Red Clocks

by Leni Zumas

  “Who?”

  “The corporate tastemakers. The romance–industrial complex. Dance, puppet, dance!”

  “Go tell the kids good night,” says the wife.

  “I will, right after—”

  “By the time you finish that, they’ll be asleep.”

  Didier throws the unlit cigarette on the counter and heads for the stairs.

  In the bathroom she pees, wipes, stands, but does not pull up her underwear. She gazes past her sucked-in stomach at the shaggy hillock. How many individual hairs are on this mound? More than a hundred, or less? She pinches one and yanks it out. It hurts a little. She pulls another. Hurts. And a third. A fourth, a fifth. The wife lifts the seat and lays the hairs, one by one, on the toilet rim.

  What is nipping at her mind?

  Something about Bryan.

  Going after him was a coward’s move.

  She needs to figure out how she got to be such a coward.

  But it’s more than Bryan.

  But what?

  She looks at the kitchen calendar, where T has been written and crossed out, written and crossed out, written and crossed out.

  Stands at the sink, scrubbing the casserole dish.

  Didier and Pete come back in from their cigarettes.

  “Want a beer, Peetle-juice?”

  Little animal burnt black, trying to cross. Rubber and shivering.

  “Can you believe she’s never heard of them?”

  “Dude, the sum total of Ro’s musical knowledge would fit into Bryan Zakile’s jockstrap.”

  Rubber and shivering.

  “Do they make those in extra-small?”

  Strapped jock. Jock of Bryan. Balls. Family jewels. Father. Mother. Cousin. Cousin—

  “He actually uses a kids’ size.”

  They don’t have any kids, so why not leave?

  Cousin beaten to a paste.

  Oh no.

  The wife drops the casserole dish. It clatters at the bottom of the sink.

  Where is her phone—where is—“Where’s my phone?” Furiously shaking water off her hands.

  “Right here on the table,” says Didier. “Jesus.”

  She snatches it up and hurries into the dark dining room, dialing.

  He picks up on the first ring. “Susan?”

  Blood beats hard in her neck. “Listen, Edward”—talking faster than she ever talks—“you need to interview a new witness, his name’s Bryan Zakile, he told me firsthand that his cousin’s husband hits her, and his cousin is Dolores Fivey. I think he could—”

  “Hold on,” says Edward.

  She is light-headed. Can’t find her breath.

  “Did he witness the hitting himself?”

  “Okay, secondhand, but—”

  “Also known as hearsay,” he says.

  “Which is admissible if it constitutes materially exculpatory evidence, and if corroborating circumstances clearly support the hearsay’s trustworthiness.”

  “Damn, Susan. After seven years?”

  Splashing glow in her chest. She rushes on: “It would introduce some compelling doubt, at least—”

  “Hold it. Mmh.”

  Silence, while he thinks.

  Her whole body is throbbing. This matters.

  Edward says, “It would corroborate Ms. Percival’s claim that Mrs. Fivey disclosed her husband’s physical abuse. Which would in turn suggest a motive for Mrs. Fivey to lie about the—mmh.”

  “You should talk to Bryan tonight,” she says. “I’ll text you his number.”

  “Wait a minute. You said, ‘He told me his cousin’s husband hits her.’ Most people have more than one cousin.”

  “He didn’t specify, but it is Mrs. Fivey, Edward. It has to be.”

  “When did he give you this information?”

  “A couple of weeks ago.”

  “And you’re only telling me now?”

  The glow cools. “I didn’t—connect them.”

  “Mmh. I don’t know that any of this will make a difference. But give me his number. Good night.”

  She sends the text and sits, twitching and exhilarated, in her grandmother’s chair in the dark.

  Upon Oreius’s return to Copenhagen, in the summer of 1876, the gangrenous ring finger and pinky on Eivør Mínervudottír’s left hand were amputated. Her notebook does not brood long on the loss: “Two taken, under anesthesia. I have eight others.”

  With her right hand she wrote up the Oreius data. Even before she had finished a draft of the article, she knew her title: “On the Contours and Tendencies of Arctic Sea Ice.”

