The Age of the Child

by Kristen Tsetsi

  THE

  AGE

  OF

  THE

  CHILD

  ~A NOVEL~

  KRISTEN TSETSI

  THE AGE OF THE CHILD

  Copyright © 2017 by Kristen Tsetsi

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed

  without permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, events, and places are creations of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to existing places or to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Book cover design by Kat Mellon

  ISBN-13 978-1979093699

  ISBN-10 1979093695

  for danielle

  my strong, brilliant, inspiring,

  and dearest friend

  cheers

  PART ONE

  ONE

  Katherine had never been this close to an abandoned. She had seen them from her car, and occasionally one wandered past her store window, but the distance had always allowed her the convenience of assuming she was imagining the worst. The children were simply walking home, she could tell herself. The babies had been set on the sidewalk “just for a second” while their parents ran inside for some forgotten thing.

  There was no pretending this baby was there for any other reason than that someone had fully intended to leave it there.

  Above the shaded entrance where the car carrier sat on a WIPE FEET HERE mat, a second-story banner declared THIS CLINIC STAYS OPEN in futile defiance of a thick iron chain looped in a taut lemniscate through the metal doors’ handles. (Katherine had hardly expected the Daily Fact article about the clinic’s chained doors to be quite so literal.) Graffiti, some old and veined—Adoption is a loving option!—and some new, bold, and bright—The future children of this great nation have prevailed!—decorated exterior walls and fresh wood panels nailed over the first-floor windows.

  Not only had no one run inside this building for anything, but one half of a legal sized envelope—what could it be but a note?—poked out from behind the baby’s large head, which swiveled this way and that in a scan of the world and the two women standing over it.

  “What should we do?” Margaret said.

  Katherine looked again at the locked doors and felt physically ill.

  She focused instead on the miniature t-shirt printed with green frogs and red daisies, at the plump legs with undefined knees poking out of a plain white diaper. A drop of water from the previous night’s rain fell onto the tiny stranger’s wrinkled neck. The baby opened its eyes and stretched one leg. Katherine tried not to imagine the moment someone had set down the carrier and walked away.

  She stepped over the baby and pulled the chain, then yanked it hard.

  Could they really have left no one on staff when there were still appointments to honor? Was that professional?

  The padlock connecting the end links clacked hard against the door. She only half heard Margaret telling her it was useless as she tugged, her fingers wrapped so tight around the cool metal her skin burned. She dropped the chain and pressed her hands and face to the glass.

  “Maybe you can find someone else to do it,” Margaret said. “There has to be someone, doesn’t there?”

  A pamphlet on the vestibule floor promised Safe Sex, No Regrets. Narrow window panels cut into each of the interior doors allowed a fractured glimpse into the waiting area: an unmanned reception desk, empty lobby chairs, and a short magazine stack on an end table.

  The sound of a vehicle passing on the rarely traveled industrial road carried over the tall wall of barberry bushes that obscured the clinic’s entrance. Margaret bent to reach for the baby, but Katherine held her back.

  “No touching,” she said. She listened until the engine faded. Her neck started to sweat.

  The baby made a sound that could have been a cry, and Margaret reached for it again.

  Katherine grabbed the back of her shirt and pulled. “No touching, Margaret. They have a task force.”

  Margaret straightened and slipped her hands inside her skirt pockets. She looked down at the baby, and Katherine did, too. Its mouth puckered and twitched.

  Margaret said, “How do they operate?”

  “I assume they look under a microscope at skin and clothing and grasses, and such.”

  “I know what a task force does.” Margaret kneeled beside the baby. “It’s a robot baby, then? An android?”

  “A what?” Katherine looked at Margaret long enough to establish that she was genuinely confused. “The babies are not a task force, Margaret. The police have a task force. To catch the people putting them out.”

  Margaret’s face turned red.

  Katherine looked away to give her a moment.

  “But we didn’t leave this baby here,” Margaret finally said. “Why don’t we just bring it to the police?”

  “Were would you say we found it?”

  “Right here. It’s not illegal to walk by, is it?”

  “Do you think they would believe we were just walking by?”

  Whether they believed it wouldn’t matter, Margaret said, because a simple DNA test would prove neither woman was the parent, and the results would clear them with either the police or the vigilantes.

  Katherine looked at Margaret the way she always did when Margaret’s refusal to read the Daily Fact left her ignorant of yet another critical piece of information or current event that could have a devastating impact on her future.

  “If we bring this baby to the police,” Katherine said, “we risk exposing ourselves not only to vigilantes, but to vigilante police officers.—Yes, some police are members, too. Margaret, if you would please just read—”

  “But we’re completely innocent,” Margaret said.

  “Innocent of leaving the baby, yes, and we might be allowed to prove that. But where we found it will be more than enough for anyone wanting to accuse one or both of us of hoping to find the facility open.”

  Margaret rubbed her nose. “One of us was.”

  “Margaret.”

