“This is absolute insanity. Absolute insanity. That’s all I can say,” Knoell said.
Larsen acknowledged that it was a tough loss for Knoell and her supporters but praised Santoro’s decision.
“The Citizen Amendment leaves no room for a gray area. We outlawed birth control to ensure right to life, so why on earth wouldn’t we protect any and all existing life? Look, a person conceived in the United States is a United States citizen, and United States citizens are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights,” Larsen said. She added, “We investigate the mysterious deaths of our post-uterine citizens, so it only follows that we would investigate the deaths of our youngest, most vulnerable citizens.”
Tinytown councilman Jerry Deutsch said that at the core of his support for the law was the protection of women who have been or could become the targets of pro-creation vigilantism.
“Women have died because there was no real system in place to determine the authenticity of these ‘miscarriages.’ It breaks my heart that some of those beaten and murdered women had valid, unintended loss of uterine life,” Deutsch said. “Now, someone—not me, but other people—might also say some of those women had it coming. Murder will always, always have a price. That’s just the way it’s always been and it’s the way it’ll always be. But without a proper investigation, we really don’t know that it’s murder, do we? To the vigilantes I say, job well done, but your job is done. We’ll take it from here.”
An unidentified woman present for Deutsch’s comments kicked Deutsch in the shin and shouted, “I hope you get syphilis!” before police escorted her out of the building.
Those found guilty of a self-induced miscarriage, including any person found to have been complicit in the act, will be considered abortionists and as such will face a life sent—
Katherine ran to the bathroom.
The old phone’s ring was so loud, the tail of the rapidly clanging bells so high a pitch, that she could hear it with her head surrounded by porcelain. The last time the bells had tormented her under such uncomfortable circumstances had been the day her mother brought home the Western Electric. Katherine was twelve and sick with a virus, vomiting in the toilet as her mother demanded each of her friends call her to test the antique phone’s ability to receive calls. It rang and rang, pounding Katherine’s head already strained from heaving. Her mother, resistant to the change, had complained loudly and at length to everyone who had undoubtedly expected to donate only a minute or two of their time.
“If they want to force us to return to land lines,” she had spit, “I’m certainly not pumping money into any business hoping to profit from such an infuriating law.” Instead, she told them, she had found a phone manufactured by a company not in operation anymore, a phone that was also, incidentally, “every bit as archaic as the feeble-minded, paternalistic ideals driving the inane decisions endorsed and approved by those cowardly, misguided, power-blinded politicians.” (Ironically, in their quest to protect people from the smart phone distractions that had caused innumerable deaths and immobilizing learned helplessness, the government had unwittingly led thousands accustomed to constant aid to their demise during the transition period.)
The ringing stopped, and Katherine removed her finger from her throat long enough to hear the message. Margaret said she was worried and needed to know Katherine was alive.
“At least give me a call and leave a little message, will you please? I promise not to pick up.”
At the click of the answering machine, which had taken hours of online antique store searches to find, Katherine pressed as far back on her tongue as her index finger would reach. Nothing, this time. She tried again, and still nothing. Small, dark bits of leaves floated in the water under her nose. She flushed the toilet and brushed her teeth, gagging at the bits of cohosh and morning muffin cranberries dislodging from her molars.
She bared her teeth in the mirror and used the bristles of her toothbrush to flick out dark remainders. Cohosh and pennyroyal, the least pleasant and more dangerous options on her list, had also been the last. Had the mixture not worked (her intervention notwithstanding), and had the miscarriage law not passed, she wondered: would she have been prepared to throw herself stomach first onto the kitchen’s stone floor? It was, admittedly, a relief to not have to answer that question, but she was disappointed by what the relief said about her commitment. Surely it was possible to miscarry and survive without medical assistance.
She put down her toothbrush and rinsed and gargled.
On the other hand, exposing herself to that kind of risk would mean she found the possibility of death or life imprisonment more tolerable than the physical experience of gestation and childbirth. She would have to be to some degree suicidal to invite either outcome. And because she was in no way suicidal, it only followed that she was also not a coward to allow the pregnancy to go forward. She was, instead, a pragmatist. Yes. Therefore, Katherine decided (as it were), whatever she did next was ultimately her choice. And her choice (she had to believe) was that she would let it grow until it was time for it to come out, and when it did, she would find someone who wanted it.
Katherine called Margaret, who was either not home or was, as prom-ised, allowing the ringing to go on until the message prompt.
“Alive,” Katherine said. “And…and still pregnant. Please, Margaret, never ask me about it.”
All that was left to do now was tell Graham.
THREE
Katherine and Graham sat in hard, high chairs at a tall table in a dim, expensive restaurant. Graham rubbed his eyes, two fingers on each eyelid. He said, “Marriage isn’t fun right now.”
There was nothing she could think to say that would make him feel better. She bit her cinnamon biscotti and tasted nothing. She forced it down with a drink of water and said, “Have you considered a dog?”
Graham put his chin in his hand and looked out the window. Cars drove by in the rain. They had never been to this restaurant before, but Katherine had always wanted to try it.
“I don’t really want a dog,” he said.
