Red Clocks

by Leni Zumas

“Really?” says the biographer.

  “Sorry, but my immune system isn’t strong and I can’t afford to get sick right now.”

  The biographer pushes the tip of her napkin up one nostril.

  In-breath.

  She wants to go home, where no one can see her.

  Out-breath.

  Sneak out now without saying goodbye.

  In-breath.

  Susan would hold a grudge for such rudeness.

  Out-breath.

  But what if—

  What if, instead—

  Mattie gave her the baby?

  What if she just gave it to her?

  But that’s insane.

  Demento dementarium.

  What if Mattie said, Yes, okay, here—for you. Take care of him. Take care. I’ll see you later, miss. I’m off to my life. Tell him about me one day.

  What if she asked, and Mattie said yes?

  She would never ask, obviously.

  Unethical. Malfeasant. Pathetic.

  But what if?

  Ice fog = pogonip

  Ice crystal = frazil

  Ice feathers = rime

  THE WIFE

  What joy to walk naked after a shower and hear your labia clap. To rise from the toilet and hear your labia clap.

  The stretching and loosening is permanent, no matter what miracles they tell you Kegels can work. Kegels can’t fix the lips. The wife’s college roommate got the surgery after her third child. “Flappy no more!” reported the roommate in a mass email. The wife remembers thinking how odd to announce your labiaplasty to seventy-nine people—the addresses weren’t hidden—but odder still were the replies. “Tell your javiva congrats.” “Bet your man is lurving it!”

  She buttons her jeans, flushes the toilet, returns to her children, slumped on the sofa. Didier is hiding upstairs, pretending to write lesson plans.

  Bex moans: “I’m so bored.”

  “Then play with your Christmas presents.”

  “I played with everything.”

  “Have you read all the books Grammy gave you?”

  “Yes.” She is facedown on the Turkish carpet, snow-angeling.

  “I doubt that.” The wife watches John start to remove, one by one, the blocks she just put away.

  “Where’s Ro?”

  “At her own house. John, leave those in the basket, please—”

  “Why are you sleeping in the sewing room and not with Daddy?” Still facedown, but the girl has stopped moving, is waiting hard for the answer.

  “Daddy snores.”

  “So do you.”

  “No, I do not.” The wife grabs two blocks from John, bangs them into the basket with their fellows.

  “Also, if you have another baby—”

  “I’m not having another baby.”

  “But if you do have another baby, will you get a purple nurple again? And will your hair fall out and your breasts die?”

  “They didn’t die. They changed shape when John stopped nursing.”

  “Went flat,” says Bex.

  Just wait until you get here, sweetpea.

  “I’m not going to hit you,” she whispers.

  She has never hit her sprites, and never will.

  Fifteen minutes later she’s alone in the car, going fast. The road is wet and dreamy with fog, but she is a good driver; her foot is steadfast and capable.

  Inside the Acme she slows, lingers over her selections. In the chocolate department she has her preferred brands and flavors, the organic rainforest companies, the mints and the sea-salt-almonds; but sometimes she likes to mix it up with a hazelnut-coriander or a black-pepper-fennel-cardamom.

  She sets six bars (three cardamoms, three mints) and a family-size of soft-batch chocolate-chip cookies on the conveyor belt, along with an unneeded pack of kitchen sponges.

  “Looks like you’re in for a fun night,” says the cashier.

  “It’s for my daughter’s class,” says the wife.

  “Right,” says the cashier.

  On the way home she pulls into the scenic overlook parking lot, whose guardrail is sturdy.

  Dials Bryan.

  Gets his growly message: “You know what to do and when to do it.”

  “Hey there,” she chirps, “hope you had a good Christmas. Checking to see if you wanted to have that coffee sometime. Oh, and this is Susan. Okay, well, call me! Thanks!”

  What will Bryan make of her clapping labia?

  The cardamoms go in the kitchen drawer, under the maps.

