The Inconceivable Life of Quinn

by Marianna Baer

  She unfolded one of the drawings from the box. Blue scribbles filled the whole page. A second and third drawing were the same, just done with different blue markers, like she’d been obsessed with drawing the sky. She remembered the feeling of frustration that went into making them. She could see it in the scribbles themselves. She’d wanted to draw something and couldn’t. Like when she was trying to describe why she wanted to keep the baby but couldn’t find the words. There had been something she wanted to draw but didn’t know what it looked like. Which didn’t make sense at all. If she didn’t know what something looked like, why would she want to draw it?

  All of this stuff . . . She’d been crazy back then, too, hadn’t she? That’s why she hadn’t had any friends at her first school in Brooklyn. And why she’d hidden this stuff away, because her craziness made her father angry. He’d hated her then, too. And who could blame him—she reminded him of his mother.

  CHARLES LOWELL

  The photo of Quinn Cutler on the TV only looked a bit like Meryl Cutler in structural ways, but there was something in her expression that Charlotte “Charles” Lowell found uncannily similar.

  “You must know the family,” someone said to Charles, pointing up at the screen. “They as bad as they seem?”

  Charles had headed over to The Shack for a beer and a bowl of chowder after a long day at the veterinary clinic. She knew everyone in there, all four customers. At this question, she realized that she was the only one who’d lived on Southaven when the Cutlers did.

  “They always seemed nice enough,” she said, stirring her chowder to cool it down. Her answer wasn’t quite true: There’d been tension between Gabe Cutler and Charles’s family.

  “Don’t sound very nice to me,” the man said.

  Even though Charles had tried to avoid taking part in the gossip, she was as fascinated by the situation with Gabe’s daughter as everyone else. More so, probably. Just like she’d been fascinated by his mother.

  Years ago, Charles had eavesdropped whenever Meryl Cutler came to the house to visit her grandmother, the original Charlotte. Listened to her tell stories of how she’d been sent away when she got pregnant at seventeen, how being separated from her home and then losing the baby had almost killed her. How she hadn’t been able to return to Southaven when her mother was alive, so she’d married a man and had a son. Nothing had helped overcome her grief, though. She fell into a deeper and deeper depression, until she got to the point where she felt like her son would be better off without her.

  When Meryl’s mother died, she’d abandoned her family and returned to the island.

  And then she’d reconnected with Charles’s grandmother, a childhood acquaintance, and read her book. To this day, Charles didn’t know whether reading that book had been the start of some sort of recovery for Meryl or the catalyst for her disintegration. She’d killed herself, after all, so it wasn’t like it had brought her peace.

  Charles had always assumed that Meryl had been delusional about certain things. That she had grasped at straws to find answers in life. Like finding religion at your lowest point and clinging onto it. But now Charles couldn’t stop thinking about those last days of Meryl’s life, about the things she had wanted to pass on to the granddaughter Gabe’s wife was carrying—Quinn. And Charles couldn’t help wondering exactly what was going on behind the doors of that house in Brooklyn, and how it related to those strange beliefs of Meryl’s that she’d always dismissed as fiction.

  QUINN

  Quinn was giving Haven an overdue brushing when her parents came to talk to her later that night. As they talked, she kept running the brush through Haven’s long ginger fur, concentrating her eyes and hands on the task.

  They explained that it was getting harder and harder to make people believe that Gabe wouldn’t be distracted by this if elected, and that the Democrats were scared he was in danger of losing the election itself. A third-party independent candidate was complicating it. Gabe was falling in the polls and getting pressure from the party to resign.

  “But it’s not a done deal, right?” Quinn said, fingers worrying a stubborn mat in Haven’s ruff. “Because you can’t drop out.”

  “I’m officially withdrawing tomorrow,” he said.

  “No.” She shook her head, back and forth, back and forth. “You can’t. This doesn’t make sense. The election is only a few days away. Wouldn’t it be worse for some random person to be the candidate? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “It’s complicated,” her mother said. “And the candidate isn’t random. She has strong ties in the community.”

  “But this is a huge deal! Why are you guys acting so calm?” Quinn wasn’t calm. Her pulse was thundering in her ears.

  “Quinn,” her father said firmly, “I did not make this decision lightly. I wouldn’t be doing it if there were any other choice.”

  “But soon after you take office, the baby will be born and these people will be gone and, and . . . It’s your whole career! How can you just drop out? Just because you have a pregnant daughter and . . . and some religious people have ideas? That has nothing to do with you being in Congress! Why would you drop out? Why are you acting like this isn’t a big thing? Why are you doing this?” She wiped tears off her face.

  “Jesus, Quinn—of course it’s a big thing! It’s the biggest disappointment of my life.” His jaw pulsed. “There are things . . . reasons. It’s the only option. I promise you that.”

  His phone buzzed. He glanced at it, said, “I have to take this,” and left the room, phone to his ear.

  Quinn and her mother sat in silence. How could Quinn ever make this better?

  “He can’t do it,” she said, shaking her head again.

  “You know that this isn’t your fault, right?” Katherine said, resting a hand on Quinn’s knee. “Dad is angry, but he isn’t angry at you.”

