Red Clocks

by Leni Zumas

  True to 9072’s humble nature, he blushes, only deepening the bartender’s sense that this man would make a first-class provider of genetic material. Throughout the evening, 9072 is sociable and composed, at ease with self and others. Meanwhile, 5546 hits on four different women before last call, and 3811 stays on a stool, swiping through his phone, aloof and alone.

  The least confident of the four women takes 5546 to her house, where they have unprotected sex, and she happens to be ovulating, but because his sperm are too weak to puncture her egg, she doesn’t get pregnant.

  Donor 3811 leaves after two beers, without talking to any humans.

  Donor 9072 strikes up a conversation with the most confident of the four women hit on by 5546. She is drawn to 9072’s good health and good brain. They discuss his rock-climbing skills and his beautiful sister. He walks the woman to her car, where she tells him she wants to have sex, but he shakes his head politely.

  “I’m a sperm donor,” he explains, “and my sperm are exceptionally vigorous, which means I’m likely to impregnate whatever body receives them, whether through intercourse or intrauterine insemination. So I can’t go around having a lot of sex. If too many children are conceived from my loin butter, especially in the same geographical area, some of them might meet each other and fall in love. Which would be bad.”

  The woman understands, and they part as friends.

  But how can you raise a child alone when you can’t resist twelve ounces of coffee?

  When you’ve been known to eat peanut butter on a spoon for dinner?

  When you often go to bed without brushing your teeth?

  Ab ovo. The twin eggs of Leda, impregnated by Zeus in swan form: one hatched into Helen, who would launch ships. Start from the beginning. Except there is no beginning. Can the biographer remember first thinking, feeling, or deciding she wanted to be someone’s mother? The original moment of longing to let a bulb of lichen grow in her until it came out human? The longing is widely endorsed. Legislators, aunts, and advertisers approve. Which makes the longing, she thinks, a little suspicious.

  Babies once were abstractions. They were Maybe I do, but not now. The biographer used to sneer at talk of biological deadlines, believing the topic of baby craziness to be crap for lifestyle magazines. Women who worried about ticking clocks were the same women who traded salmon-loaf recipes and asked their husbands to clean the gutters. She was not and never would be one of them.

  Then, suddenly, she was one of them. Not the gutters, but the clock.

  The narwhal’s blotchy hide has been likened to the skin of a drowned mariner. Its stomach has five rooms. It can hold its breath under the ice for outrageous lengths. And the male horn, of course—much could be said.

  THE MENDER

  Would kill to never make another trip to the Acme, yet her needs can’t be met entirely by the forest, orchards, fields, or clients who trade with fish and batteries. For certain essentials she must use green cash. But the store lights hurt the mender’s eyes. And the floors are so hard. And she notices—because even though the teachers at Central Coast Regional called her stupid, she is not stupid—that people stare at her in the Acme. They take their children’s hands.

  She is here for ginger, sesame oil, Band-Aids, thread, and a box of black licorice nibs. Passing the butcher counter, she is sickened to see the machine-pressed slices, the loaves of meat. Oils from the tissues of pig and cow and lamb glisten on the air. She has a long walk in front of her, in the rain, and night is coming. She speeds up toward the candy aisle, where her nibs—

  “I know what you did”—a low snarl, nearly unhearable.

  The mender keeps on.

  Louder: “Dolores Fivey almost died.”

  She keeps on, staring at the end of the aisle, where she will turn right.

  Loudest: “She was in the ICU! Do you care? Do you even care?”—voice lifting to the vast fluorescent beds, but the mender won’t look, she won’t grace them with a look.

  “Find everything okay today?” says the cashier.

  The mender nods, staring down.

  “Cool necklace, by the way.”

  She always wears her Aristotle’s lanterns to town.

  Lola didn’t almost die. It would have been in the newspaper at the library.

  Ignore them, says Temple from the freezer. People will believe any old crap.