“Well, that should settle it for you. If you would shy away from the responsibility of a dog, how on earth could you handle a child?”
“I didn’t say I couldn’t handle a dog. I said I don’t want a dog.”
“Oh, thank goodness. I like them just fine—Margaret’s dog is lovely—but one of our own? The fur everywhere, and all that mess and walking. Who would do it all?”
Graham nodded. He smiled the saddest smile Katherine had ever seen him smile when the server delivered their second round of drinks. Katherine adjusted the napkin on her lap, sipped her fresh water, and when the server left she held Graham’s hand across the table. Black glass sucked cold at the tender skin of her forearm.
“I guess that explains why you’ve been so tired,” he said.
“I guess it does.” She stroked his fingers. “It was never the plan,” she said.
“Plans can change.” Graham drank his ginger beer and licked the foam from his upper lip.
“I cannot imagine why you would think that.”
“Yeah, well, I ‘cannot’ imagine why I wouldn’t.”
Katherine wanted to tell him that when she closed her eyes, she saw nothing but teems and teems of babies cocooned in blankets, streaming out hospital doors by the millions in tightly packed schools while fertile bodies continued without consciousness to create, create.
“Are we ocean sunfish, Graham?” She detested that blond television idiot. “Are we mice?”
“What?”
“If you love me,” she said, and when Graham released her hand, she crooned, “as I love you. My galaxy.”
“But you won’t do this for me. This one little thing.”
“Oh, Graham, no.” She moved aside the thick curl of hair that always threatened to sneak inside his ear. “But if you need to have it, you should. If you want to raise it alone, or…or even find someone to do it with you, I would never try to ke
ep you.”
“Why are you being like this?”
“I am being nothing but sincere.”
“Yeah, well,” he said, “the only way anyone is leaving anyone is if you’re the one leaving me.” And quietly, his beer glass hiding his mouth, “You know, they only stay until eighteen.”
“Oh, is that all?”
The next morning, both were tense and quiet after having pretended to sleep at the end of a clumsy sexual effort during which both seemed to have forgotten what the other liked or how to do it. Graham sullenly agreed over coffee to officially agree to adoption when the time came, in whatever way such an official agreement was made.
The time came three months later when Katherine collected Graham from Oxford Spirits II to bring him to sit at a polished marble desk across from an adoption counselor and a notary. In yellow wingback chairs much too large for the space, they leaned forward to read the contract and sign their initials beside arrow-shaped tabs to confirm both consented to all components of relinquishing “the child” at birth.
The adoption would be closed (this clause required their initials, unless they preferred it to be open), and no, Katherine said, they did not wish to participate in the selection of the parents (initials required here, as well).
“Why don’t we wish to participate in the selection?” Graham said, pen held over the blank line.
“Because the decision is not ours to make. How can we behave as her parents one moment, concerned over who will take her, what their treat-ment of her will be—”
“Her?”
“An arbitrarily chosen pronoun.” She urged the tip of his pen to the blank line. “We either are or are not the parents, and we are not. This child should go to its new parents with as much random chance as it came to us.”
Katherine would not dare tell him that it would be too much to bear to wonder year after year whether they had chosen the wrong guardians. If the new parents presented ideally on paper but let the diaper sit full for hours, or if they shook her—or him—Katherine would never forgive herself for having said, “Those people. They look perfect.” That she would never know the level of parenting they, the people she had handpicked, were achieving would only add to her anxiety. If she expressed her fears to Graham, he would latch onto her concern and insist, smiling and stroking whichever part of her body was closest to him, that it was a sign she wanted to be a parent, and from that moment until the day her body split open, he would peck and peck and ever so charmingly peck at her until she either walked away or relented.
“Initial there,” Katherine said, and Graham scribbled GJH on the short line beside Adoptive parents will be chosen at the discretion of the Happy Baby Agency. “And there,” Katherine said, having only just read the line, herself. It was in a smaller font, an obvious afterthought, squeezed tightly between paragraphs as if to retain the contract’s original page count, which was exactly four full pages: The Happy Baby Agency cannot guarantee placement of your child and reserves the right to revise and/or terminate the contract up to or beyond fourteen (13) days prior to or following the child’s birth.
“Is it fourteen days or is it thirteen?” Katherine said, showing the contract to the middle-aged man behind the desk.
“That’s a typo.”
Graham said, “It’s one day, Katie. What difference does it make?”
“It took exactly nine minutes to make this difference, Graham. Now, which is it? Whatever it is, please cross out the incorrect number, write in the correct number, and initial it.”
The counselor crossed out the number thirteen, wrote in 14, initialed the change, allowed the notary to pound a tiny seal into the page beside the initials, and returned the contract to Katherine.
“Will your notary be with you if you do decide to revise the contract up to or beyond thirteen-slash-fourteen days?” Katherine said.
“Every change and every signature is verified and validated. Can’t have people claiming they didn’t know this or that or never signed this or that line. Makes a bit of a jumble of things.”
“Natalist Net said you were the top child placement agency in the state. We waited three months for this appointment,” Katherine said while initialing with KBO. “I did not expect to be forced to accept that you anticipate likely failure.”
