Hugo Awards: The Short Stories (Volume 2)

by Anthology

  "If you are coming back?"

  "Of course I am," I say, surprised that she'd think I wouldn't.

  "Oh," she says. "Because I thought -- you know -- after today's over -Well, whatever. Good luck."

  There are five flames on the list, most of them in the neighborhood close to the Woman's Center, only one of them farther uptown. It's a glorious spring day.

  Soon it will be Easter. The holiday came late this year, almost the end of April. I think April is a pretty name to give a girl -- April, full of hope and promise, full of beauty. Maybe I should have named my daughter April. I laugh away the thought. What's done is done, too late now to change Tessa's name. Too late.

  When I get to the first place I'm surprised by how old the woman is who answers the door. I introduce myself and say that the Woman's Center sent me. I show her the cold pack and the sampler pad, telling her what I'll do for her at the bank.

  She has black hair that is so shot through with silver threads it looks gray, and her fingers are stained with tobacco. She stands in the doorway, stony-eyed, barring me from the dark apartment beyond, making me stand in the hall while I run through my entire explanation.

  After I have finished and I'm standing there, holding out one sampler sheet, she speaks: "I'm not Vicky," she says. "I'm her mother. God will judge you people.

  You go to hell." And she slams the door in my face.

  I feel like a fool, but by the time I reach the next address on the list the feeling has faded. It's better here. The woman's name is Maris and she lives alone. She urges me to come in, to have a cup of tea, some cookies, anything I'd like. Her apartment is small but tasteful, a lot of wicker, a lot of sunlight.

  "God bless you," she says. "I was just about at my wits' end. I thought if I had to go through that one more time I'd go crazy. It 's supposed to get easier with time, but it just gets harder. I've got three more years to go before I'm free.

  Never again, believe me; never again."

  She rubs the sampler sheet over her thumb and watches like a hawk as I fumble it into its thin plastic envelope. The envelope goes into the cold pack and the cold pack goes back into my purse. "Are you sure you remember my password?" she asks as she sees me to the door.

  "Yes, but please change it after today," I tell her.

  The third and fourth women are not as hospitable as Maris, but there is no one there to tell me to go to hell. One of them is an artist, the other lost her job, and Maris, I recall, told me she'd taken a sick day off from work just on the off chance the Woman's Center could find a runner to come help her. It feels very strange to me, sitting in rooms freckled with spring sunshine, to be talking with strange women when I would normally be at work. In the course of these three visitations I drink three cups of tea and also share a little gin with the woman who has lost her job. My head spins with passwords and special instructions, my hands clasp a pile of three plain brown self-addressed stamped envelopes by the time I teeter out the door in search of my final contact.

  I take the bus uptown. Out the window I see news leaves unfurl in blurs of green made more heartstoppingly tender by the gin. It was a mistake to drink, but if I looked into the glass I didn't have to look into the woman's eyes. I decide to get off the bus a few blocks away from my stop. A walk will clear my head.

  The blue and red and white lights flash, dazzling me. Two police cars and a crowd have gathered outside a restaurant that's trying to be a Paris sidewalk cafe. A man is clinging to the curlicued iron fence around one of the trees in front of the place, his face a paler green than the leaves above his head. I smell vomit, sour and pungent. I watch where I step as I try to make my way through the crowd.

  One of the policemen is holding a shopping bag and trying to make the crowd back away. The bottom of the shopping bag looks wet. Another one is telling the people over and over that there is nothing here for them to see, but they know better.

  A third stands with pad in hand, interviewing a waiter. The waiter looks young and frightened. He keeps saying, "I didn't know, I had no idea, she came in and ordered a Caesar salad and a cup of tea, then she paid the bill and started to go. I didn't even notice she'd left that bag under the table until that man grabbed it and started to run after her." He points to the man embracing the iron girdle of the tree. "I didn't know a thing."

  The girl is in the fourth policeman's custody. I think she must be sixteen, although she could he older and small for her age. Her face is flat, vacant.

