called archaeologist friends.  She must have settled elsewhere.

Poor John. He’s a good father. Danny, too, I suppose. They’re hurting and they feel guilty about Rebekah.  Not like Dora, who evidently has never felt anything. Not for Rebekah, anyway.  If she had, our children would be safe now. Doing what they’re supposed to do. Not happy, maybe. But no one would be aiming to mutilate my son.

All of my husbands are upset, to one degree or another.

Tom. Andy. Ryan. Seth. Sam.

Each considers himself a father to David.

Sometimes I wonder if Tom knows that it was just him and me who made David. Tom knows a lot. But if he suspects, he would push that suspicion to the back of his mind and never acknowledge it.  What difference does it make, anyway? David didn’t inherit Tom’s good sense. Maybe that’s something that can’t be inherited.

John came home from Tennessee as depressed as me.

We no longer feel the joy we once felt with each other. But we continue to have sex.  In a perfunctory kind of way. He tries not to blame David, who is nothing to him, after all.  I try not to blame Rebekah. She’s just a girl—a naïve, headstrong girl. And I do love her. I should have done more to make sure it wouldn’t come to this. I should have paid more attention. I knew what could happen. It’s my fault that it did.

Maybe Mama is right. Maybe I should take drugs.  Maybe I should get pregnant again. It doesn’t matter with whom.

If I don’t soon, I’ll be required to have a physical evaluation, which will result in an ultimatum: Get pregnant with one of your husbands or be impregnated in the medical center.  It’s not an official ordinance, of course.  It’s just what happens now to fertile women who aren’t producing. Mama told me that some aren’t even given an ultimatum. They just hop up onto the exam table, put their legs in the stirrups, and get a squirt of sperm without even knowing.

Maybe they’ll use Danny’s sperm on me, like Mama wants.  That would be a laugh.

Poor Danny.

Poor Simon and Ethan.  This is not a happy home for them now. I’m not a good mother to them. What kind of a mother would I be to a new baby?

Tom. Andy. Ryan. Seth. Sam. John.

John. Sam. Seth. Ryan. Andy. Tom.

Maybe I’ll ask Mama for some of those Winnipeg drugs after all.