  Her cloak is sopping by the time she reaches home. Wool socks squelch in her sandals. In the goat shed, pouring grain, nuzzled by the snouts of her beautifuls, she tells Temple: “I hate them all.” Runs her hand over the lid of the chest freezer, listening, though she knows Temple won’t come back.

  Salem, Massachusetts, 1692: a “witch cake” was baked with rye flour and urine from girls said to have been stricken by spells. This fragrant cake was fed to a dog. When the dog ate it, the witch would suffer—so went the folk wisdom—and her yelps of agony would incriminate her.

  “How did they get the girls’ urine?” the young mender wanted to know.

  “Unimportant,” said Temple. “The important thing is that people will believe any old crap. Never forget that, okay? Any. Old. Crap.”

  The mender misses her aunt every day.

  It’s not true that she hates them all, but it makes her feel better to say it.

  She doesn’t hate the girl she watches for.

  And she doesn’t hate Lola. She misses the compliments—“You have the coolest eyes I ever saw.” The sugar packets and shakers of salt Lola stole from restaurants for the mender. She misses Lola’s finger in her slit, Lola’s plump tits in her mouth.

  No visits or notes in over a month. The mender has considered going back to the big sandstone house, when the husband’s at work, to bring her a spray of fawn lily. But Lola might get confused again.

  She had come to the cabin for help with a burn. The mender knew she was lying about how she got the burn.

  She adds wood to the stove. Eats a cold white stalk of ghost pipe. Steps out of her wet clothes, stands naked by the stove until she is dry.

  Who was that yelling in the Acme? What has Lola been telling people?

  The last time, Lola wore a green dress, shoulders bare. The scar was knitting well, less puckery, but it would be on her forearm the rest of her life. Into the marked skin the mender rubbed elderflower oil infused with lemon, lavender, and fenugreek.

  “That feels so good,” said Lola.

  “Okay,” said the mender, wiping her hands on an old washcloth. Packed bottle and washcloth into her rucksack. “See you.”

  “But you just got here!”

  The mender blinked at the flowered couch, bag of golf clubs, family photos running up the long staircase. Through the cork soles of her sandals she felt the wall-to-wall teeming with carpet-beetle larvae.

  “He won’t be back until five. We could…?” Little plucked eyebrow twitched coaxingly. “I haven’t seen you for two whole weeks,” added Lola, coming closer. “I missed you. I have this friend in Santa Fe”—nudging the mender’s toe with her shiny black boot—“who sells handmade piñon kokopellis. We could go there for a while. He’d never find—”

  “I won’t leave my animals.”

  Clumsily stroking the mender’s biceps: “Maybe I could stay with you, then?”

  Jab of heat in her throat. “You can’t stay.”

  “Why not?” Lola stepped back, frowning. “I thought you liked me, Gin.”

  Humans always want more.

  “I like you,” said the mender.

  “But—” A panicky smile. “Hold on, are you…?”

  “It’s just,” began the mender.

  Devil flowers danced on the couch, jumping, blurring.

  “What? What?”

  But some feelings aren’t fastened to words.

  “It—isn’t—I don’t—” The mender’s tongue was an oily toe.

  “Can’t you talk? Can’t you even say a sentence?” Lola slid her hands up and down her thighs, bunching the green dress, smoothing it, b
unching again. “You know everyone thinks you’re crazy, right?”

  “I’m not crazy.”

  “You’re batshit,” hissed Lola.

  The mender took the scar oil from her sack and set it on the coffee table. “You can keep the whole bottle. No charge.”

  Lola said, “Get the fuck out of my house.”

  She couldn’t understand—and the mender wasn’t good at helping her understand—how much the mender likes to be alone. Human-wise.

  Sea-washed lighthouse built with:

  Aberdeen granite

  salt-tolerant poplar

  hydraulic lime

  Bells and sledgehammer = fog signal

  THE DAUGHTER

  Please be bloody. Please be a gush of dark mucus, black-strung red.

  Pulls down her underwear.

  White as cake.

  “Where’s the goddamn table leaf?” shouts her dad, stomping downstairs.