  The baby made another crying noise. Its doughy skin was starting to develop a sheen in the humidity. The awning provided shade, at least, and the frog shirt appeared to be cotton, which was helpful, but the awning was narrow and the forecast had predicted rising humidity and a temperature in the nineties.

  Margaret said, “Oh! See! There, under the leg. Is that a pacif—”

  Katherine held up a hand at the sound of an engine on the other side of the barberry bushes. She clutched Margaret’s wrist, said, “Sh,” and crouched at the base of the hedge to peer through the loose mesh of low branches. A burgundy van with dark windows idled on the street beyond the parking lot.

  Just one car, Katherine’s, occupied a space.

  The van turned into the lot and rolled toward Katherine’s car. It halted in front of it, driver’s side facing the clinic.

  Margaret stooped beside her and told her they had to stay completely still, now. Her book research had taught her that was how soldiers and animals survived.

  “What if they get out?” Katherine said.

  “If we have to move, we will, but not until then.”

  Behind them, the baby squawked and then whined, its short, shaky protests building into howls.

  Katherine and Margaret looked back at the baby, and then through the hedges.

  Over the crying, Katherine heard the door on the opposite side of the van slide open with a dull grind. Artie Shaw’s “Temptation” played to the lot. The baby screamed. Margaret spun to reach for it, and Katherine pushed her a little too hard before she could make contact, knocking her sideways onto the concrete path.

  “You are one of the smartest women I know,” Katherine whisp
ered, pulling Margaret back to her crouch, “but I sometimes think you intentionally repel common sense. Are you all right?”

  Margaret swept a hand over her still-flat abdomen.

  Katherine whispered, “Margaret, I am so sor—”

  “Don’t be silly. I’m fine.—Kat, it’s fine.” She put a finger to her lips.

  The people in the parking lot must not have been able to hear the baby over the music, because no one materialized around either side, and the faint shadow of the driver’s head moved only slightly behind the window. At “You were born to be kissed,” the sliding door slammed shut and the van peeled out to the street.

  Katherine and Margaret waited one full minute before standing. The baby continued to exhaust itself in the shade.

  “We can call the police for it from a gas station,” Katherine said.

  They crept from the barberry bushes to a line of oaks and ran from there to the car. Katherine plucked a folded piece of paper from under the windshield wiper and slid behind the wheel. She pushed START, unfolded the note, and read it aloud while Margaret, who was more familiar with AVs, programmed the GPS.

  “‘We came to collect some of our personal items but changed our minds when we saw your car.’” Katherine said, “Why do you suppose they wanted us to know why they were here?”

  “They probably don’t want us to be scared,” Margaret said.

  “‘If you’re here to cause harm or damage,’” Katherine continued reading, “‘please know you’ve already won. There’s nothing more for you to do. If you’re here for help, please know how sad we are that we can no longer help you.’”

  Margaret pressed the BEGIN circle on the monitor. The car eased out of its space.

  “What will you do now?” Margaret said. “Tell him?”

  Katherine watched the steering wheel turn on its own. She followed the green line on the map from the clinic to Margaret and Ernie’s house, and from Margaret and Ernie’s house to the much smaller Newchester house Katherine and Graham had owned for two years.

  She had meant to tell him four days ago, on the day of her appointment. That morning, she sat at the kitchen table with coffee, a muffin, and the newspaper spread in front of her, just as she did every morning. She intended to read, as she always did, while waiting for Graham to come downstairs for the coffee he consistently filled with an inconsistent amount of creamer. I have an appointment, she was going to tell him once he set down his mug. It should be no surprise to you, considering, but I thought you should know.

  She tried to read, but her prepared words repeated and repeated, blurring the headlines. The speech itself, succinct and harmless as it was, was making her needlessly nervous. Of course Graham would agree. Of course he would. Of course. She smoothed the soft crease in the paper’s center and tried again, getting no farther than the second sentence before spontaneously vomiting her first bite of cranberry muffin and a sip of coffee onto the lede:

  NATION—In a long anticipated but hard fought move, the country’s five holdout reproductive health clinics will chain their doors today in compliance with federal laws enacted under the pro-creation Citizen Amendment. Anti-abortion and pro-creation acti-vists who together have waged a decades-long battle for the protection of unborn citizens call the clinics’ closings “an epic victory”…

  The Daily Fact was a carefully gathered wad in her hands when Graham finally sailed chin first into the kitchen and sucked up the air with flared nostrils. Polished Italian leather shoes bought on their Austrian vacation dangled from his fingers. After a look at Katherine, his eyes went to the paper, but he said nothing as he sat at the table and set his shoes at his feet. He fluttered his eyebrows at her, then frowned as she left the table with the Fact. When he asked what had happened in the world—“Can I read it before you throw it away, next time?”—she told him what little she knew.

  “Ah, well,” he said when she finished. “I know you must be upset about that—and you should be! We all should be—but it was bound to happen. Do you know, I’ve been thinking about changing my mind about all that. Babies. Fatherhood. Motherhood, for you.” He winked and smiled and put on his left shoe. “Just thinking.” His right foot slipped into the right shoe. “Hey! You’re still in slippers. Aren’t we going in together?”

