The Oregon Experiment (20 page)

“Of course in my day, nursing was a radical act,” Joey declared. “I nursed Scanlon despite the doctor telling me I was probably doing more harm than good. And he was a
ferocious
eater.” Joey eyed her son, smiling with a creepy flirtatiousness. “Insatiable.”

“Why don’t you and Scanlon stroll around the festival for a while?”
Naomi said. All she wanted right now was to be alone with her baby, to smell and to nurse.

Joey shifted closer to her. “Lemme tell you a few things about nursing.”

“Let’s go, Ma,” Scanlon said. “We’ll buy you some pottery. No sales tax out here.”

Now she leaned her shoulder into Naomi’s. She toyed with the cloisonné pendant at her throat, pretending to whisper but speaking loud enough for Scanlon to hear. “Apropos of nursing, I’ve observed that Scanlon has always been drawn to women with a bosom.”

“Cut it, Ma,” he called.

It was a fact, Naomi knew, that women were more sexually inclined when they were ovulating, and that men were aroused by ovulating women; lap dancers’ tips increased by ninety-two percent during ovulation. It was also a fact that women were aroused by the smell of another woman nursing. Joey always made sexually inappropriate remarks to Scanlon.
Always
. When they danced together at the wedding, his mother cocked back her head and stared into his face with the freaky grin of a virgin bursting with desire. The possibility that Naomi’s nursing was stoking any of this in Joey made her squirm.

“I’d like to buy you a negligee,” Joey said. “This can be an exciting time in a marriage, despite the—”

“C’mon,” Scanlon said, pulling her off the bench. “Let’s go.”

“We’ll have a spa day, then we’ll each get something,” Joey persisted. “I noticed JP’s PJs downtown.”

“Now,” Scanlon ordered, “or I’ll sell you to the hippies on that bus to keep as a pet.” He pulled his mother to her feet. “We’ll give you fifteen minutes or so,” he told Naomi.

“Make it half an hour.” Naomi smiled, and they walked off.

It would be worth taking Joey to that store, if only to confirm her suspicions about Douglas. JP Lutz was the young bride of Harold Minor, a senior member of Scanlon’s department. She’d been his grad student at UCLA, where he did not land tenure but landed a wife. She followed him up to Douglas, where she spent a decade failing to finish her dissertation on Taiwan. Since then she’d played at being a travel agent, a sourdough-bread maker, and a landscape designer, and for the last five years she’d owned and operated JP’s PJs. Despite her academic career coming to a screeching halt, she talked the talk, managing to work phrases like “a rubric that repurposes ambivalent tropes” into a discussion with Naomi
about the quality of Lands’ End bath towels while they nibbled Trader Joe’s mini quiches piping hot from the microwave in Cebert Fenton’s living room.

Joey would find no negligees at JP’s PJs. Only flannel pajamas, bathrobes, fleece slippers. The anti–Victoria’s Secret. Or, as Naomi had said one day when she and Scanlon walked by the store: “The latest in nighttime fashion from Manitoba.”

JP Lutz was a trailing spouse.

She switched Sammy to her other breast, gritting her teeth when his mouth took hold. For his sake, she’d begin taking better care of herself. Anosmia was no longer an option. Use it or lose it, people in the industry said, referring to acuity, but for Naomi the implications were more dire. Her nose, the breast infections, her career, and her spirits were intertwined, and she had to give herself over to all of them in order to be the most vibrant, healthy, fulfilled, and loving mother possible.

The sidewalks and pathways between craft stalls were getting more crowded. Foot traffic bottlenecked. Balloons, pinwheels, Cat in the Hat hats. From across the park she heard a marimba band poink out the first notes of a song. A woman at least ten years younger than Naomi, lugging a crying toddler on her right hip while her sobbing preschooler hung on her left arm, pushed a double stroller in which a black lab was curled up asleep.

More marimba players joined in, the music louder and more frenetic as Sammy opened his eyes and turned his head to look up at her, tugging on her nipple. She smiled and touched his head, then pried the lid off the tea cup, twirled the cool dregs, and sniffed. Orange peel, yes, and behind the cayenne was roasted chicory. Burnt. Her nose was as good as ever. She was ecstatic. Then, looking up over the heads of the fairgoers, over blue and white and green tents, she saw a figure dressed in black rise up into the air on a red nylon rope. He tugged the rope and rose higher, his feet dangling, his buttocks and groin riding in the black harness. He pulled again, and she followed his ropes up to the quivering branch of a black walnut tree towering over the park. The marimba music swelled—a happy, frenzied sound of heat and sweat and brightly colored robes—a tug-tug at her nipple. And suspended far above the fair, after another tug on the ropes, was Clay.

