Master Class

by Christina Dalcher

  Of course. He would have his ringtone set to Wagner.

  “I have to take this,” he says, and I catch a quick flash of the photo on the phone’s screen before I let him turn me toward the door.

  I steal one final glance at the coffee table. The papers are gone.

  FIFTY-ONE

  When I leave Alex’s apartment, it’s nearly noon. I’m high on adrenaline and low on morale as I jog back along the beige hallway to my own quarters with three phrases from Madeleine Sinclair’s speech last night echoing through me.

  Better America.

  Better families.

  Better humans.

  I think of the Genics Institute, really the Eugenics Institute, and break into a run, hoping Lissa or Ruby Jo will be in. There’s so much to tell them.

  I should be shocked, but I’m not. Appalled, maybe, and all the other words I can think of that go with it, but not shocked. We’ve always done this, we humans in our little societies. We categorize and compare and devise ways to separate ourselves into teams, not so differently from the rituals of a grade school gym class. I pick her, we say. But not him.

  Someone is always last; someone is always at the bottom of the barrel, the last to be chosen.

  You’d think we’d grow out of that nonsense.

  Ruby Jo listens while I give the digested version of Malcolm’s visit, the guards’ conversation, and the papers in Alex’s apartment. Lissa, curled up on the sofa and alert, scribbles notes on a pad of paper, only stopping to mutter something about a twenty-first-century Jim Crow state, only the dividing line of segregation isn’t skin color but Q scores.

  “Fucking Progressives,” Lissa says.

  I have no idea what she’s talking about.

  “It’s a Progressive thing. Progressive with a capital P, that is. They were a big deal in the early 1900s with their Get-Rid-of-the-Idiots programs.”

  Ruby Jo shifts in her chair. “I hate that word.”

  “Progressive? Or idiot?” Lissa says.

  No one laughs.

  “There were two doctors hanging about near Underwood’s office today,” I say.

  Lissa’s head jerks up from her notepad. “M or PH?”

  “I don’t know.” The men outside Underwood’s office weren’t wearing white coats and stethoscopes, but they didn’t have the tweed-and-Birkenstock mien of career academics. “Medical doctors, maybe.” Of course they’d have more doctors here. With over a hundred kids crammed together in dormitories, colds and flu would spread, well, like a virus. And the chill air today is a harsh reminder that we’re about to start another round of flu season, just as Alex said. The entire school will need shots, especially the younger ones.

  “You okay, Elena?” Ruby Jo says.

  No. Yes. I have no idea. “Sure. Fine.”

  Click. Click. Click.

  “Lissa? What is it with you and that pen?” I say finally.

  She grins at me, and the grin takes twenty-five years off her face. “It’s a camera, honey. I used to be a teacher until I retired,” she says. “History. Now I work as a reporter. Freelance, but it keeps me busy. The only question is how I’m going to get enough credible information to expose these assholes. Well, make that two questions. I don’t know how I’ll get that information out of here without a phone. Tricky. What else did you see in his apartment?” Her tone is sharp, and she softens it. “Sorry, I can’t help being brusque when I’m in reporter mode.”

  I shrug and think back to the sights and smells. “Coffee. Good Scotch. A pipe on one of the shelves, tucked back behind something else.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Oh—when I was leaving, his phone rang. The lock screen had a shot of him with a woman and two boys. She seemed familiar. I don’t know—the way she stood or something.” I try like hell to conjure it up in the space before my eyes, but I can’t; it happened too quickly. “She was wearing a hat. That’s all I saw before I got the hell out of there. He’s married, but he was coming on strong.”

  Lissa’s eyebrows waggle up and down and up once, and stay high on her forehead.

  “Told you I didn’t like him,” Ruby Jo says.

  What matters, according to Lissa, isn’t that any of us like or don’t like Alex. What matters is that he seems to like me.

  Two sets of eyes are on mine now, reminding me of a childhood playground game. In Ruby Jo’s and Lissa’s stares, I hear three words.

