Лени Зумас – Red Clocks (страница 8)
“I’m fine, Dad.”
“Well, I
She could trot out the usual list (“I’ve got friends, neighbors, colleagues, people from meditation group”), but her okayness with being by herself—ordinary, unheroic okayness—does not need to justify itself to her father. The feeling is hers. She can simply feel okay and not explain it, or apologize for it, or concoct arguments against the argument that she doesn’t
“Well, Dad,” she says, “you’re alone too.”
Any reference to her mother’s death can be relied on to shut him up.
There was Usman for six months in college. Victor for a year in Minneapolis. Liaisons now and again. She is not a long-term person. She likes her own company. Nevertheless, before her first insemination, the biographer forced herself to consult online dating sites. She browsed and bared her teeth. She browsed and felt chest-flatteningly depressed. One night she really did try. Picked the least Christian site and started typing.
What are your three best qualities?
1 Independence
2 Punctuality
3
Best book you recently read?
What fascinates you?
1 How cold stops water
2 Patterns ice makes on the fur of a dead sled dog
3 The fact that Eivør Mínervudottír lost two of her fingers to frostbite
But the biographer didn’t feel like telling anyone that. Delete, delete, delete. She could say, at least, she had tried. The next day she called for an appointment at a reproductive-medicine clinic in Salem.
Her therapist thought she was moving fast. “You only recently decided to do this,” he said, “and already you’ve chosen a donor?”
Oh, therapist, if only you knew how quickly a donor can be chosen! You turn on your computer. You click boxes for race, eye color, education, height. A list appears. You read some profiles. You hit PURCHASE.
A woman on the Choosing Single Motherhood discussion board wrote,
But, as the biographer explained to her therapist, she did
She took notes on dozens and dozens—
Pros:
1 Calls himself “avid reader”
2 “Great cheekbones” (staff)
3 Enjoys “mental challenges and riddles”
4 To future child: “I look forward to hearing from you in eighteen years”
Cons:
1 Handwriting very bad
2 Commercial real-estate appraiser
3 Of own personality: “I’m not too complicated”
—then narrowed it to two. Donor 5546 was a fitness trainer described by sperm-bank staff as “handsome and captivating.” Donor 3811 was a biology major with well-written essay answers; the affectionate way he described his aunts made the biographer like him; but what if he wasn’t as handsome as the first? Both of their health histories were perfect, or so they claimed. Was the biographer so shallow as to be swayed by handsomeness? But who wants an ugly donor? But 3811 was not necessarily ugly. But was ugly even a problem? What she wanted was good health and a good brain. Donor 5546 claimed to be bursting with health, but she wasn’t sure about his brain.
So she bought vials of both. She wouldn’t stumble upon 9072, the just-right third, for another couple of months.
“Do you feel undeserving of a romantic partner?” asked the therapist.
“No,” said the biographer.
“Are you pessimistic about finding a partner?”
“I don’t necessarily
“Might that attitude be a form of self-protection?”
“You mean am I deluding myself?”
“That’s another way to put it.”
“If I say yes, then I’m not deluded. And if I say no, it’s further evidence of delusion.”
“We need to end there,” said the therapist.
The polar explorer liked to stand on the turf roof of the two-room cottage and think of her feet being precisely above the head of her mother, who was stirring or cutting or pounding; and how many inches of grass and soil lay between them; and how she was
Then she would be called in to help boil the puffin.
Walks home from the library the long way, past the school. The three o’clock bell is big over the harbor, flakes of bronze dropping slow to the water, bell in her mouth, bell in her scabbard. The blue school doors open: boots and scarves and shouts. Part-hid behind a bitter cherry, the mender waits. A string of Aristotle’s lanterns—the spiky teeth of sea urchins—hangs on her neck as protection. Last week she stood here an hour until the last child came out and the doors stopped; but the girl she was waiting for did not appear.
The mender herself performed quite poorly at Central Coast Regional, which she left, fifteen years ago, without a diploma.
They come through the blue doors, little and big, bundled for weather: fishermen’s children, shopkeepers’ children, waitresses’ children. Girls with white cheek paint and black eyelids and crimson lips who are not the girl she is waiting for. The girl she is waiting for doesn’t wear makeup, at least not that the mender can tell. She smells smoke. Her aunt Temple’s brand. Is Temple close? Has Temple come—? Stupid, stupid, they don’t come back. It’s the blond weasel, who teaches at the school. His hair and his teeth go in all directions. She has seen him with his daughter and son on the cliff path, pointing at the water.
“Looking for someone?” he says.
She gives him the side-eye.
The blond weasel sucks and blows. “Seems like you are.”
“No,” she says, and goes.
She shouldn’t be seen trying to see the girl. People already think she’s unhinged, a forest weirdo, a witch. She is younger than the broomy witches people know from TV, but that doesn’t stop them whispering.
Up the cobbly lane to the cliff path. Then back and back into the trees. A Douglas-fir was felled on a hillside, sawn into logs, truck-hauled to a mill. Boards were cut and trimmed, planed true. A man bought the boards and notched them together to make a cabin. Two rooms and a toilet closet. Wood stove. Double sink. A cupboard north and a cupboard south. The lamps and mini fridge run on batteries. Showerhead outside, nailed up. Wintertime she sponge bathes or stinks. The goat shed and chicken coop sit behind the cabin on either side of a dead black hawthorn, lightning split. In its cleft the mender has built nest boxes for the owls, swallows, marbled murrelets, golden-crowned kinglets.
She ought to be more careful. Can’t let people see her watching. The yellow-haired, tumble-toothed weasel looked suspicious. It is no crime to watch someone, but humans like to name
Clementine comes to the mender’s door with a picnic cooler and a pain. Her last complaint was vicious burning when she peed; today’s pain is new. “Pants off and lie down,” says the mender, and Clementine unzips herself, kicks away the jeans. Her thighs are white and very soft, underwear the size of a shoelace. She plumps back on the mender’s bed and opens her knees.
A vesicle on Clementine’s south lip, the inner fold, white-red in the browny pink: how much does it hurt?
“Oh God, a lot. Sometimes at work I’m like ‘Eeesh!’ and they think I’m—Anyway, do I have syphilis?”
“No. Plain old cunt wart.”
“My vadge isn’t having a good year.”
The ointment: emulsion of purslane, bishopswort, and devil’s claw in sesame oil. She dabs a few drops on the wart, recaps the vial, hands it to Clementine. “Put this on it twice a day.” More warts are likely to join it, possibly a lot more, but she doesn’t see cause to say this.
After Clementine leaves, the mender misses her, wants back the soft white thighs. She likes her ladies big-sirenic, mermaids of land, pressing and twisting in fleshful bodies.
Out in the shed she pours a scoop of grain and waits for Pinka and Hans to come galloping. Hans nuzzles the mender’s crotch, and Pinka lifts a front hoof to be shaken.