  Quinn didn’t respond to that. She sat thinking for a moment before saying, “You know Liz, the woman whose office I went to as a kid? During my year at 107? Was she a speech therapist? Or, like, a therapist therapist?”

  “She was your therapist. You know that.”

  Ever since that strange slip of Dr. Jacoby’s, Quinn had been having suspicions. “I remembered it as speech therapy.”

  “You did have a bit of a lisp,” Katherine said, brows knitting, “but it went away on its own. You probably remember it as speech therapy because it was supposed to help you speak more. You weren’t talking at school.”

  Quinn had never forgotten that, but had thought it was mostly because of her lisp. She thought she’d stopped talking because kids had made fun of the way she spoke, that it had marked her as an outsider. But no. That wasn’t right.

  “It was understandable,” her mother added. “Moving here was a hard transition.”

  No more lies, Quinn! No more lies!

  Now she remembered. She hadn’t talked at school because all she’d known to talk about was her life in Maine, and when she did, kids laughed, made fun of her, told her she was lying. That’s why she’d stopped talking. Because if you couldn’t lie and couldn’t tell the truth, what did that leave?

  She called Ben again. And again. And again. Even though, by this point, she knew that there was some reason he didn’t want to talk to her. It was the only thing she could think to do. She had so many questions about so many things and needed answers. She needed to talk to someone. And she needed to go see Marco! She needed to do something other than talk to Dr. Jacoby and write out those stupid memories that weren’t helping anything! Pick up the fucking phone! But he didn’t.

  She paced around her room, thinking about how unbelievably messed up everything was and wondering if the decision to go through with the pregnancy had been unforgivably selfish. All she’d done was listen to her gut, and look what had happened. This was her father’s entire career on the line! No, there had to be something more to it all. Something that made it more than just a stupid selfish decision. Because she refused to believe that someth
ing she’d felt was beautiful and worth saving had really cursed the family like this. She refused for the baby to be born under that weight.

  I know you’re here for a reason, she said to the baby. Even if no one else does. I know.

  As she paced, she spotted the envelope Jesse had brought over and fished it out of the wastepaper basket. With everything else going on, she’d forgotten about it. She took out the letter and read it again.

  I knew there was something special about you. God told me that you were chosen. So if you haven’t been able to hear God tell you that because of all the other noise in our world (what a different world than in the Blessed Virgin Mary’s time!) please know that I heard him for you.

  Was this Nicole woman insane? She didn’t seem it, neither from the measured tone of her letter nor her expression when Quinn met her eyes.

  . . . perhaps you have heard Him, but other, outside voices are louder, telling you that you’re wrong, or troubled . . .

  (What is wrong with you? No more lies, Quinn!)

  Quinn was well aware that it was crazy to be considering anything this woman said, but . . . did she only think that because of what she’d been told while growing up? Had she been too closed-minded during this whole experience because of her parents’ beliefs? No matter what he’d ever said publically, her father hated organized religion. He thought it was the root of the world’s problems, all about power and money and controlling people’s minds.

  Was it possible that she’d had a connection to God back when she was a kid? Maybe she’d lost the connection because her father had told her it was wrong. If his daughter told him she had a relationship with God, wouldn’t he have forced her to stop believing it? Told her she was lying? No more lies, Quinn!

  And what about those drawings, those blue drawings? Maybe she’d been trying to draw . . . God. And all she could do was draw the sky. Her limbs began to tingle at how very possible that seemed. Because Quinn had never been taught about God, she wouldn’t have had an idea of him as anything physical. Wouldn’t have known how to represent him in a picture.

  She found herself thinking about that midnight swim last May. She thought of that magical feeling in the ocean, the feeling of losing her body and becoming connected to something larger. Was it possible that God had been trying to tell her that night, but she hadn’t been able to hear, because she had been told it was wrong to believe?

  Listen deeply, Nicole’s letter said.

  * * *

  Sunday morning, Quinn woke late to the drumming of rain on the roof above her. Her nights were so full of dreams now that she never felt like she’d actually slept, but had just lived another, underwater life. As she lay in bed in the darkness of the storm, stroking Haven (who loved sleeping snuggled next to Quinn’s firm, domed belly, as if communing with the baby), Quinn realized she couldn’t stay inside this space one more day. Her father had officially withdrawn on Saturday, bringing a new wave of press to the house and filling the rooms with air so tight and tense it was hard to breathe. Lying there, it wasn’t even a decision that she needed to get out for a while—it was an undeniable fact. Maybe her guilt was too big for the house; like trying to fit an ocean into a fish tank.

  And there was somewhere she wanted to go.

  After making an appearance downstairs to get a mug of tea, she told her mother she hadn’t slept well and was going to take a long nap. Back upstairs, she dressed quickly in loose sweatpants, a sports bra that mashed her down to pre-pregnancy size, a tee and hoodie, an oversized windbreaker, sneaks, and a hat pulled low with her hair braided and tucked underneath. She considered sunglasses, but since it was raining, she thought that would just make her more conspicuous.