  THE MENDER

  Keeps asking for different blankets, but they say work with what you have, Stretch. She hasn’t been sleeping. Her throat hurts. She misses Temple, who would burn the bleachy blankets and boil a throat syrup of marshmallow root and say Show them you’re not afraid.

  Except she is.

  There is one man on the jury whose eyes are alive. He looks at the mender like she’s a person. He smiled when Clementine told the courtroom “Gin Percival saved my vagina.” The other eleven watch her like she’s batshit.

  Kook. People like to throw around labels.

  Kooky. Don’t let them define you.

  Kookaburra. You are exactly yourself, that’s who.

  Temple, wish you weren’t gone.

  The lawyer is excited today. His face is moving faster. He’s brought licorice nibs and lettuce, a brown loaf from Cotter, butter in a ziplock. He explains about the new witness he’s calling—Lola’s cousin—who doesn’t want to testify, so must be considered hostile.

  “He’ll just lie,” says the mender, ripping bread with her teeth.

  “Not if I approach him the right way.” He takes the butter-smeared hunk she hands him and sets it on the metal bench, too polite to say no. “And if he says what I think he’s going to say, then we recall Dolores Fivey to the stand.”

  “Also me? I could tell them what she told me. After he broke her finger he said she better start taking calcium supplements.”

  “You—” The lawyer smiles. “Not you.”

  “Why?”

  “You are so much your own person, Gin. And some people on the jury may feel… unnerved by that? People tend to be more comfortable with speech and behavior that does what they already expect it to do. Yours doesn’t, and I respect that it doesn’t. But I have to think about the jury’s perceptions.”

  She side-eyes him. Being fake? Talking down? With this lawyer, not easy to tell.

  Clementine waves at her from the gallery. Cotter’s there too, and the pissed-off blond lady from the library who doesn’t lower her voice when talking to the librarian.

  The mender can’t remember seeing Lola’s cousin ever before. He looks like your basic man in a suit, dark hair cruelly combed.

  “Mr. Zakile,” says her lawyer, “it is true you were a soccer star in college?”

  The cousin’s mouth opens in surprise. “I don’t know about ‘star,’ but yeah, I made a contribution.”

  “More than a contribution, I would say! According to the University of Maryland student newspaper, The Diamondback, you earned All-Conference honors with your ‘exquisite ball control and panther-like aggressiveness.’”

  “Objection,” says the prosecutor. “Where is Mr. Tilghman going with this?”

  “Your Honor, I’m establishing context and background for this witness. Mr. Zakile, the Washington Post described you as ‘a revelation’ in a win over Georgetown, during which you scored three goals.”

  Hesitant smile from the cousin. “That was a great game.”

  “Plainly, then, Central Coast Regional was fortunate to hire you as their boys’ soccer coach. I’m told you are an effective coach—would you agree?”

  “We went fourteen and four last season. I’m proud of my guys.”

  “Your Honor, what?” says the prosecutor.

  The mender watches her lawyer lead Bryan Zakile to water. As the story of his own awesomeness—as athle
te, coach, English teacher, and citizen of the world—unfolds, the witness grows animated. Talkative. Of course he loves his family. Of course he wants to tell the truth as an example to his students. Of course he has no reason to slander Mr. Fivey. On the contrary (as her lawyer meekly points out) he has a motive to protect him, even if that would require lying, because Mr. Fivey has the power to fire him. At least, he had the power. Now, of course, Mr. Fivey cannot fire him, no matter what Bryan says on the stand. That would look biased, wouldn’t it? That would look, frankly, actionable. So if Bryan had the freedom, as he now does, to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth—the freedom to act as befits a man of his character—what would he tell us about his cousin Lola’s relationship with her husband?

  19 February 1878

  Dear Miss Mínervudottír,

  I am in receipt of your submission, “On the Contours and Tendencies of Arctic Sea Ice,” a paper which, it is patently clear, you did not write. Notwithstanding the stirring discoveries it contains, unless its true author is acknowledged, the Royal Society cannot publish it.