  The mints stay in the torn lining of her purse.

  The soft batches were eaten in the eight minutes between the scenic overlook and home.

  She spots husband and children through the window, tumbling in the brown grass behind the garage. He has given them a snack, at least, even if he didn’t clean it up.

  Herd crumbs into palm.

  Spray table.

  Wipe down table.

  Rinse cups and bowls.

  Set cups and bowls in dishwasher.

  Throw empty family-size soft-batch cookie box into recycling.

  If she leaves first, she breaks her family.

  Knot up recycling and take out to blue bin.

  Pour compost pail rinse water into pot of ficus tree.

  Spray mist onto green snake arms of Medusa’s head.

  If she sleeps with Bryan, it won’t be a relationship.

  Stack books.

  Push fairy costumes into trunk.

  Only sex.

  Ignore black dust on baseboards.

  Intercourse with a shire horse.

  Ignore soft yellow hair balls in every corner.

  Ignore beds of children, but make own.

  That little red motel on 22—

  While making own bed find sock of husband in covers.

  Sniff sock; be surprised that sock does not smell bad.

  Run rag through dust on dresser.

  She will leave the credit-card statement open on the dining-room table.

  In downstairs bathroom, ignore soap heel crusted to sink.

  Except that Didier wouldn’t bother reading the charges.

  Lift toilet seat.

  Count three pubic hairs.

  Slam seat back down.

  Then she will just tell him, flat-out.

  And he will leave first.

  When London was colder, “frost fairs” were held upon the Thames. Fire pits and puppet stages, caged lions and gingerbread booths, were dragged onto the ice; there were sled races, pigs turning on spits, fortune-tellers, bull-baiters. One could see flounder and porpoise trapped mid-swim in the glass river. But not since 1814 has the ice been solid enough to withstand this revelry. I came to London too late.

  THE MENDER

  The jail washes its blankets with so much bleach she has to shove them in the opposite corner of the cell. She sleeps in her clothes, the mattress thin, she pretends it’s the forest floor. When she wakes, her chest hurts and her nostrils are full of chemicals. The walls are still gray.

  She draws the outside inside her head. Sky full of water. Clouds full of mountains. Shark field full of bones. Stoves full of trees. Trees full of smoke. Smoke full of winter. Sea full of seaweed. Fishes full of fishes.

  In here they bring her nuggets and colas, but no fishes.

  The bitches are squirrely. They are sending letters. They want advice remotely. Give them recipes, they demand. What about the ointments for their figs? The stinky teas for their bloods? Oh, bitches. Please can the mender provide the name of a pharmacy that carries the ingredients? No, she can’t, because the pharmacy is the phorest. It is pherns, phunghi, phauna. It is hairs from dead Temple, ground up.

  Mattie Matilda has not written to her. Term-house procedure gone wrong. Untrained scrapers. Dirty gear. If the girl started to hemorrhage, they would’ve been too nervous to take her to the hospital.

  “Breakfast,” calls the day guard.

  “Don’t want it,” says the mender, not sure if she is saying this
out loud.

  The guard has unlocked the cell door, stands holding a tray. “Cereal and sausage.”

  “Poison.” When she eats cereal, her scabbard gets yeasty; and truly anything could be in that sausage.

  “Your trial starts next week, Stretch. I’d advise you to eat.”

  Can she see into next week, this guard with the sixth finger on her off hand? Can she see the mender fainting from hunger on the stand?

  “Well, it’s here if you change your mind.” Clunks the tray down on the floor, and the little milk box jumps.

  Squeeze the lemon. Grind dried lavender and fenugreek seeds in a mortar. Unscrew the jar of elderflower oil.

  Then Lola’s husband gets ahold of the bottle. Pours in the crushed-up drug. Makes her drink it, or she drinks willingly. Washes it all down with Scotch.

  Ninety months is two thousand, seven hundred thirty-nine days. All those days in a cell like this one. Her nostril walls will turn white from bleach. Hans and Pinka and the halt hen will die. Malky will forget her.