  The Salem cousins come for dinner in an hour.

  She fishes under the sink for the box of tampons and tugs out what’s hidden under the Regulars and Super Pluses.

  “Shut up,” she tells the shiny blond infant on the box.

  Thighs planted on the toilet, she tears the plastic sheath off the pee stick.

  There is a loving home out there for every baby who comes into the world.

  She doesn’t weep or hyperventilate or text Ash a photo of the plus sign blazing on the stick. She wraps the test box and its contents in a brown paper bag, which she tucks into a rain boot at the back of her closet. She gets dressed.

  The witch has a treatment, if it’s early enough. And she doesn’t charge money. Ash’s sister’s friend, who got an abortion from the witch last year, said it only works before a certain week in the pregnancy. The witch uses wild herbs that won’t incriminate you if you’re caught with them, because the police can’t tell what they are. And the daughter doesn’t plan to be caught.

  Yasmine could have gone to Canada for an abortion, because the Pink Wall didn’t exist yet. Or she could have given the baby to someone else.

  Yasmine asked what it felt like to be adopted.

  The daughter said, “Normal.”

  Which was true and not true.

  Yasmine knew the daughter was curious about her bio mother.

  Maybe she

  Was too young.

  Was too old—didn’t have the energy.

  Already had six kids.

  Knew she was about to die of cancer.

  Was a tweaker.

  Just didn’t feel like dealing.

  It was a closed adoption. There is no way to find her, aside from a private detective the daughter can’t afford yet.

  So she dreams.

  About her bio mother getting famous for developing a cure for paralysis and being on the cover of a magazine in the checkout line, where the daughter instantly recognizes her face.

  About her bio mother finding her. The daughter comes down the school steps, the three o’clock bell is ringing, and a woman in sunglasses rushes up, shouting, “Are you mine?”

  About her bio grandmother, who maybe loved to bake. She sees the ramekins her bio grandmother used for custard. A set of six, white-rimmed blue, one chipped. Her bio mother maybe always chose to eat from the chipped one.

  The ramekins are smashed at the bottom of a well in the yard of the house where they all died, grandmother and grandfather and cousins and her bio mother, who was still weak from giving birth, overwhelmed with sadness, resolved to go the next day to the agency and get her baby back—she had a forty-eight-hour window; it had only been thirty hours; she would go the next day; now she just needed a little rest, but what was that smell? It was smoke, because fire, because malfunctioning space heater, but nobody was paying attention because drunk, and her bio mother, though not drunk, was too exhausted from the pain of labor to call out a warning; so they died.

  An aunt, arriving later to pick through the rubble, threw all non-valuables into the well. If this well existed—if the daughter could find it—she’d climb down a rope and save the pieces of white ramekin, the spoons and knives, tin canisters of love notes, steel lockets packed with hair. That hair would have the DNA of her bio mother, sealed safe from fire and from damp.

  Sixteen years ago abortion was legal in every state.

  Why did she spend nine months growing the daughter if she was just going to give her up?

  The Salem cousins yammer in the hall. Upon seeing the daughter, Aunt Bernadette goes, “What is it about these teenagers dressing so unemployably?” and Dad laughs. Mom, not laughing, tells Aunt Bernadette: “Mattie can wear whatever she wants. Last time I checked, this was America.”

  Mom and daughter escape to the kitchen.

  “Would you wash the potatoes?”

  The daughter dumps them into a colander, starts scrubbing under the faucet.

  “By the way…” There’s a forced-cheerful note in her voice. “I got a call from Susan Korsmo.”

  “Yeah?” says the daughter, scrubbing harder.

  “It was an odd conversation, frankly.”

  “Oh really?”

  “She expressed some concerns.”

  “About what?” Thank God for you, potato dirt. So much scrubbing you require.

  “Well, I told her it was ridiculous, but she sounded—I don’t know, adamant. Although she tends to sound adamant most of the time.”

  There is no way Mrs. K. could know. No way.