  Yours Sincerely,

  SIR GEORGE GABRIEL STOKES

  Physical Sciences Secretary

  The Royal Society of London

  for Improving Natural

  Knowledge

  THE BIOGRAPHER

  At two forty p.m. on January fifteenth she waits, sweating and trembling, outside the door of eighth-period Latin.

  It will need to be a home birth, to circumvent hospital records. Mattie is young and strong and shouldn’t be in any danger. The biographer can drive her to the ER if something goes awry. She’ll find a midwife to help them. They will doctor the birth certificate.

  The girl will have all summer to recover.

  The biographer will handle Mr. and Mrs. Quarles somehow.

  Mattie emerges, knotting the blue scarf at her throat. Her cheeks are fuller, but you can’t otherwise tell—scarves and big sweatshirts and winter coats do a fine job of hiding her.

  “Quick word?” says the biographer.

  Too cold for a walk. They duck into the music room, used for storage ever since the music program was canceled. Posters of tubas and flutes hang over broken chairs, reams of copy paper.

  “Are you checking to see if I’m all right?” says Mattie.

  “Well, are you?”

  “It smells like ham in here.”

  The biographer only smells her own watery dread.

  “Nothing has changed,” says Mattie, “since you asked me the other day.”

  The biographer opens her mouth.

  Give it to me.

  Air moves lightly on her tongue and teeth. Dries her lips. “Mattie?”

  “Yeah, miss?”

  “I want to help you.”

  “Then don’t tell anyone, okay? Not even Mr. Korsmo. I know you’re pals.”

  She prepares to shape the words: Pay for your vitamins. Drive you to every checkup. If you give it to me.

  The girl coughs, swallows a curd of phlegm. “By the way, I made an appointment at a—a place in Portland. I need to do it soon because I’m almost twenty-one weeks.”

  Twenty-one weeks means nineteen left. Four and a half months.

  Only four and a half months, Mattie!

  “That far along,” says the biographer, “the procedure could be dangerous.” The glass splinter is choosing these words. “A lot of term houses have no idea what they’re doing. They just want to make money.”

  “I don’t care,” says Mattie.

  “I’ve heard of—” The biographer’s whole self is a splinter. “Fatal errors.”

  “I don’t care! Even if the place is foul and they have other girls’ stuff in the buckets, I don’t care, I want this to be over.” Hands in fists, she starts hitting herself on either side of the head, bam bam bam bam bam bam bam, until the biographer pulls her arms, gently, down.

  “I’m just saying”—holding Mattie’s wrists—“you have other choices.”

  You can wait four and a half short months.

  “Choices?” A new edge in her voice.

  “Well, like adoption.”

  “Don’t want to do that.” Mattie jerks out of her grasp, turns away.

  “Why not?” Give it to me.

  “Just don’t.”

  “But why?” Give it to me. I’ve been waiting.

  “You always tell us”—the girl’s voice flicks up into a whine—“that we make our own roads and we don’t have to justify or explain them to anyone.”

  “I do say that,” says the biographer.

  Mattie glares.

  “However, I’d like to make sure you’ve thought this through.”

  The girl slumps down against a green filing cabinet. Holds her head in both hands, knees up to her chest, rocking a little. “I just want it out of my body. I want to stop being infiltrated. God, please get this out of my body. Make this stop.” Rocking, rocking.

  She is terrified, realizes the biographer.

  “And I don’t want to put someone on the planet,” whispers Mattie, “who I’ll always wonder about my whole life. Like where is the someone? Are they okay?”

  “What if you knew who was raising them?” The biographer sees a vast, sunny cliff top, blue sky and blue ocean beyond; and Mattie in a flowered dress, shielding her eyes; and the biographer crouching beside the baby, saying, “There’s your Aunt Mattie!” and the baby toddling toward her.

  “I just can’t,” rasps the girl. “I’m sorry.”

  Horror thuds in the biographer’s chest: she has made her apologize for something that needs no apology.

  Mattie is a kid, light boned and soft cheeked. She can’t even legally drive.

  Four and a half months.

