by John Searles
Charlene doesn’t like his condescending tone. She doesn’t like it one bit, so she tells him, “Well, I use the stuff. In fact, I can’t get enough of it. I’m a microfiche junkie.”
He gives her a wary smile. “You should know that there are far better ways to do research now.”
Charlene has been waiting a long time for a moment like this, to put some jerk in his place. She sets aside any prior nervousness about being back here again, plants both hands on the desk, and leans closer to his face. Close enough that she bets he can smell the Wonder Bread on her breath when she says in the soft librarian voice she used to use on a daily basis, “And you should know, Mr. Presley, that I don’t give one rat’s ass if there are better ways to do research. If I want to use microfiche, I will use microfiche. And for that matter, if I want to wrap myself up like a mummy in the stuff and do the Hokey Pokey, my tax dollars have certainly paid for that privilege over the years. So tell me where it is. Now.”
When she is finished, Charlene watches his milky blue eyes dart around the library like he might scream for help. She imagines Pilia returning from wherever she is to come to his rescue. Good, she thinks, because I’m warmed up and ready to give it to her now. Instead of calling for reinforcements, though, he changes his tone. In the gentlest possible voice, he says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you upset.”
Now that’s more like it, Charlene thinks.
“I’ll be happy to show you where the microfiche shelves are.”
“Shelves? What, they don’t get their own room anymore?”
“Actually, no. Like I said, for most kinds of research these days, it’s quicker and easier to use the computer. I know you don’t want to hear it, but you’ll have far better luck finding whatever it is you need.”
Charlene glances over her shoulder at the cloudy glass window on the door of the old microfiche room. She reads that word again—INTERNET. When she turns back to him, she says, “I’d rather not.”
Still using that temperate voice, he asks, “Is that because you’ve never used the Internet before?”
She lifts her hands from the desk and adjusts the edge of her cloak, which is catching on her thin gold watch. Back in her days here, the library had a handful of computers to access the Web. Charlene was always so busy with her other responsibilities that she never took the time to learn how. “No,” she admits, keeping her eyes on her watch. It is two-fifteen. “I have not.”
“Well, I’d be happy to show you.”
He rises from his chair, and Charlene sees that he is much taller than she thought when he was sitting down, as tall as Philip, in fact, and just as skinny. Looking at him, she thinks of Philip back at home. When she left a short while before, he was still lying on the sofa bed, reading that dreadful Anne Sexton biography while the movie Fargo blasted on some godforsaken cable channel in the background. Charlene wishes he’d just finish the damn book already and be done with it.
“So can I show you?” the man behind the desk asks.
She reconsiders and decides that maybe he is right, maybe she will have better luck finding the information she needs on the computer. “Fine,” Charlene says. “Show me.”
Inside the Internet room, the study carrels, bookshelves, metal drawers, and viewing machines have been replaced with one long table that has at least a dozen computers on it. The man from the information desk, who introduces himself as Edward on the way over, leads Charlene past all the people clicking away on their keyboards. When they reach an available computer, he pulls out a chair and tells Charlene to have a seat. It has been so long since anyone has fussed over her that she takes her time peeling off her cloak and draping it over the chair along with her purse, relishing the attention. Before sitting down, Charlene glances around for Pilia again. She is still nowhere in sight. Once she’s seated, Edward’s pale, nimble fingers type something into the keyboard. He hits the Enter key and a bright white screen appears with the word GOOGLE splashed across the top in blue, red, gold, and green.
“Now don’t be afraid,” Edward says.
“I didn’t say I was afraid,” Charlene tells him. “I said I’ve never used it before.”
“Sorry. I just meant that most people find the Internet scary the first time they use it.”
“Well, I’m not most people.”
Edward smiles that wary smile again. “So I’ve gathered.”
Charlene is about to ask him what the hell that’s supposed to mean, but he takes a breath and launches into a five-minute computer and Internet lesson. In the middle of it all, he mentions something that appalls her: if any old Joe Blow were to type in her telephone number, he would be given a map leading straight to her house.