  What does she see? The policeman helps; her into the back of his squad car and slams the door. "Said she couldn't face it, going to a clinic, having it recorded like a decent woman. Bitch," I hear him mutter. "Murderer."

  As I walk past, quickening my step as much as I can without beginning to ran, I hear the waiter's fluting voice say, "I don't think it was dead when she got here."

  A man answers the door when I ring the bell at my last stop. "Frances Hughes?" I ask nervously. Has a prankster cal led the Woman's Center, giving a man's name that sounds like a woman's? Oralee says it's happened before. Sometimes a prank call only leads to a wild goose chase, but sometimes when the runner arrives they're waiting for her. Trudy had her wrist broken and they destroyed all the samples she'd collected so far. It was just like those stories about Japanese soldiers lost for years on small islands in the Pacific, still fighting a war that was over decades ago.

  The man smiles at me. "No, I'm her husband," he says. "Won't you come in?"

  Frances Hughes is waiting for me in the living room. She is one of those women whose face reflects years of breeding and who looks as if she were born to preside over a fine china tea service on a silver tray. If I drink one more cup of tea I think I'll die, but I accept the cup she passes to me because she needs to do this.

  "We can't thank you enough," her husband says as he sits down in the Queen Anne armchair across from mine. Frances sits on the sofa, secure behind a castle wall of cups and saucers, sliced lemons and sugar cubes and lacy silver tongs. "I wanted to do it, but Frances insisted we call you."

  "You know you couldn't do it, George," says Frances. "Remember how hard it was for you in the clinic, and after?"

  "I could do it," he insists stubbornly.

  "But you don't have to," she tells him softly. "Spare yourself, for me." She reaches over to stroke his hand. There is an old love between them and I feel it flow in waves of strength from her to him.

  I leave their building still carrying just three brown envelopes. They don't want me to mail them any cash, like the others; they only want me to dose Frances' personal account and transfer the funds into George's.

  I also have a check in my wallet from Mr. George Hughes made out to the Woman's Center. He gave it to me when I was leaving the apartment, while I set my purse aside on a miniature bookcase and rebuttoned my jacket. He said, "We were very wrong." I didn't know what he meant. Then, just as I was picking up my purse, my eye lit on the title of one of the volumes in that bookcase.

  "No Remorse?"

  It is the book that changed things for good, for ill. You can still find it for sale all over. My aunt Lucille gave a copy to my mother. My mother has not spoken to her since. They study it in schools with the same awe they give to Uncle Tom's Cabin and Mein Kampf. Some say, "It stopped the attacks, the bombings, it saved lives." Others say, "It didn't stop the deaths. So what if they're forced to suffer? It still sanctioned murder." Some reply, "It threw those damned extremists a sop, it truly freed women." And others yet say, "It sold out our true freedom for a false peace, it made us terror's slaves." I say nothing about it at all. All I know is what it did to me.

  I looked at Frances' husband and I wanted to believe that the book had come there by accident, left behind by a caller who was now no longer welcome under that roof. But when he looked away from me and his face turned red, I knew the truth. I took the check. "You go to hell," I told him, the same way Vicky's mother said it to me.

  I will not use Frances Hughes' password and sample to ste
al: I could, but I won't. I will not betray as I hope not to be betrayed. But George Hughes doesn't know that. Let him call ahead to his bank, change the password. Let him be the one to come down and face the truth of what he's helped to bring about, this dear-won, bloodyminded peace. Let him twist in the wind.

  There is almost no line worth mentioning at the bank. It is a small branch office with only one live employee to handle all transactions past a certain level of complexity. All others can be taken care of through the ATMs. There is only one ATM here. As I said, this is a small branch.

  I prefer small banks. Larger ones sometimes have live employees on duty whose only job is to make sure that no one uses the ATMs to perform transactions for a third party. That would be cheating.

  I stand behind a man who stands behind a woman. She looks as if she is at least fifty years old, but when it is her turn she does not take one of the sampler sheets from the dispenser. Instead she opens her purse and takes out a cold pack like mine, a little smaller. Her hands are shaking as she extracts the sheet, inserts it, and types in the password.

