The Age of the Child Read online

  She scanned the sidewalk and the street, saw no one, and turned into the gravel driveway narrowed by tall hedges and reaching vines. Small rocks crunched under each step she took toward the house. Its upstairs windows were dark cutouts in thick, curling ivy, and blue glass beakers on the bottom floor windowsills glowed bright against the white curtains closed behind them.

  She stopped.

  The beakers struck her as odd.

  What respectable underground abortion clinic would advertise as a laboratory, or as a scientific or medical facility of any kind?

  Charlene had cautioned her about the knocking, but going all the way to the door to announce herself now seemed like a reckless idea. The police could have set a trap. So could the vigilantes. Prison for attempted murder on one hand, a potentially fatal beating on the other.

  Katherine watched the house—the beautiful, old red house that just seconds before had promised her freedom—as she backed away from it, each step a grating that traveled the length of her legs to grind at her abdomen. When she reached the sidewalk, she was almost certain the left window curtain moved an inch or two to one side. She ran for the convenience store as fast as she could for as long as she could.

  The pharmacists standing behind their white counter made no effort to pretend they were uninterested in Katherine’s study of the vitamins and herbs in the natural health aisle. She fingered through the vitamin A, B12, and D. There was no vitamin C.

  “Help you?” the woman pharmacist called.

  Katherine asked sweetly where she might find the vitamin C.

  Both pharmacists looked her over. Katherine imagined what they saw: Clean, intact shoes, pressed mid-lengths, and a crisp black shirt. Shiny blond hair and—she smiled at them—remarkably unstained teeth. A large box of “All natural! 100% Organic!” diapers tucked under her arm.

  The male pharmacist said, “You know the law’s this close to changing. I suspect you don’t want to get caught up in that.”

  Katherine said, “Law? What law is that?” She knew precisely what law. Time was critical.

  “Stop making accusations, Bertram. She probably just has a cold, the poor thing,” the woman said. “C is for cold.” She laughed at her own joke. “Is that right? You have a cold, hon? We keep all the C behind the counter, these days. You never can tell with some people.”

  “That’s exactly right, June.”

  “Oh, Bertram.” She pointed at Katherine’s diapers. “Can’t you see she already has one?”

  “Doesn’t mean she wants another one,” he muttered.

  “Come on over, hon. I have some C right here. How many milli-grams?”

  The seasoning aisle was next, and it had a supervisor, as well, this one wearing a white shirt, black slacks, and a red MANAGER tag. Katherine dropped as many containers of curry, onion powder, and rosemary in her basket as she did cinnamon. Now and then, as the manager inched closer, she struggled with the diapers to draw attention to them.

  “That’s an awful lot of cinnamon, ma’am,” the manager said.

  He stood so close behind her she could feel her shirt sleeve touching some part of him. She turned to face him and checked his neck and wrists for tattoos. Some vigilantes had them, but most kept their participation hidden until it was time to, as one member had phrased it for the Daily Fact, “administer justice.”

  “Is there a limit per customer?” She spoke sweetly. She twirled her hair. Graham said men liked that. Katherine never understood why.

  “That all depends,” he said. “What do you need it for?”

  The Fourth of July, of course, she said. She twirled her hair again and tilted her head. She cooed, “Do you enjoy a party?” When he smiled that way and let his eyes fall down her neck to the last open button of her shirt, she nudged him with a shoulder and said, “Graham—my husband—always prepares a delightful pasta salad.”

  He pulled away. “That’s fine, ma’am. Have a nice day.”

  Katherine avoided Margaret’s calls for the next two weeks. It was easier to pretend there was no pregnancy if she could escape talking about it, and Margaret would want to talk about it. Although Margaret might think Katherine’s absence made her a terrible friend, Katherine had to risk the misconception for now. In truth, she was there for Margaret in her own way, listening to every single voicemail she left.

  Margaret was excited—not only about her own pregnancy, but about (what she believed would be) their shared due dates. Their babies, she predicted, were “destined to be best friends,” and she hoped that would comfort Katherine as she settled into her “…um…situation.”

  Margaret had chosen names. Elmore for a boy and Lenore for a girl. “Have you thought about names?” she trailed in a small voice.

  Margaret was convinced she could feel every extraordinary moment of her baby forming itself from her own blood and tissue.

  Margaret was drinking Rooibos tea and working on her eleventh novel, the activity in her uterus making her feel “so optimistic and creative” she had half considered beginning a new series.

  Katherine, meanwhile, was doing her best (and mightily succeeding) at ignoring whatever activity she had going on in her own uterus in between as yet ineffective doses of this and that. When she worked, she worked late, her undivided attention on the second store’s final, pre-grand opening touches, various employee concerns, and Graham’s plans for opening day (Katherine would not attend; Graham was a natural at social gatherings).