·   ·   ·

“That’s good. That’s very good,” Sequoia said as Trinity held up the picture she’d drawn: the view over the food stalls and the bandstand to the Cascades, where fresh snow covered the Sisters, brightening the perfect rectangles of clear-cuts patching the foothills.

By mid-afternoon, Trinity was getting antsy and Sequoia, bone tired, still had to run by the café to do receipts. In a few minutes Journey would show up, and she and Keiko would handle the booth until it closed at eight.

“Can we get my face painted now?” Trinity asked.

“Just a few minutes, sweetheart. You’ve been very patient.” And as soon as she said it, Journey appeared, tying on her apron.

On the grass behind the booth, she gave Trinity some milk and Journey brought her a tempeh burger and a cup of honey lemonade. She lay back, sipping the drink and smoothing her daughter’s hair, then heard his voice: Scanlon was at the counter, taking change from Keiko and pouring cream in his coffee.

“I didn’t see you there,” Sequoia said, coming around front. “All day at the fair?” She liked the nappy beard. He was handsome, in a professorish, normal-haircut, pleated-khaki-shorts way. She’d always liked a man in glasses. If she’d been his student, she would’ve had a crush on him. Not the sort of thing she’d ever act on, but sitting in his class she would have allowed the power of his intellect, sexuality, and authority to slip through her skin.

“The baby’s been sleeping,” he said. “I think it’s good for him to be out in the air.”

He’ll be a wonderful father, she thought. The right balance of idealism and practicality, of providing shelter and caring for his child’s heart, nurturing both the mind and body. Her own parents loved her, but when it mattered most, in their all-out rally to protect her, they’d lost sight of what she truly needed. A day after she confessed and the boy’s father split open her lip, she was on a plane for Zurich and then installed on the eighth floor of the St. Sebastian Hotel, consumed with grief for the boy who’d been entrusted to her care and now, in critical condition, lay in a hospital bed. It was completely her fault. From the hotel window she couldn’t even see down to the street—just hundreds of rooftops as jutted and steep as the Alps behind them—and by the time her father’s lawyer called to say a return ticket was waiting for her at the front desk—that the situation had been handled—this might as well have been an asylum. She’d entered a
dark period from which she didn’t emerge until she failed to graduate from the private school she loved in Portland, until she changed her name from Marcia Beckmann to Sequoia Green, until she left her parents’ home and discovered that we heal not through the mind but through the body. She joined the secessionists the month Trinity was born, and the two brought meaning back to her life. She’d still been waiting for the last piece, but now it had appeared—Scanlon Pratt, who would bring the movement to fruition.

“A little better,” he was saying about his wife. “I think your tea might’ve helped.”

“I know every doula and midwife and nursing coach in town,” she said. “Let her know. I’ll hook her up.”

“Sometimes I think she just needs to relax.” He looked away when he said it, down at the ground.

“How about you?” she asked. “This has to be stressful.”

“Somebody’s gotta stay strong.” He laughed nervously, and Sequoia saw his face and shoulders tighten—his body revealing what his words withheld.

“I can hook you up too,” she said, then hugged him and pressed a warm tempeh burger into his hands.

Scanlon headed back to the patch of shade where he’d left Naomi and Sammy, his heart beating a little faster from the hug. The tempeh burger tasted pretty good.

Sammy’s head was bobbing with the rhythm of his sucking, his eyes closed. Naomi gave a tired smile. “Joey?” she asked.

“Couldn’t find her.” At the sound of his voice, Sammy’s eyes opened and he twisted his pink head away from Naomi’s breast for a blurry look at his father.

“You want a bite?” Scanlon asked.

Naomi inspected the half-eaten burger, the green tempeh bleeding into the brown bun. “Didn’t you hear?” she whispered, deadpan. “Soylent green is made from people.”

“You’ve cheered up.” He leaned over Sammy and kissed her cheek. “Your nose is back.”

She smiled, nodding.

“For good this time,” he said.

“I need to make sure of it. Plenty of sleep. No more colds. And these pollens—I’ve got to figure that out. There’s gonna be some changes.” The last bit sounded like a threat, which seemed ungracious given his round-the-clock nursing.

“Sequoia offered her extensive connections to the Douglas alternative-medicine scene.”