  Tag. You’re it.

  FIFTY-TWO

  We leave for lunch, filing in past the lines of children walking into the dining hall. I stay close enough to them to brush my hand against Freddie and whisper, “It’s going to be all right, baby girl. Trust me.” Freddie looks up with wide, frightened eyes, and I wonder if she can hear the uncertainty in my voice.

  The next-to-last girl in line turns hard, accusing eyes at me. I recognize her as Sabrina Fox, the girl whose mother was practically dragging her into a car, insisting they go home at the same time Sabrina insisted the opposite. She nudges the girl next to her. They’re close enough that I can hear Judy Green’s words spoken so softly they sound like sighs.

  “It’s her fault. She’s a monster. And you know I should have crushed that test last week.”

  Judy and Sabrina continue to whisper. I get every poisonous syllable they say.

  Only a week ago, I watched Judy’s mother, Sarah, pull yellow flowers from the beds in front of their house. I don’t want to revisit that place, but not wanting to isn’t enough to prevent me from going there, from hearing Sarah scream at me while a yellow bus took her daughter away.

  Every single report we got said her Q was almost perfect.

  Did you know something? Did you hold anything back from me?

  How did she lose the Q points? Tell me that, El.

  I guess you’ll have more time for your top two percent now, El. Good luck with them.

  And a few days after that, Jolene Fox blowing smoke in my face, calling Malcolm an asshole, wondering why her girl dropped from a silver school to here in the blink of an eye.

  Now I’m back in the dining hall listening to the girls, wishing I could stop my ears. Did I know something? No, I didn’t.

  When I pass close to Judy, she stares hard into my eyes. “You should have studied history, you bitch. Don’t you know it repeats itself?”

  “What did you say?”

  “You heard me.”

  Sabrina mumbles something about Judy not being herself. “She’s sorry. Really.” Judy doesn’t seem to agree, but lets Sabrina lead her by the arm and pull her gently along to one of the long tables, out of earshot.

  The same woman who gave me an earful in the common room last night is here. She calls after Judy, “You tell her, honey.” When she turns to me, she smiles innocently. “Don’t even think about reporting that. We’ll all swear we didn’t hear a thing. Enjoy your meal.”

  Over lunch, while I’m worrying over Freddie and wondering if everyone in the world sees me as a bitch, Ruby Jo talks about the Fitter Family Campaign.

  She shrugs. “They don’t like us mountain folk none too much. It’s funny, ’cause before my mom had me, the FF—that’s what we called them—was pretty strong down in our parts. I mean, they weren’t Q testing back then. It was more like making sure the town didn’t get taken over by Italians. Or gays. Or anyone who wasn’t purebred, homophobic white trash.” She pushes food around her plate as she talks. “Still is, I guess. Some of them don’t give two shits about how smart you are.”

  “Some of who?” I say.

  “Some of the FF people. You know.”

  “No. I don’t.” Since it started, the Fitter Family crap has always been about smarts. Measurable smarts in the form of Q scores. Although when I think back to this morning’s class, I wonder if that’s all they’re about.

  Ruby Jo looks me over and deci
des I need to be educated. “See, I think lots of ’em are like that, all wanting to be smarter than the next guy, make sure they got little Einstein babies and Einstein boyfriends and Einstein wives. That’s a good one. Einstein babies.” She laughs. “But that ain’t all of it, Elena. You think I left that piece-of-shit town because I wanted life in the big city? No way. I hate the city. If it were up to me, I’d hang out in my little piece-of-shit town, ride my bike, go apple picking, stuff like that.”

  “But you left anyway?” I say.

  “Well, where I come from, people like me don’t fit in so good. I mean, well.”

  It’s not the first time Ruby Jo’s corrected herself. I want to tell her not to worry about it so much, but I don’t. Right now, I’m trying to imagine a place where someone as clever as Ruby Jo Pruitt wouldn’t fit in. Hell, maybe?