  The child is no more than nine months old. It can coo and gurgle. It can paw at the screen with its plump, brown hands. "Hi, sugar," the woman says, her voice trembling. "It's Nana, darlin', hi. It's your nana. Your mama couldn't come here today; she sick. She'll come see you soon, I promise. I love you, baby. I love --"

  The screen is dark. A line of shining letters politely requests that the woman go on with her transaction. She stares at the screen, tight-lipped, and goes on.

  Bills drop one after another into the tray. She scoops them out without even bothering to look down, crams them into her purse, and walks out, seeing nothing but the door.

  The man ahead of me dashes a sampler sheet over his thumb, inserts it, and does his business. He looks young in his twenties. He is handsome. The girls must have a hard time resisting him, especially if he knows how to turn on the charm.

  He may have the ability to make them think he is failing in love with them, the passion of novels, spontaneous, intense, rapture by accident.

  Accidents happen. Accidents can change your life, but only if you let them.

  While he is waiting for the ATM to process his transaction, he turns his head so that I can see his profile. He looks like a comic book hero, steadfast and noble, loyal and true. If there were an accident, he would accompany her to the clinic. He would hold her hand and stay with her for as long as the doctors allowed. And then it would all be over for him and he could go home, go about his business. No one would insist on making sure he stayed sorry for what was done.

  There is no picture on the screen for him.

  I am next. I do the other transactions first. Maris has a little three-year-old boy, like the one I saw on the bus. He can talk quite well for his age. He holds up a blue teddy bear to the screen. "T'ank you, Mommy," he says. "I name him Tadda-boy. Give Mommy a big kiss, Tadda-boy." He presses the bear's snout to the glass.

  The artist's little girl is still only a few months old. This is easy. I never had any trouble when Tessa was this young. I could pretend I was watching a commercial for disposable diapers on the t.v. It got harder after Tessa learned to do things, to roll over, to push herself onto hands and knees, to toddle, to talk. . .

  The woman who lost her job has a one-year-old with no hair and the bright, round eyes of the blue teddy bear. I can't tell whether this is a boy or a girl, but I know he or she will be blond. Tessa is blond. She looked like a fuzzy-headed little duckling until she was almost two.

  I see why Frances Hughes did not let George handle this. The child lies on its back, staring straight up with dull eyes. It must be more than a year old, judging from its size, but it makes no attempt to move, not even to rum its head. I feel sorry for Frances. Then I remember the book in their house and for a moment I am tempted to believe that there is a just God.

  Of course I know better.

  It's my turn. I glance over my shoulder. A line has formed behind me. Four people are waiting. They look impatient. One of them is a woman in her sixties.

  She looks angry. I guess they have been standing in line long enough to notice that I am not just doing business for myself.

  I leave the ATM and walk to the back of the line. As I pass the others I murmur how sorry I am for making them wait, how there was no one waiting behind me when I began my transactions. The three people who were merely impatient now smile at me. The woman in her sixties is at the end of the line. She waits until I have taken my place behind her, then she turns around and spits in my face.

  "Slut!" she shouts. "Murdering bitch! You and all the rest like you, baby killers, damned whores, can't even face up to your sins! Get the hell out of --"

  "I'm sorry, ma'am, but I'm going to have to ask you to leave." The bank's sole live employee is standing between us. He is a big man, a tall man. I have yet to see one of these small branches where the only live worker is not built like a bodyguard. That is part of the job too.

  "You should toss her out, not me!" the woman snaps. She lunges for me, swatting at me with her purse. I take a step backwards, holding the envelopes tight to my chest. I am afraid to drop them. She might get her hands on one and tear it up.

  The man restrains her. "Ma'am, I don't want to have to call the police."

  This works. She settles down. Bristling, she stalks out of the bank, cursing me loudly. The man looks at me but does not smile. "In the future, please limit yourself to personal transactions," he says.

  "Thank you," I say, dabbing the woman's spittle from my cheek with a tissue.