  Katherine, stunned vapid, only shook her head. Graham’s revised perspective on their future was—surely inadvertently and wholly unconsciously—a threat. She immediately rethought her once deeply held belief that they should always be completely honest with each another.

  She had stayed home from the store that day, and for two days after that.

  “No,” Katherine said to Margaret. “I think not yet.”

  TWO

  Katherine found herself on the map and looked at the time. Charlene had warned her not to be late, so Katherine had given herself twenty minutes to spare. “Three sets of knocking, and say nothing,” Charlene had said. “They won’t answer the first two times. Listen, now. If they do, it isn’t them.”

  Katherine thought it sounded risky, but she trusted Charlene, a tall, thin banker in her sixties and Katherine’s first customer when Oxford Spirits opened two weeks after the ratification of the Citizen Amendment. It was also the only underground clinic Charlene said she trusted, and Charlene was the only person Katherine knew who knew of an underground clinic. (Many people could direct her toward black market birth control—all of them customers—, but very few were aware of, or would admit to being aware of, an abortion provider. Were black market birth control more reliable, and less frequently a pink vitamin B12 pill or a condom made in someone’s home kitchen, Katherine might have opted for it in favor of the rhythm method that had proved powerless against the charms of Austria and a blindingly beautiful husband.)

  There were other options, of course, but she had carefully thought through each one and had ranked them from most to least pleasant. She would turn to the alternatives only as they became necessary.

  By force of habit, she hovered her hands near the steering wheel as the car navigated itself away from the liquor store. (“You’re taking the AV?” Graham had smiled at her from the vodka aisle. “Where’re you going?” He’d looked down, then, distracted when their customer crouched to investigate a lower shelf, her tangled red hair blanketing her shoulders. “Margaret needs me,” Katherine had lied, turning to leave before he could ask anything else.) When the car reached a steady speed on Tinytown’s Main Street, straight road for a mile and a half, Katherine relaxed her hands in her lap and looked out the window.

  Even with the increasing attention law enforcement was paying to abandoned children, discards still sat in doorways every several blocks. Some wore signs around their necks: FREE TO A GOOD HOME, read one hanging from a child who looked old enough to ride a bike. A little girl in a frayed dress wore a small whiteboard reading POTTY TRAINED, a rainbow and sunshine doodle crammed into the top right corner. Others had no signs, but huddled on stoops with bottles they may or may not have been able to manipulate themselves, stuffed animals that fell and rolled away, or toys Katherine had seen more than one child drop on the sidewalk and then promptly jam into a dirty mouth.

  Discarded coffee cups, fast food containers, used pregnancy tests, and pint-sized liquor bottles also dotted Main Street’s once pristine sidewalks. When traffic slowed to maneuver around a drunk pedestrian, Katherine found herself at pace with a bearded man in a business shirt collecting trash as he came to it, his arms loaded. When he glanced up and caught Katherine watching, she turned forward and concentrated on the road. One car ahead, a brightly-fingernailed hand popped out of the passenger side window to toss a soda can. It bounced into the gutter in front of the man, who lost a beer bottle picking it up.

  Traffic picked up speed, and the man became a small figure in the side mirror. Two blocks later, a red light created another standstill. It was the only major intersection in north Tinytown and the final light before the highway turnoff. Consequently, semi-regular protests had taken
shape on the high-traffic corner early in the debates over the Citizen Amendment, whose supporters and opponents waved and shouted at rush hour commuters pretending to be distracted by their dashboard screens. Those semi-regular protests had over time become a weekly gathering for anyone who wanted to stand in support of or opposition to nearly anything.

  This week, the focus of the protest was children. A sign reading BABIES AREN’T TRASH bounced in rhythm with steps taken in a tight circle. IF YOU CAN’T DO THE TIME, DON’T DO THE CRIME, read one side of a large poster. It spun to flash CLOSE YOUR DAMN LEGS on the other. A woman wearing a mask of some kind—she was three vehicles ahead, so her back was to Katherine—jumped out of the front car in the right turn lane and plopped a baby at the feet of a protester carrying a sign reading THINK OF THE CHILDREN. By the time she returned to her car (it was a gray seal, the mask she wore) and the driver sped around the corner, the protest group had managed to shuffle ten or fifteen feet away from the baby left squirming and crying on the warm asphalt. Katherine watched to see whether one of the protesters would turn back to pick it up, but none did. She was reaching for the door handle when the man who had been collecting trash sprinted by on the sidewalk and scooped the baby into his arms. He held it to his chest while shouting and gesticulating at the backs of the protesters who stepped farther away, signs bouncing in exclamation.

  After half an hour, much of the drive along a curving, tree-lined county highway, Katherine’s car parked itself at a convenience store on the outskirts of a small town. She locked up and hurried across the street. Sweat collected under her chin and trapped stray hairs against her cheeks and forehead before she reached the opposite curb. By the time she made it to the red house half a mile away, her shirt pressed flat against her rib cage.