  She leans in close, a schoolgirl ready to confess a secret crush on the captain of the football team. “See, the thing is, I don’t like boys so much.”

  “So what? You like girls,” I say. “There’s nothing new about that.”

  Ruby Jo cracks a crooked smile and shakes her head. “Maybe in Washington, but you haven’t spent much time in the sticks.” She nods her red curls toward Judy Green and Sabrina Fox. “You see those two over there? The tall ones who are always sitting together and whispering?”

  “Sure. I saw them. The one with the darker hair lived on my street.” Used to live on my street. Now, Judy Green lives in the girls’ dormitory at State School 46.

  “You see the way they look at each other? The way their hands touch when they think no one’s watching?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “Those chicks are in love, Elena. Like with a capital L.”

  Once again, I hear Sarah Green’s voice screaming at me on the street. How did she lose the Q points? Tell me that, El.

  The only answer I have is this: Judy Green didn’t fail anything. No fucking way. And if she didn’t fail, maybe Freddie didn’t, either.

  When lunch is over, I make sure to pass close to Freddie again. This time, there’s less fear and more pleading in her eyes.

  “I want to go home, Mommy. Can’t you take me home?”

  I die a little on the inside.

  FIFTY-THREE

  THEN:

  I was in the kind of pain I knew from experience I would soon forget, but right now, the pain was an all-over pain, a leviathan of misery that squeezed and worked its way around every part of my body. Malcolm, gowned and gloved in hospital green, told me to push. Again. He’d been telling me to push for hours, it seemed, while a nurse fed me ice chips and patted the sweat from my forehead.

  “Almost there, sweetie,” the nurse said. “Just one more little push and we’ll be done.”

  She said this the last time. And the time before that. Inside me, Freddie was twisting and turning and contorting into position.

  It was hell.

  And then it was over, the fiery torture behind me and forgotten. I was in the now, in a place where the only thing I knew was Freddie’s warm body on mine. I wondered at her size, how eight pounds of human could have grown in my belly, how there could possibly have been room for all this complicated biological material to thrive and live, how any part of me could possibly have opened a door wide enough to let her out into the world.

  At the same time, she was tiny, miniature. I examined each long finger, yet to fatten with baby pudge, unable to fathom how anything could ever be so small and so helpless. So utterly dependent on me for survival.

  An invisible hand reached out and tagged me while I lay in the delivery room. You’re it, El. And I was. I was the bringer of life and the protector of that life, the only thing an eight-pound newborn could depend on, the wielder of those thin marionette strings that had the power to lift my baby up or let her fall. I was everything, all-powerful and all-knowing. If my baby cried, I would soothe her. If she got sick, I would stay up all night and pour cough medicine into her. If she scraped a knee, I would kiss it and make it better. I’d done all of that with Anne, and I would do it all over again, helping her through colic and crushes on boys, making sure no one would ever do her harm.

  To Malcolm, I was still me, still Elena Fischer Fairchild. There was no way to explain to him that I wasn’t, and that I hadn’t been since the day Anne was born. These babies of mine took something when they left me, thin slices of myself, leaving empty spots. Dead spots. I think I died a little when Anne was born, and I think I died a little more this time around.

  With Freddie sleeping on my bare breast, I whispered to her.

  “I’ll do anything for you, baby girl. That’s a promise.”

  When she stirred and stared up at me with those big eyes, those eyes that would be the same size at three and at sixteen and at eighty, that would see all of her life through the same physical lens, I cried.

  They say it’s postpartum depression. Or hormones. Or who knows what. But I knew then what the deal was—a simple matter of trading myself for my baby, should it ever come to that.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  When Martha Underwood marches toward me, I know I’m in trouble. Which means Freddie’s in trouble, and that can only mean I’ll die a little more. But Underwood’s voice surprises me this time.

  “Dr. Fairchild, there’s a call for you. I’ve asked them to ring back so you can take it in my office.” She sighs. “And you can bring your daughter along.”