  She put on music in her room, even stuffed clothes in her bed to make a dummy, and pulled the blinds to make it darker. On her way out, she turned around and left a small note next to her pillow: Had to go for a run. Back soon. I have my phone.

  She slipped quietly down the stairs—knowing her father was shut in his office and her mother was on the phone in the living room—out the kitchen door, and through the garden and into Jesse’s building, where she just missed running into one of the other tenants.

  Once she was on the street, she had a moment of psychic disorientation. It had been so long since she’d been outside alone! Her cells tingled with the freedom of it. We could go anywhere, she said to the baby. Run the loop around the park, run to the beach at Coney Island, run all the way to Maine . . . She yearned for the burn of fresh air in her lungs, the meditation that came with the rhythm of her feet. But there was something specific she needed to do, and she didn’t want to risk being away from the house for longer than necessary. If she were caught this time, it would ruin her chances to sneak out again. They’d probably chain her to her bed. So instead of going toward the park or Coney, she headed down toward Sixth Ave. It was a fairly quick run, and soon she was approaching the stone church, walking now, suddenly aware of her rain-soaked clothes clinging to her skin. She put her hands in her windbreaker pockets to help hide her belly. There was a service going on. She stood to one side and waited under an overhang, bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet to stay warm and because she was nervous, both about being out of the house and about what she was doing.

  People lingered, chatting, when the service ended. Quinn stayed over to the side with her hat pulled low until she saw Caroline and her moms leave. She kept waiting as other people shook hands and spoke with Father Bob, who seemed to be as friendly and cheery as the other time Quinn met him. When there were only a few people left, Quinn stepped forward. Father Bob saw her and smiled.

  “I recognize you,” he said. “Refresh my aging memory.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Quinn said. She hadn’t been expecting him to remember her, especially not with the hat on and her hair up. Or maybe he recognized her from the picture in the Herald? “This is my first time here. My name is . . . Lydia.”

  “Nice to meet you, Lydia,” he said. “Did you enjoy the service?”

  “Uh, I actually . . . I’m just here to see if I could ask you something. For a project I’m doing. But if you’re too busy . . .”

  “Not at all. Give me one minute to say hello to Mrs. Warner over here.”

  Quinn waited while he chatted with an elderly woman in a floral raincoat, taking deep breaths and trying to convince herself this really was for a project. A minute later, Father Bob was back.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said. “But I’m supposed to get a priest’s perspective about something, and I don’t know any, and a friend told me you’re nice.”

  He laughed. “I’m glad to know my reputation precedes me. What perspective can I offer?”

  “I’m doing this thing . . . It’s kind of hard to explain. But I need to know . . . Was Mary really a virgin? I looked at the Bible and there isn’t that much about her. And then someone told me that today—you know, in our time—not everyone thinks she was a virgin. How could she have been one and still had a baby?” Her words tumbled out in a rush.

  “Well, Lydia, the Virgin Birth is a mystery. It’s something we can’t understand.”

  “So, even though you’re a priest, you don’t know if she was?”

  “There’s a difference between knowing and believing. We believe in the Virgin Birth, but we don’t know it in the same way that we know, say, the boiling point of water. So it remains a mystery.” He laced his fingers together and rested the tips of his pointer fingertips on his chin. “Albert Einstein said that the most beautiful thing in the world is a mystery. The questions we haven’t answered yet. Their mysterious nature doesn’t preclude our belief in them.”

  He was even more evasive than Dr. Jacoby. Great. “Why would you believe in something if you don’t know it’s true?” Quinn asked.

  “Mysteries do tell us a truth, in their own way. The truth told by saying, ‘born of the Virgin Mary’ is that God loves us.” As he said this, Quinn noticed someone coming up the granite step
s. Caroline’s mother. Crap. She angled herself so Juna couldn’t see her face as she hurried into the church. “God is everywhere. God is capable of doing things that people judge to be impossible. But they are possible, because God does them.”

  “Oh.” Quinn’s eyes kept darting to the door Juna had gone in. She bounced on her toes.

  “Does this help at all?” Father Bob asked. “These are complex ideas. A lot to think about.”

  “Yes,” she said, although she didn’t mean it. She felt as if he’d talked around her question but hadn’t really answered it. Couldn’t anyone just tell her something straight? She was about to thank him and walk away when she decided she had nothing to lose and she might as well say it point-blank. “So, would a virgin birth, you know, like Mary, be possible today?”

  Father Bob’s expression became more serious. “Lydia, I’m wondering, is this something about all of the talk in the neighborhood about the young girl?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Because I understand that the girl and her family are by no means claiming that this is a virgin pregnancy. It’s quite a different issue. The people who are making a to-do out of it, well . . . their thinking might be a little confused.”

  “Oh. Right. But, okay, say the girl was saying it was a virgin pregnancy. Then would you believe it?”

  “Well, of course it’s possible,” he said. “But to my knowledge, it hasn’t happened for over two thousand years, so I’d have to ask myself, Why now? Why here in Brooklyn? When supernatural events take place, when the settled order of science and reason is disturbed, all believers must ask themselves to think hard. What is God doing here?”