“Stop right there,” she says. “Hasn’t this Mr. Google person ever heard of something called privacy? I mean, how would he like it if I stood on a street corner handing out maps to his house? What if I had a stalker I was trying to hide from?”
Elvis—or rather, Edward—just laughs.
“Well, I’m glad one of us is amused,” Charlene says.
Thankfully, he tells her that she can remove her information from the system. After he helps her to do that, he winds up the minitutorial by repeating a few of the basics. “So like I said, it’s really quite simple. All you have to do is type in the key words of your search and press Enter. Google will look up any sites on the Web where those words appear together.” As an afterthought, he adds that if she wants to search newspapers and magazines that aren’t on the Web, there is a computer on the other side of the table with something called Nexis. For that, she’ll have to pay a small amount at the front desk to get a thirty-minute pass.
Charlene doesn’t want to have to deal with the chance that the bright light of recognition might finally permeate Adele’s thick skull, so she tells Edward no thanks. “Google is good for me,” she says. The words feel so ridiculous rolling off her tongue that she can’t help but wonder whatever happened to the simple things in life, like the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature.
“Well, good luck then. Let me know if you need more help.”
As Charlene watches his tall, thin frame slip out the door, she thinks of Philip again. His words from their conversation this morning echo in her mind: There’s a small, very small, possibility that what she said is true… With that, she turns back toward the computer, holds her fingers over the keyboard, and types four words: sperm, birth, after death. When she presses Enter, a cluttered list appears before her.
Ethical and Legal Aspects of Sperm Retrieval After Death or…
* * *
… and Legal Aspects of Sperm Retrieval After Death or Persistent … the first report of pregnancy and birth following postmortem sperm retrieval appeared… www.aslme.org/pub_jlme/27.4h.php—6k—Cached—Similar pages
Commentary: Posthumous Harvesting of Gametes—A Physician’s…
* * *
… conception but before the resulting birth of a … the posthumous disposition of the sperm or embryos … for disposition of these reproductive tissues after death…
www.aslme.org/pub_jlme/27.4g.php—8k—Cached—Similar pages
Life before birth and after death
* * *
…I repeated the question, expecting he would disclose his place of birth or his residence prior to the… Was he not a drop of sperm emitted (in lowly form)?…
www.mostmerciful.com/life-before-and-after-death.htm—35k—Cached—Similar pages
Charlene scans the page, wondering what to make of such mumbo jumbo, since Edward neglected to warn her about anything of the sort. Finally, she gets the idea to move the mouse around and click on a random cluster of words. This is what pops up next:
JOURNEY OF OUR SOULS
BEFORE BIRTH AND AFTER DEATH:
WILL YOU BURN IN SATAN’S FIRE
WITH OTHER SINNERS
OR
BE ALLOWED TO ENTER THE KINGDOM?
In the Bible, the Lord said, we shall reap what we sow. (
In other words, we get what we deserve, good and bad!!!) In my Monday morning Bible studies at the Allegheny Baptist Church, I speak about this and that it means that we people (humans) get back from the world what we give. And depending on the extent of our tragedies (very bad stuff) and our hardships, there is no blessing (the good) that HE, CHRIST ALMIGHTY, will not give. So you must ask yourself, where you will go when that bolt of thunder flashes in the sky and Christ comes down on the giant escalator from the clouds. Will you burn in the pit of hell with the other sinners? Or will…
Charlene feels as though she has just been accosted by one of those crazy people on the streets of Philadelphia. Exhausted by this whole lousy business of the Internet already, she considers giving up and going to find the microfiche, as she originally intended. Another part of her considers giving up her search altogether and simply leaving the library. But then she thinks of Melissa’s words last night: This baby inside me belongs to him… Of Philip telling her, I’m just saying that it’s a remote possibility… Of Richard shouting into the phone from Palm Beach, Well, then, it’s yes, Charlene. Yes. It is possible. Are you happy?