  My first thought is that Malcolm has changed his mind, that he’s worked something out to keep his family together after all; my second is that Alex actually took some pity on me and made a call to Maryland. But then those two words on the state school letter from last weekend come back to me. Family emergency.

  Oma.

  We follow Underwood out of the dining hall and down the weedy path toward the administration building, Freddie’s hand small in my own.

  “Are we going home?” she says. Her eyes are premeltdown wide.

  I don’t think so, but all I say to her is, “Sh. Just hold on,” and I squeeze her hand in a steady rhythm to soothe her.

  The rain has left a mosaic of puddles and muddy patches for us to dodge as we make our way through the grounds. Freddie trips on a ragged tree root, nearly falling flat on her face. A hand that isn’t mine reaches out and catches her by the upper arm. The ring I saw earlier today winks at me.

  “Whoopsie-daisies,” Alex says. Then, hurriedly to Underwood: “That’s for FedEx to pick up. I rang them just now, and they should be here within the hour. Monday-morning delivery, okay?” He gives her a large-format envelope before announcing—a little too loudly—that he’ll be in his apartment all afternoon. That was for my benefit, I suppose.

  When he’s gone, Freddie whispers, “I don’t like Daddy’s friend.”

  Neither do I, but I may need to pretend I do, at least for a few hours.

  We wait in Underwood’s office until two, when my parents are due to call back. She’s brightened up the room for us, turning lights on and even pulling over an extra chair with a few pillows on it for Freddie to sit on. All this sudden kindness should reassure me, but it has the opposite effect.

  “I’ll leave you alone here,” Underwood says when the clock chimes the hour.

  Freddie and I wait, but not for long.

  I pick up the phone on the first ring, dreading what I’m about to hear, hating my husband and every single one of the people who have denied me a final goodbye, hating that Freddie won’t see her great-grandmother again.

  Mom’s voice comes on, and I know something is wrong.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  I’ve known for a long time my grandmother would die. I imagined a tearful phone call from one of my parents, secondhand news from an oncologist being passed along, Oma’s body weakening over months and weeks and days until it gave up. But I also imagined there would be time to adjust, to say goodbye.

 
My mother sounds as if she hasn’t slept for a week. “Elena? Are you there?”

  “I’m here, Mom. Is Oma—”

  She changes to a tone that’s less tired and more at wit’s end. “I don’t know. She’s okay, but she’s not okay. Your father called Dr. Mendez, and there’s nothing wrong.” There’s a dry laugh. “Nothing wrong. He had to give her a sedative to stop her ranting, and even then she wouldn’t stop. Kept screaming that I had to call you. I told her we couldn’t, and she screamed some more. Oh, Elena, the woman’s been in her room all day banging that cane of hers on the bed frame. They don’t want to give her anything stronger because of her heart, but I think she’ll kill herself if she keeps up like this.” She pauses, says something to my father, and comes back on the line. “I’m going crazy here. One hundred percent batshit crazy. Oh, Gerhard, will you please make her stop that?”

  Freddie stiffens next to me at the noise, and I mouth an “It’s okay” to her. “Calm down, Mom. I’m sorry I’m not there.”

  “I’m not. You don’t want to be here. She’s been going on and on and on about Miriam’s sister. Since last night, El. It’s driving your father mad. Oh, hell. Here comes your father. Hang on, okay?” As if it’s an afterthought, she adds, “How are you? How’s Freddie?”

  I want to tell her everything, but I bite my tongue. “I’m okay, Mom.”

  “Your father says she wants to talk to you. Just humor her, all right?”

  I follow the sound of my mother’s footsteps as she leaves wherever she is and walks toward the back room. Oma’s voice is thin, but piercing, and grows louder with each step. When Freddie hears her, she reaches for the phone in my right hand. “In a minute,” I say, although I’m not sure I want Freddie to hear her great-grandmother in this state.

  “Are you okay, Oma?” I say.

  “I don’t like to be old. No one listens to old women.”

  I start doing my best to humor her. “I’m listening, Oma.”