  The days she stayed home to experiment with herbs and spices, Katherine found many ways to occupy the time spent waiting (hoping) for cramping. When she was confident Graham had driven far enough away to not turn back for something, she switched on the television news and listened to the all but intolerable voices in the background while straining to lift impossibly heavy furniture. (“You’re seeing the true animal nature of human beings,” said the blond male opinion generator one hot July day. “Pest status, here we come. Correction, correction: here ‘they’ come. I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but me and the wife, for one—or is it for two? Ha! Ha!—aren’t mindless breeders like…Hey, what’s another nuisance breeder? Mice? Yeah? Mice? What about sunfish? Most of their eggs die, did you know that? That’s why they have so gosh darned many of them. Natural population control at work with those sunfish. What say you, audience? Is it time we start looking into some kind of human population control? If so, what’s your proposal? Chemtrails? Something else? You’re invited! Come fight it out at YouGuidetheNews.com.”)

  The day Katherine left behind cinnamon, parsley, and vitamin C (in all of its incarnations), she committed as soon as she got out of bed to a blend of black cohosh and pennyroyal. Graham got ready upstairs and she let the herbs do their work while skimming the headlines at the kitchen table, making tic marks beside selected Daily Fact articles.

  She read the newspaper for Margaret nearly as much as she did for herself. Not talking regularly to Margaret meant not keeping her informed as well as she would have liked, and although Margaret did claim to spend plenty of time reading relevant discussions on social media, Katherine thought it critical to send her clippings to keep her apprised of the issues not making it into blogs or online meeting sites—at the very least those issues that might be easily misunderstood, misrepresented, or blatantly manipulated with an edited word here and a misquote there. Margaret granted too many interviews and attended too many signings and book launches to be as uninformed about the world’s “negativity” as she would like to be. (And Margaret had more than once thanked Katherine for having somehow selected just the right current events to help her better navigate the intolerable world of small talk.) Katherine did, however, do her best to respect Margaret’s wishes and rarely sent her anything that would upset her.

  Katherine would unquestionably include the top two front page stories in her weekly news update envelope, the first for its documentation of an extraordinary moment in history:

  Citizen Amendment proponents overwhelmed by babi
es

  STATE—Opposition to the Citizen Amendment continues to escalate, with an increasing number of lawmakers and residents finding infants and toddlers on their front porches, lawns, and in some cases in front of their places of business.

  Governor John Santoro, perhaps most widely known for his repeated declarations on the dangers of birth control, said babies left outside his private gate eleven times in the last week have made it a “real chore” to leave his house.

  “You have to go out and you have to move them, first, otherwise the gate will scuttle them across the driveway. It isn’t a soft, smooth stone, like slate. We have cobblestones, authentic. Ripped straight from the streets of Munich,” Santoro said.

  Santoro is one of at least four hundred politicians nationwide reporting the presence of uninvited children, but until recently the phenomenon had not significantly affected the northeastern region. State representatives Alice Charles and Chadwick Allen, staunch opponents of the Citizen Amendment and in particular the June shuttering of the Eighth Street Reproductive Health Clinic, have argued the uptick in doorstep babies is a direct and clear response to the clinic’s closing. Haverton selectwoman Frances Platt, who also opposed the Citizen Amendment, hesitates however to credit the loss of the state’s holdout clinic with the rise in what many are calling shocking demonstrations of animosity.

  “People are tired of not having sex, so they’re having it. These babies are in many cases an inevitable result,” Platt said. She added that while parents have options, such as putting children up for adoption, “My guess is they figure these people they’re leaving them with will want them, and it’s a lot easier than going through that whole process.”

  Politicians aren’t the only targets of those seeking alternative permanent childcare. Tinytown resident Albert Griffin, 20, filed a police report Monday claiming he tripped over a toddler asleep on his door mat. Windbury resident Zelda Knightly, 60, last week reported finding a young girl sucking a watermelon wine cooler from a child’s sippy cup on her back porch swing. Police estimated the girl to be two years old.

  Both Griffin and Knightly say they were openly supportive of the Citizen Amendment but that they don’t know who could have left the children outside their homes.

  Santoro, who said he spoke on behalf of all Citizen Amendment supporters, condemned the behavior.

  “Are the babies precious? Well, of course they’re precious. Every child is precious. But I’ll tell you what, they aren’t mine to treat preciously. Is it so wrong to want to be able get in my car and go out for some milk once in a while?” Santoro said.

  The second story would be light fodder for party conversation:

  Baby Stuffs to add fifty new links to its chain

  NATION—Baby Stuffs will add fifty new stores over the coming year, executive vice president of corporate affairs Danielle Marias announced Thursday.

  The big box retailer’s surge in popularity follows 32 years of disappointing sales that reduced the once booming retailer to fewer than 100 stores nationwide. Marias said that although precise locations are to be determined, she expects the bulk of the stores to open in the higher-than-average birthrate regions of the Northeast and Midwest. Marias said she could not be more excited about the store’s success.

  “Three years ago I was mainlining Cabernet in my office bathroom. I was just waiting on word that I was out of a job, you know? Tip Top One Stop already had my resume,” she said. “But then everyone started having all their babies, and boom!”

  Statistics compiled by the Centers for Disease Control reveal a marked spike in the nation’s birth rate, previously holding steady at 5.1 million. One of the authors of the report, Hazel Schnyctic, said she is astonished by the figures.