  To quit shaking, she reminds herself: You are a Percival. Descended from a pirate.

  25 January 1875

  Dear Captain Holm,

  Allow me to offer my services on the upcoming voyage of Oreius from Copenhagen to the Polar North. I am a hydrologist with significant expertise in the behavior of pack ice. It would be my honor to assist in your collecting of magnetic and meteorological data.

  Though a Scotsman by birth, I speak and write fluent Danish.

  I am, Sir,

  Your most obedient servant,

  HARRY M. RATTRAY

  THE BIOGRAPHER

  You can’t just say to a person, “Would you give me your baby, please?”

  Allow me to offer my services.

  Eivør Mínervudottír did things she wasn’t supposed to. Took plunges.

  “It doesn’t work for everyone,” said Dr. Kalbfleisch at their first appointment. “And you’re well over forty.”

  Woman who is thin and ugly. Cruel and ugly old woman. Witch-like woman. Mínervudottír was forty-three when she died; the biographer turns forty-three in April. Crones to the bone.

  “You need to cultivate acceptance,” said the meditation teacher. “Maybe motherhood isn’t your path.”

  Acceptance, thinks the biographer, is the ability to see what is. But also to see what is possible.

  She puts on her running shoes. Her gloves. Dark out: she’ll keep to the lit streets. She jogs up the hill, focusing, as her track coach taught her, on the balls of the feet pressing at the asphalt, press and release, press and release. Her breath is stiff. Sweat tingles in her armpits and at the top of her butt. She’s too out of shape for running to feel good, but it feels correct, a corrective—slam the blood through every vein, unseat the sediment, flush the channels, ask the heart to do more.

  She cuts over to Lupatia and back down toward the ocean. Passes Good Ship Chinese and the church. If she turned left here, she would end up, after a zigzag or two, on Mattie’s block. She stops. Leans against the trunk of a madrone, panting. On the family trip to the nation’s capital she raced her brother up the Exorcist steps and won. Archie said, “Only because you’re older.” Dad yelled, “Come the hell back down.”

  Mattie, can I ask you something?

  The biographer doesn’t know when the average person eats dinner, but she guesses by eight p.m. most dinners in Newville are done.

  When Mama made a whole chicken, she claimed one drumstick for herself, and Dad and Archie fought for the other, and the biographer was the good child who ate breast.

  Mattie, if I paid for all your checkups and vitamins, would you—

  Her feet turn left.

  If I drove you to all the appointments, would you—

  She is not really doing this.

  It can’t hurt to ask, can it?

  But how would she even get the words out?

  The biographer’s baby will be the good child always, even when he scribbles with permanent marker on the walls. Even when he throws his drumstick out the window into the neighbor’s yard.

  Bike-lock key at her throat, gloved fingers fisted tight against the cold. Her fingers ache, but not as much as the fingers of Eivør Mínervudottír once ached. All the plunges that woman took—gigantic plunges—the biographer can take one too.

  She starts to sprint.

  Dear baby,

  You have one live grandparent. He moved to Orlando after your grandmother died. Your uncle is gone, so you’re out of luck on the cousin front. As cousin stand-ins you will have Bex and Pliny the Younger.

  Dear baby,

  I love you already. Can’t wait for you to get here. Your hometown is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever known. Full of ocean and cliffs and mountains and the best trees in America. You’ll see for yourself, unless you are born blind, in which case I will love you even harder.

  The Quarles house is gray shingled, flanked by shore pines. Lights are on behind the curtained windows. You are not really doing this. But she is. Climbing the wooden steps to a wooden deck heavy with ceramic bowls of wintering dirt. She is. Going to convince her. She is. Whispering the sentences of her prepared speech. As she brings a finger to the doorbell, it occurs to her that a logical outcome of this plan is that she’ll be fired from Central Coast Regional.