“You’ve been seeing a lot of that girl.” Naomi rested Sammy on her shoulder and patted his back.

“She wants to help. She’s got a big heart. Her little girl was there.”

Naomi’s mind had wandered, and they were silent for a minute. Then Sammy burped. “Hey,” she said. “I saw your anarchist.”

“Clay?”

“The one and only.”

“What did he say?”

“He didn’t see me. He was on the other side of the park, climbing trees with the Free Skool people.”

“Let’s go look,” he said, feeling the return of his excitement—a rev that Naomi had dragged down with her threatening tone and, even worse, her unwillingness to share the relief and glee that her nose was back. An emotional stinginess.

He dodged fairgoers with the stroller and cut a path for Naomi, who followed with Sammy in the sling. He led her by several strides as he passed a candle maker, then spotted the Free Skool banner and ropes hanging from the trees. He scanned the area, rattling the stroller over the grass. Finally, deep in the grove, he saw Clay and another guy sitting on the back of a park bench, their four black boots lined up on the seat. Clay caught sight of him, and Scanlon held up, waiting for Naomi, then they both walked into the shade. The two anarchists stood up and turned their backs, practically whispering. But these were the conversations Scanlon needed to hear. What motivated these guys? Did they know anything about the
history
of anarchy? Where did they feel they fit into the tradition? Or did they think about stuff like that at all? Were they just hooligans?

The other one walked off and Clay turned, standing on a root as Naomi and Scanlon approached. “Make any purchases?” Clay asked. “A unique little something to brighten the home?”

“Hi, Clay,” Naomi said sweetly, and Clay’s pose fell away as fast as a dagger dropped from his hand. “You want to meet Sammy?” She lifted the swaddling blanket.

Their baby was beautiful, Scanlon thought, looking at his old-man face with his pushed-in chin, Naomi’s dark complexion, his blistered upper lip, eager eyes, and bushy wild hair.

Clay leaned in. “Hey, Sammy,” he said, apparently as riveted by the sight of their baby as Scanlon was.

There was a long, intimate silence, and Scanlon flashed on Clay’s hand touching Naomi’s belly in the hospital. “We’re gonna have two more,” he blurted. “Davis and Junior.”

“Thanks again for all your help that night,” Naomi said.

Clay nodded, forcing his hands in his pockets. His head twitched. Then he turned to the side and spit. “Good to see you,” he said, and backed away.

“Hey,” Scanlon called. “We’ve got the barbecue fired up if you want to come by sometime.”

Clay threw back his head, and they watched him scuff off through the trees.

It began with Scanlon’s stomach making a quarter turn, like the barrel tumblers his neighbors used for compost, and by eight o’clock that night he was doubled over on the toilet. While his wife gave their son a bath, fed him, sang lullabies, put him to sleep, he was remembering Sequoia’s squinty green eyes and stunning smile, the feeling of her body against his, her breasts like pillows beneath her thin cotton shirt, the smell of sesame oil and tempeh in her hair—and to be clutching his gut while tofu and tempeh cramps reduced him to a degrading hour of stink and waste was clearly his just deserts.

After an hour of misery, the god who still reigned over lapsed Catholics decided Scanlon had paid his penance for lust in his heart. Naomi showered, then he did too. Joey had gone out. She’d met a man at the festival, both of them admiring handcrafted glass bowls, Joey pulling a line Scanlon had heard countless times. Pointing at the price tag, she made a show of biting her lip and said, “Your taste is exquisite.” And this stranger, a widower, a retired professor from the school of pharmacy, invited her for a drink at the Grotto, where a jazz combo was playing in the wine bar.

In bed, while Sammy nursed, Scanlon read with a mini light clipped to Leavitt’s study of secessionist movements, a book he’d cited in his dissertation but hadn’t looked at since. Once, after a conference panel, he tried to talk to Leavitt, a Yale prima donna, who promptly blew him off. Later, he looked up the Tillman argument Leavitt had referenced in his talk and confirmed that he had in fact, as Scanlon had been trying to tell him, been wrong.

Draped over Naomi’s shoulder, Sammy burped. Scanlon put down his book, swaddled him tight, and laid him in the bassinet. They adjusted pillows and blankets, then Naomi opened a window and went into the bathroom. When she came back, she re-tucked Sammy’s fleece blankets and lay on her side next to Scanlon, pulling the comforter up to their ears, their foreheads and knees touching. He felt like it had been a day of heavy lifting. “How could a nine-pounder completely pummel two healthy adults?” he whispered.