These bits of conversation come together in her mind and stoke that small, persistent flicker of hope that burns inside of Charlene. More than anything now, she wants to believe that what the girl said is true. So she stays right where she is and continues searching, clicking on site after site, until at long last she finds an article that interests her:
FIANCÉE RENEWS BABY HOPE
A Brisbane woman may have hope of having her dead fiancé’s baby. Marvin Tilt studied at the University of New Castle, and may have donated sperm there 10 years ago, according to grieving fiancée Patricia Ducret. “They had a campaign where you could donate sperm and get money for it,” Ms. Ducret said. She checked with the university after a friend mentioned that her fiancé may have been a sperm donor. Mr. Tilt, 29, slipped and fell to his death while visiting a waterfall in a national park in far north Queensland.
After still more clicking, Charlene finds yet another article:
CONCEIVING A BABY AFTER HUSBAND’S DEATH
In America a dead man’s sperm has been used to fertilize an egg for the first time. Albert Barish died in Chicago following a lethal reaction to prescription drugs. Although his wife stated that they had been planning a family, he had not given permission for his sperm to be used. The man had been dead for 24 hours when his sperm was removed and used to fertilize an egg. Dr. Myron Waite, a Chicago urologist who pioneered postmortem sperm extraction, says that extraction takes around 15 minutes and that sperm can be taken from men who have been dead for up to 38 hours. In the U.S., extracting sperm from corpses is increasingly common. A survey of 250 American fertility clinics by Dr. Gerald Casale, a urology specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, found that 18 admitted to taking sperm from a man postmortem…
And after still more clicking, Charlene finds a total of fifteen articles on the subject. By the time she is finished reading all of them, she looks at her watch and sees that it’s three-thirty. Bleary-eyed from so much time spent staring at the screen, she glances around at the other people in the room, who are just as mesmerized by the computer in front of them as she has been for the last hour. Reading these articles has sent a kind of numbness through Charlene. She would have thought that finding such an abundance of stories about women getting pregnant this way would sway her toward believing the girl. But there is still so much doubt lingering inside of her. Mainly, Charlene realizes, because if she gives herself over to this idea of having a part of her son back again, of having a grandchild after she’d long since given up on the notion, she doesn’t think she will be able to survive the heartbreak and disappointment if it turns out not to be true.
Charlene has had far too much of that already.
Sitting there, however, she can’t help but try to piece together what she knows of her son’s life with the information she just read on the computer. Of the many things Charlene came across, the two details she latched on to above all others were the mention of that doctor from Penn and the notion that a student could donate his sperm on a college campus. She attempts to make all sorts of tenuous connections between these pieces of information. In one scenario, she imagines that Ronnie donated sperm for cash when he went to visit Penn after his acceptance. It was just the sort of impulsive thing he might do, and he did need the cash, since Charlene and Richard had taken away his credit card. Perhaps Ronnie told Melissa what he’d done, or maybe she was with him at the time, and after his death she found a way to track it down. In another scenario, that Dr. Casale from Penn who was mentioned in one of the articles happened to be on campus the day Ronnie visited. Or maybe he was at the hospital the night Ronnie died. Perhaps Richard knew him, the way all doctors in this state seem to know one another, and that’s the secret he is keeping from her…
In the end, after Charlene is done spinning out all of these far-fetched scenarios, she is no closer to believing the girl than before. And the more she thinks about it, the more she remembers that the way Melissa delivered the news did not make it sound as though this was some sort of medical miracle at all, but rather a miracle from above.
I made the decision to stay away from doctors, because I know they won’t understand either. That’s why I was hoping Mr. Chase—
Again, Charlene wonders why she kept asking to see Richard. Yes, it could have simply been because he was the only doctor she was willing to trust. But something tells Charlene there is more to it than that. For the first time, she regrets having yelled so much last night and storming off instead of staying in the car with Philip to get the details.