  Of swelling and aching and burning and straining and worrying and waiting and feeling her body burst its banks. Of hiding from the stares in town, the questions at school. Of seeing the faces, each day, of her parents as they watch the grandchild who won’t be their grandchild be grown. Having to wonder, later on, where is the someone she grew.

  The glass splinter says: Who gives a fuck?

  Mattie says: “Would you go with me?”

  To the checkups and the prenatal yoga.

  To the store for dark leafy greens.

  To the clean, comfortable birthing bed set up in the biographer’s apartment, when it’s time.

  For a dazzling instant she has her baby, who will be tall and dark haired, good at soccer and math. She will take the baby on a rowboat to the lighthouse, on a train to Alaska, practice math problems with the baby on a soccer field. She will love the baby so much.

  Except that’s not, of course, what Mattie means.

  Down her spine, an itching wire.

  If the biographer were to admit her own Torschlusspanik motives, clarify that the baby would be for her, Mattie might end up agreeing. She wants to please—to be pleasing. She wants to make her favorite teacher happy.

  The biographer would be asking something of her that she doesn’t believe should be asked of anyone. Deepest convictions, trampled.

  Yet here she is, about to tell a sniffly child to give her what she’s growing.

  The glass splinter says: This is your last chance.

  Plunge.

  The biographer says: “Okay.”

  Mattie looks up, green eyes red and spilling. “You’ll go with me?”

  “I will.” She feels like vomiting.

  “I’m sorry to—There’s nobody who—Ash won’t—”

  “I get it, Mattie.”

  “Thank you,” she says. Then: “Is there more than one girls’ juvenile correctional facility in Oregon, do you know?”

  “Are you—” But of course she’s scared. The biographer pats, clumsily, the top of Mattie’s head. “We’ll be all right.”

  We will? They could both get arrested. The biographer could become a headline. SHIFTY SCHOOLMARM IS ABORTER’S ACCOMPLICE. She feels a rush of raw love for those who are caught, and for those wh
o know they could be.

  The girl stands up, shoulders her satchel, adjusts her scarf. Won’t meet the biographer’s eye. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” And she is out the door.

  Seed and soil. Egg and shell.

  A plug of bile is bobbing at the foot of her throat.

  “The key to happiness is hopelessness,” says the meditation teacher.

  Like a shark: keep moving.

  The biographer walks up to a poster for the music club (WHY ARE PIRATES SUCH GOOD SINGERS? THEY CAN HIT THE HIGH CS!) and claws it off the wall and rips it in half.

  The explorer wrote to the tutor, Harry Rattray, who still worked for the shipyard director in Aberdeen:

  After many weeks of reflection on my difficulties with the Royal Society I have taken the painful decision to request that you publish my findings under your own name. Otherwise the world will never know them.

  THE MENDER

  Cousin Bryan’s testimony, while damning of Mr. Fivey, only matters if Lola corroborates it. When the lawyer explains this to the mender, warning that it may have been a pointless detour, she smiles and says: “Not for Lola.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Other people know now,” she says. “Outside her family. She’s free.”

  The lawyer thoughtfully pets the clean pink skin over his skull. Murmurs, “There we go.”

  Today Lola isn’t wearing as much eye makeup, so her face looks farther away.

  “Mrs. Fivey,” says the lawyer, “thank you for coming back to the stand.”

  “Well, I was subpoenaed.” But she’s looking at the lawyer. Last time she only looked at her hands.

  “You heard the testimony of your cousin, Bryan Zakile. I want to ask you, Mrs. Fivey—”

  “I prefer Lola?”

  Yes, her family members have witnessed arguments between her and her husband. Yes, these arguments can get heated. No, her cousin was not wrong when he described an altercation on Thanksgiving that involved her husband clapping his hand across her mouth in an extremely forceful manner. He was not wrong when he testified that her mandible had been bruised by her husband. Or that, on another occasion, she confided to him that her phalanx had been snapped by her husband. And, yes, the scar on her right forearm was caused when her husband held a hot skillet against the skin. She did not report any of these incidents because it takes two to tango. She’s not perfect either. A few family members have expressed concern, yes, but as her mother says, you don’t go into other people’s marriages uninvited.