  “Matilda, look at me.”

  She turns off the faucet, wipes her hands on her jeans. “So what was she adamant about?”

  Mom’s face is papery, punched in. “She says you were vomiting at her house. When you babysat last week. She heard you in the bathroom.”

  No.

  “And she thinks you have an eating disorder.”

  Yes!

  “This is funny to you?” says Mom.

  “It’s—no—because she’s so wrong.”

  “Is she?”

  The daughter reaches her arms around Mom’s neck, presses a cheek into her shoulder. “I ate a bad burrito at school and threw up. Mrs. K. has too much time on her hands, so she—”

  “Creates a crisis where there is none,” whispers Mom. Then she draws back, cups the daughter’s chin in her fingers. “You’re sure, pigeon? You’d tell me if something was up?”

  “I swear to you, I do not have an eating disorder.”

  “Thank Christ.” Tears in her eyes.

  The daughter is lucky to have this mother, even if she’s already sixty, even if she makes jokes about pulling a mussel at a seafood disco. A young mom like Ephraim’s might have said “Bulimia? I’ve taught you well!”

  For reasons she can’t figure out, the daughter almost never dreams of her bio father.

  She takes an extra-big spoonful of mashed potatoes. Looks at Mom, points to the plate, winks, hates how hard Mom is smiling. She breathes through her mouth when passed the bowl of brussels sprouts, the vegetable whose odor, when cooked, most closely resembles human wind.

  The Salem cousins blather and blither. “Well, what do the illegals expect, a red carpet?” Blahblahblahblah. “And then they refuse to learn English—” Blahblahblahblah. “So then why should I have to take three years of Spanish?” Blahblahblahblahblah. The invaders all look like xeroxes of each other, their beefiness repeating itself, reheating itself. Whereas the daughter is tall, and Dad is short. The daughter is pale, and Mom is sallow.

  This clump of cells would have turned out tall, though maybe not pale. Ephraim tans brown in the summer.

  Gravy has dried on the daughter’s sleeve. She hates this shirt anyway. Maybe she’ll give it to Aunt Bernadette, who hates it even more.

  Mom and Dad can never know.

  What if your bio mother had chosen to terminate?

  “Matilda, your turn.”

  “Pass,” says the daughter.

  Think of all the happy adopted families that wouldn’t exist!

  Never, ever
know.

  “Oh, you!”

  “Don’t be a poop at the party.”

  “I can’t think of any jokes,” she says.

  “Very funny!”

  “What is it with these kids pretending to be so miserable?”

  Yasmine said she’d die before telling her parents.

  jumps down the sky (lightning)

  sheep groaning (what narwhals sound like)

  a smell grew

  sea struck, ice bound

  causing regret where it did not exist before

  THE WIFE

  Didier hums “You Are My Sunshine” and trims fat off raw breasts. He worked in kitchens for years, scorns recipes, is good with a knife. A decent restaurant job would pay better than teaching at Central Coast Regional, but he swore off food and bev because he’d miss the kids’ childhoods. The wife sees a calendar of vacant blue evenings, Didier away cooking, children in bed, herself alone and accountable to no one.

  “—the tinfoil?”

  “What?”

  “Foil, woman!” Didier trots over to snatch it. His mood is merry; he’s happiest when cooking, a dish towel slung over his shoulder. Happiest, yet he rarely cooks.

  “What else?” she says.

  “I’m good here. Go relax.”

  “Really? Okay.” She rubs at a smear of old yogurt on the stovetop. “Should I do a salad?”

  “You should sit down.”

  She watches him chop, one hand herding the olives and the other bringing down the knife, fast, accurate. Eyes don’t waver from the olives. Shoulders don’t slump. Happy and confident, yet most of the meals fall to her, the one who “has time.”

  “By the way, why is Mattie still here?”

  “She’s putting them to bed.”

  Didier sets down the knife and looks at her. “We’re paying twelve dollars an hour to keep our kids at home while we’re at home?”