  Mattie, I will take the baby on a train to Alaska.

  Row a boat with the baby to the Gunakadeit Light.

  Her finger hovers over the white plastic button, heart thumping frantic in her ears, rain spitting on her forehead. Keep your legs, Stephens.

  She plunges.

  Not until the steamship Oreius had rounded the Jutland Peninsula into the North Sea did the captain understand a woman was aboard.

  He told the explorer, “We have no choice but to bear you.”

  THE BIOGRAPHER

  Eight seconds after she presses the bell, Mattie’s mother opens the door, smiling. “Miss Stephens?”

  “Sorry to drop by unannounced.”

  “No, please, come in.”

  Photos of the girl overwhelm the living room—on walls, on tables, on bookshelves, their daughter’s every year, it seems, well captured. “We go a little wild with the pictures,” says Mrs. Quarles, noticing the biographer notice.

  “You have a fabulous child, so why not?”

  “I doubt Matilda would agree. She says the number of pictures is, quote, demented. Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Oh no, please, I’m not staying long, I—needed to—” Breathe. “Before Christmas Mattie asked me for more comments on an essay draft, but things were so busy that—Well, now that the holidays are over, I want to give her the feedback.”

  “That’s unusual,” says Mrs. Quarles.

  “When a student puts in the extra effort that she does, I’m willing to do some extra too.”

  “But she’s not here.”

  “Oh?”

  “She’s at the conference.”

  The biographer is clearly meant to understand what Mrs. Quarles means by the conference. “Oh?”

  “You knew she was going, didn’t you?”

  “To the—conference?”

  “She told us you nominated her.”

  “Of course. I must have mixed up the dates.”

  “I have to say,” says Mrs. Quarles, “she didn’t give us many details about this thing.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “That it’s a Cascadia history conference for high school students, and only one student from any given school is nominated to attend.”

  “That’s right,” says the biographer.

  “Not as prestigious as the Math Academy, she said, but it will still look good on her applications.”

  Damp swoosh down the biographer’s throat, into her ribs.

  Is the baby gone?

  Her mouth is full of bits from the planned speech—chewy clichés. I can give it a good home. I mean her. Or him. You’ve got your whole life ahead of yo
u.

  “Yes,” mutters the biographer, “it’ll be impressive.”

  “And they’re all staying at the same hotel in Vancouver? Is there adult supervision?”

  The biographer stands up. “I’m pretty sure they have supervision, yes. Sorry to interrupt your evening.”

  “You’re pretty sure, or you’re sure? Mattie hasn’t been answering my calls. And I can’t find anything about the conference online.”

  “That’s because of its, um, principles? The people who run it are committed to students spending less time on computers, so they work only on paper, through the mail.”

  Mattie’s mother is an intelligent woman, yet she appears to accept this.

  The biographer walks slowly back to her apartment.

  Archer Stephens may not be getting a namesake.

  Her brother’s blue lips on the kitchen floor.

  The gravelly whine in his voice when he said he wasn’t high.

  “Yes, you are.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are!”

  “Jesus, I’m not—you’re so paranoid.”

  But his pupils were the barest dots in the pale green; mouth ajar; tongue slow. She knew the signs, was becoming something of an expert; and yet, and still, Archie’s denials undid her. Dad said, “You’re being duped!”—he was never much help, aside from the time he put up five grand for bail. She said, “I’m not paranoid; you’re pinned!” and Archie said, “Because it’s sunny, my friend.” Possibly it was not sunny at all, but the biographer wanted to believe him. Her Archie, her dear one, no matter how buried, was still in there.

  Shut up, she tells her monkey mind. Please shut up, you picker of nits, presser of bruises, counter of losses, fearer of failures, collector of grievances future and past.

  At the kitchen table she opens her notebook to the For which I am grateful page. Adds to the list:

  28. Two working legs

  29. Two working hands

  30. Two working eyes

  31. The ocean

  32. Penny on Sunday nights