“We don’t like to anticipate failure, Ms. Oxford, but you were the first appointment of the day. And you were a legitimate appointment.”
“What has that to do with anything?” Katherine signed the final line.
“You’ll see.”
And they did. When Katherine and Graham stepped out of the elevator, they confronted a double-wide line stretching from the reception desk to the glass doors and out onto the sidewalk. Everyone inside the doors, their coats draped over their arms and their bodies sagging in the warm lobby, turned to look at Graham and Katherine. They did not look away after a second or two, as Katherine had expected they would, but lingered on their once-overs. Graham placed a protective hand over Katherine’s protruding abdomen.
“What are you doing?” She plucked it off.
The teenager at the reception desk screamed at the crowd that he was doing his best, but that there was no time between appointments to see anybody today.
“Anyone without an appointment and who has more than seven months left on your pregnancy, move to the back! I’m not saying it again. I don’t care how insulting and offensive you are, I will not put you on the wait list if you’re up front and I can’t see a bump. Move to the back!”
Necks craned to get a look at the end of the line, but from the inside, there seemingly was no end. People fell out of their places—some only feet from the desk—and made their way farther back, greeting each person in line with, “How far along?”
Katherine and Graham shoved the glass doors against a steady, cutting wind whipping bright scarves and long hair into the faces of taut, shivering strangers. Most were bundled in that year’s trendy faux fur hats, the expensive and the inexpensive easily distinguishable by sheen. They wore tattered polyester, suede leather, or puffy cotton-blend coats, most of them ankle length and some straining at the midsection. The men wore platform shoes ranging from brand name to generic, shiny to torn, their soles so high the shortest man was as tall as the tallest, high-hatted woman.
Katherine was suddenly aware of the feel of her own hat on her forehead. It was the best faux available, and the first time she had been able to afford something so ridiculous. It was also every bit as warm as advertised.
“Nice hat,” someone said.
“Oh, thank y—”
“I’m kidding, you elitist cunt. Why don’t you buy one of us an appoint-ment?”
Katherine felt Graham’s hand close around hers. Too many women for her taste looked at her.
“Look at them,” one of them muttered. “If me and my husband looked like that I bet we’d walk confident about our baby’s chances, too.”
Katherine wanted to say something, but what? She could hardly say what she wanted to say, which was that she hoped the woman was right. Odds were that a baby she and Graham made would indeed be, at least, aesthetically superior. Even if it were…well, an intolerable nuisance, no one would know or care until it was too late. People took babies home because they wanted a baby. While some undoubtedly favored a particular skin color, eye color, or something else, they did not take them home because they liked them for who they were. (Katherine made a mental note to write that in a message she decided at that very moment to have the agency deliver with the baby: I never knew you. It had nothing to do with who you might have been or who you might become. It was nothing personal.) She found herself, then, scrutinizing the women. What if there were no opportunity to leave a note? Which of those women might ruin her chances by having a baby more attractive than her own? The one with dark brown eyes and delicate hands? The one with full lips and high cheekbones? Probably not the one who muttered at her, but babies sometimes looked surprisingly unlike their parents. It could
, therefore, be any one of them.
An unnerving flutter thumped low in her throat. She pulled at Graham’s arm and rushed him across the street to the car.
FOUR
With the stores closed for the holiday, Katherine and Graham slept late on the morning of Margaret and Ernie’s Christmas dinner—Graham a bit later, because, Katherine guessed, no one was pressing every available appendage against his insides.
She looked out the kitchen window at the purple, early morning landscape while waiting for the coffee to percolate. It had been unusually warm for weeks. Warm enough for snow, falling now as it had off and on for days in flat, wide flakes that covered their four acres of weeds (which until recently had been only one acre of weeds). Bare trees normally passed by for their dull brownness stood in proud, naked glory under the building layer of white.
For as long as Katherine could remember, winters had been painfully cold and, but for a tiny flake here and there, free of snow. (As a child she had had to scrape and scrape to gather enough snow for one small, tight snowball, which she had thrown at her mother when she stepped outside to take a picture of Katherine in her knit cap and mittens. The snowball—no larger than a rock, and almost as hard—made it into the photograph before pelting Katherine’s mother’s face the second she lowered her camera, “yet another expense, not to mention another piece of clutter” caused by the smart phone ban. Katherine’s mother had henceforth forbidden her to make snowballs.) The intermittent snow had so enthralled Katherine for the last several days that, until this morning’s intrauterine abuse, she had managed to completely forget she was pregnant.
“Merry Christmas,” Graham said behind her. “Where’d you go?”
“Right here.”
“I thought maybe you’d stay in bed.”
“Why?”
“Christmas.”
She had considered it. She missed their closeness. In the months since her abdomen had taken on more girth, however, Graham had started paying it more attention. Taking off her shirt only drew his eyes to it, and being naked beside, on top of, or beneath him meant being close enough for him to touch it. He would heed, but soon forget, her well-intentioned lies about sensitive skin and slide his palm over her before she could turn away or hold him off. It was easier to not be physical at all.
The Age of the Child Page 3