  “In the last four years we’ve grown by at least an additional half a million annually,” Schnyctic said. “Five hundred thousand one year, then five hundred seventy five, and we expect this year to top out at about six hundred fifty thousand. These are all extra, you understand.” Schnyctic added that the CDC’s projections for the next ten years are “astronomical”…

  Katherine cut and folded the articles and slipped them into the yellow envelope before turning to page two.

  Lice no longer the only daycare strain

  TINYTOWN—Daycare providers face new pressures as enroll-ment continues to exceed available accommodations.

  Facilities already over capacity struggle with the challenge of understaffing, tearful brawls over inadequate toy supplies, and employees traumatized by the number of children left behind by their paren—

  “Staying home again?”

  She looked up from the paper. Graham, wearing her favorite of his sports jackets, stood in the space between the kitchen and living room. The ends of his hair just touched the collar. He was beautiful.

  “Yes,” she said. “I think so.”

  Rather than walk toward the coffee pot to fill his travel mug as he did every morning before leaving, he raised the cuffs of his pants to show her his platform shoes. He winked an eyebrow.

  She suspected the sight of the tan leather lace-ups he’d bought in Austria should have transported her directly to their small, pink hotel room overlooking the Salzach River, and to the uncommonly dizzying sexual connection Salzburg had always inspired in them. Instead, she thought of abdominal intrusion and unbearable weight. Of old age and Salzburg’s penetrating rain. Of prison.

  “Oh, Graham. You know it was never the shoes.” She reached out to him. “The time. You have to open. Customers will be waiting.”

  He tapped his watch. “I’m early. On purpose.” He posed in his jacket. “Ten minutes, Katie.”

  “This exhaustion…”

  He let her hand hover between them. “You’ve sure been tired a lot, lately,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all.” She hated to lie, and lie again, but it was the only way. If she told him the truth now, which she believed she could safely do with the miscarriage so imminent and irreversible, he would still feel betrayed by the decision she had made without him. He would almost certainly stop trusting her. And then stop loving her.

  “Nothing,” he said. “That’s the whole problem. Even on the days you don’t stay home tired, there’s nothing. It’s been months, you know that?”

  It had not been months, but it had been a long five and a half weeks since they had last engaged in almost any form of intimacy, she realized as he stood there in masterfully unveiled sorrow.

  “It has not been months,” she said quietly.

  He took her hand, finally, and got on one knee in front of her. He kissed her knuckles and then slid her robe aside and kissed her breast. She wanted so much to appreciate the kiss for what it was, and for a brief, blissful moment it did clear her mind of anything but the pure physical sensation, but the vision of a suckling baby fast replaced the reality of his mouth and she nudged him away.

  Graham adjusted his crotch as he stood. “You used to like sex you didn’t know was coming.” He shook his hair out of his eyes and smiled. “If it worked with the calendar…”

  “Is that what this is about? Graham, you have to allow me to not always want—”

  “Sex? You think this is about sex? Only sex, I mean? Katie, if that’s what you think, how could you even love me?” He dragged a chair around the table and sat close enough to touch her arms under the wide sleeves of her bathrobe. “Katie. Katie, we…We planned the whole second store in the middle of the night, standing out in the weeds. Remember we used to get drunk together?”

  He slid his hand further into her sleeve and cupped and stroked her elbow. They used to make dinners together, he said. They used to have sex after the morning alarm and then share the newspaper. They used to talk in the car on the way to the store.

  He scraped a fingernail against her forearm, over and over again in the same spot until it itched. She moved his hand so she could scratch.

  “You used to like being around me,” he said.

&
nbsp; “Five weeks ago, Graham?”

  He looked at her, cold. “Not long enough? Well, Katie, you let me know when I can officially start missing you, and—”

  She pulled him close and whispered in his ear, with full sincerity, “I love being around you.”

  He held her tight and whispered back, “I know how you can be around more of me.”

  She laughed and squirmed away, wanting but very much not wanting. “The grand opening.” She wiped her eyes. “Lout.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m—”

  “The store, Graham. The opening.” She tapped her bare wrist.

  “Oh! Yep, yep, I guess I should get.” He hopped up, adjusted his crotch again, unhooked a pant cuff from the heel of his shoe, and smiled dazzling eyes at her. “Sure you won’t come?”

  She was tempted to, now. She promised herself that if the herbs performed early enough, she would do her best to make it. To him she said, “Tell me about it tonight, and please kiss me hard before you go.”

  She would have continued reading about the troubles of lice after he was gone had she not been distracted by another headline (one she was appalled that the Fact could for one second believe was a page-two story):

  Miscarriages will be investigated, lawmakers say

  STATE—Governor John Santoro signed into law Thursday a bill requiring that all miscarriages be investigated by a state appointed physician.

  Effective immediately, the law previously adopted by 23 of the 50 states applies to women who admit themselves to hospitals for treatment following a miscarriage. The law also applies to those whose miscarriages are otherwise brought to the attention of medical or legal authorities. The decision follows months of often heated debates that notably included Senator Betsy Knoell at one time throwing her briefcase at Representative Victoria Larsen.

  Knoell called Santoro’s refusal to veto the bill “diabolical.”