  It is my turn again. I want to kiss the sampler sheet before I run it across my thumb, but I know that if I do that, I will not be able to access my account. I wonder how long we will have together? Sometimes it is ten seconds, sometimes fifteen. Maybe they will give us twenty because it's Tessa's birthday. I take a deep breath and insert the sampler sheet, then enter my password.

  There she is! Oh my God, there she is, my baby, my daughter, my beautiful little girl! She is smiling twirling to show off her lovely pink party dress with all the crisp ruffles. Her long blonde hair floats over her shoulders like a cloud.

  "Hi, Mama!" she chirps.

  "Hi, baby."My hand reaches out to caress her cheek. I have to hold it back.

  Touching the screen is not allowed. It either cuts off the allotted seconds entirely, or cuts them short, or extends them for an unpredictable amount of time. Few risk the gamble. I can't; not today.

  I take out the invitation and hold it up so that Tessa can see it. "Look, honey," I say. "Pandas!"

  "I'm going to school tomorrow," Tessa tells me. "I'm a big girl now. I'm almost all grown up."

  "Baby. . ." "My eyes are blinking so fast, so fast! Tessa becomes a sweet pink and gold blur. "Baby, I love you so much. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry for what I did, but I was so young, I couldn't -- Oh, my baby!"

  And I will touch her, I will! It's all lies they tell us anyway, about how touching the screen will affect how long we may see our children, about how now we are safe to choose, about how our compromise was enough to stop the clinic bombings and the assassinations of doctors and the fear. I don't believe them! I will hold my child!

  Glass, smooth and dark.

  "I'm sorry, ma'am, but I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

  I go with my own business left undone. The man takes a spray bottle of glass cleaner and a cloth from his desk and wipes away the prints of my hands, the image of my lips.

  There is another small bank that I like on the east side. I think I'll go there.

  I start to walk. It's getting late. Paula must be making all kinds of last-minute phone calls, settling the details of my party. They call it freedom.

  I call it nothing.

  At first I hated her, you know. I hated my own child. She was there, always there, on every CRT device I chose to use in college, in public, at home. After the procedure, the college clinic forwarded the developmental information that the central
programming unit needed to establish her birthdate. The tissue was sent along too, so that they could project a genetically accurate image of my child. She wasn't there until her birthdate, but then -- !

  Then there was no escaping her. Not if I wanted to use a computer, or an ATM, or even turn on any but the most antiquated model of a television set. I hated her.

  I hated her the way some hate the children of rape who also live behind the glass, after. But they exult in what they've done, how they've had the last laugh, how they've cheated their assailants of the final insult. I have seen them in the banks, at the ATMs, even at work, once. Who's got the power now? they shout at the children, and they laugh until they cry. Sometimes they only cry.

  I fled her. I ran away -- away from college, away from home, away from so much that had been my life before. Away from Tessa. A mandatory sentence of six years of persecution for one mistake, one accident, seemed like an eternity. She was almost the end of my future and my sanity.

  And then, one day, it changed. One day I looked at her and she wasn't a punishment; she was my little girl, my Tessa with her long, silky blonde curls and her shining blue eyes and her downy cheeks that must smell like roses, like apples. One day I was tired of hating. tired of running. One day I looked at her and I felt love.

  Now they're taking my baby away.

  No.

  I find a phone booth. "Hello, Ms. Thayer? I'm sorry, something's come up. I can't go with you to the clinic today . . . Yes, this is Linda . . . No, really, you'll be all right. No one will bother you; it's against the law. And after, you'll handle it just fine . . . Sure, you will. I did."

  "Hello, Mr. Beeton? This is Linda. I don't think I'll be in tomorrow...Yes, I know you can't give me two days off with pay. That's all right."

  "Hello, Paula? Linda. Listen, there's a spare key with my neighbor, Mrs. Giancarlo. Feed Squeaker . . . No, just do it, I can't talk now. And for God's sake, don't let him hide in the closet. I have to go. Good-bye."

  I am walking east. I realize that I am still holding the envelopes full of all the money the women need. Singly they are small sums, but put them all together . . . I could buy a lot of pretty things for Tessa with so much money. I could afford to keep her, if I were rich as Frances Hughes.