Since she is not going to find any real answers sitting here, she stands and grabs her cloak and purse. When she steps out of the Internet room, Edward looks up from his thick book and asks if she found what she needed.
“Sort of,” she says. Charlene feels on the verge of tears suddenly, though she does her best to fight them back. Her nose is running, and she wishes she had a Kleenex in her purse instead of that bread.
Edward notices her sniffling and pulls a tissue from his desk. Charlene thanks him, then gives a loud goose honk into it, disrupting the tranquil quiet of the library. When he returns to his reading, her eyes linger on his bony shoulders and slim frame a moment longer as she thinks of Philip again, at home reading too.
That’s when she gets an idea.
In the very back of the library is a cluster of waist-high shelves where the poetry books used to be kept. Much to Charlene’s surprise, when she walks to the section, they are still there. It takes her a few seconds to scan the authors—from Maya Angelou to Elizabeth Bishop to Emily Dickinson—before she spots the author she is looking for: Robert Frost. Charlene pulls the book of his collected works from the shelf, intent on taking it home to Philip in hopes that he’ll finally stop reading about that madwoman of suburbia’s personal brand of suicide-obsessed rubbish. She decides that the book will serve as a kind of peace offering, that maybe it will help them stop bickering with each other so that he might stay a while longer once he gets better.
But there is one small glitch in her plan: Charlene’s library card has long since expired. The last thing she wants is to draw attention to herself by going through all the rigmarole of renewing it, so she comes up with a Plan B. After checking to make sure no one is watching, Charlene tucks the book into the folds of her wool cloak and walks toward the emergency exit over by the Science and Technology shelves. Back when Charlene was head librarian, some of the other librarians liked to step outside and smoke. Since she didn’t want them puffing away by the front entrance, Charlene left the alarm off on this door so they could slip out for a cigarette without anyone noticing. The ALARM WILL SOUND sign above the push-bar always deterred patrons from going anywhere near it.
Charlene puts one hand on that bar, figuring that if something has changed and the alarm does sound, she will have to make a mad dash around the corner of the building to her c
ar. After all, it’s not like dopey Adele or that smarty-pants Edward fellow is going to have the energy to get up off their rumps and chase her down. One last time, Charlene looks around to make sure no one is watching. In the distance, she sees Edward slumped in his chair, reading. Just beyond, she sees Adele and that ancient red-haired woman at the front desk, searching through a box of index cards together.
She is about to turn back toward the door when she spots something that makes her stop: there, in a nook between two shelves, are the metal drawers that house the microfiche, along with a lone viewing machine beneath a plastic dust cover. Charlene puts her escape plan on hold and goes to those drawers, scanning the dates on each one until she spots the week of June 18, 1999. Without planning it, she tugs open the drawer and pulls out the canister. A moment later, she yanks the dust cover off the machine. It’s not plugged in, so she has to undo the cord in the back and find the nearest outlet. Once it is up and running, Charlene loads the film into the cartridge and takes a seat, keeping that Robert Frost book tucked beneath her wool cloak the entire time. As she cranks the Forward knob and all those headlines whiz by her in a blur of gray and white, Charlene thinks back to what she was doing the night of the accident.
It was the first author event of the summer, and she had managed to book an author whose book had been selected by Oprah. Even though they were guaranteed to draw a crowd, Charlene requested that all the librarians invite as many friends as possible so they would have the biggest turnout ever. She also made a point to warn them against asking what Oprah was like, since she thought the writer must get that question an awful lot. But late in the evening, after the author had finished reading and the floor was opened for questions, Pilia (who brought no friends, probably because she didn’t have any, Charlene surmised) raised her hand and asked, “Sowhat’sOprahreallylike?”
Charlene wanted to slug her, but Adele tapped her on the shoulder and said, “There’s a phone call for you.”
