Caeli Widger - Mother of Invention

Tessa had proposed the moratorium on work-talk, though the Trial was all she wanted to talk about. But lately, with Peter, the topic only led to one place: his skepticism. To his same old questions: What’s wrong with natural design? What’s wrong with human pregnancy as it is?

Tessa’s perennial answer: almost everything .

For most of last night’s dinner, they’d managed to avoid the topic, to keep the conversation light, even buoyant. His mother’s growing assortment of pet pigs. The progress of the young girls Tessa worked with at the coding academy. They’d laughed and netted their fingers together on the little table, their knees touching beneath it, candlelight throwing ghost-shapes on the wall beside them. Tessa actually felt romantic . Somehow, they’d entered one of those suspended spaces, free of context, when only the other person mattered. It hadn’t happened in a long time.

But then Peter had looked up to speak with the restaurant’s owner, Sylvio, who was a friend, and Tessa excused herself to the bathroom, where she checked her messages.

Kate Lavek: I’m a little bit terrified. Hurry up and get here.

Luke Zimmerman: OK to push up meeting time to 9am? My office.

Gwen Harris: Residence rooms are beautiful though I find the “dumbwaiter” unsettling. See you tomorrow.

LaTonya Sims: SUPERHEROINES. Just reminding myself.

The three women composed Cohort One, chosen from a pool of over a thousand applicants who’d applied to participate in the Trial. Tessa couldn’t help herself; in the bathroom stall, she responded to each woman’s text, uniquely reassuring each of them, though her hand sweated onto her phone.

To Luke, she replied only, “Y.” When she returned to the table, Sylvio was gone, the butterscotch pot de crème had arrived, and Peter’s mood had shifted. The change was subtle but Tessa detected it like a scent.

“Everything okay?” Peter said. “You were gone awhile.”

“Definitely okay,” said Tessa, too quickly.

“You seem preoccupied.”

“Just tired.”

Obviously, he knew what was preoccupying her. The Trial. Which, tonight, was off-limits.

Tessa wanted to reenter the loving, easy place where she’d been with him ten minutes ago, but found it impossible. The Cohort’s messages had reconfigured her attention. Instantly, they’d made her see Peter in a slightly different light, filtered with a colder hue. The pot de crème was untouched between them and Peter’s cappuccino still thick with foam, but Tessa was ready to leave. It was 11:00 p.m., almost officially April 4, day one of the Trial, and the Cohort needed her. As Peter spooned the dessert into his mouth with what seemed like deliberate slowness, Tessa’s impatience bloomed. He was still talking—now about his epic afternoon surfing at Mavericks—but she could no longer listen. She could barely restrain herself from reminding him that he was forty-four and thus might consider spending less time on a surfboard.

The names of the women in the Cohort began to loop in her mind with a percussive insistence: Gwen, Kate, LaTonya. Gwen Kate LaTonya. GwenKateLaTonya.

“Earth to Tessa,” said Peter.

“Roger.” Tessa mustered a smile, some eye contact.

“I can see you’re ready to go,” he said, nodding down to the inch of Syrah left in his glass. “Let me just finish this.”

This irked her. He’d already finished his cappuccino. He never returned to wine after coffee.

“Sure,” she said. “Take your time.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Peter’s voice softened. “If you do, it’s okay.” He did not need to say what it was.

“No, that’s okay,” she said. “I’m enjoying the break.”

“I’m proud of you,” he said. “You know that, right?” He reached for her hand across the table.

“Yes,” she said.

GwenKateLaTonya.

She tried a bite of the pot de crème; it tasted burnt.

Back home, he’d begun kissing her in the foyer while Python nosed at their legs, the silk of his fur tickling Tessa’s ankles. Peter paused to rub the dog’s head and shoo him away, then returned to kissing her, more greedily. She tried to savor the familiar sweep of his tongue against hers. Soon, he’d led her by the hand upstairs. She’d tried to stay present. In the moment. She’d pulled off her clothes quickly, with his help, as if she couldn’t stand to wait. But then, when they’d landed on the bed and Tessa had caught sight of her KindClock—12:09 a.m.—she’d felt official permission to stop. It was simply too late. Tomorrow would demand everything of her; she needed her sleep.

She stopped kissing him. Removed her hand from his inner thigh.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “It’s just… tomorrow.”

“It’s still tonight,” he whispered, his teeth at her earlobe.

“I need all my resources.”

He didn’t stop grazing his lips across her throat. He didn’t remove his hands from her breasts. He was not listening.

“Peter,” she said, at normal volume.

Now he stopped. Rolled off her, onto his back.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated.

He sighed. “No big deal. We’ll have another chance in a mere nine weeks.” Sarcasm—a rarity for him.

“That’s not true. We’ll see each other.”

“Maybe,” said Peter.

“Not maybe. You’ll visit the Center. I can pop home.”

“We’ll see.”

“I love you,” she said, with too much emphasis.

“You too,” he’d said, rolling over, and was asleep within two minutes.

How were men able to do this? Tessa had wondered as she’d lain awake beside him. What did it feel like to get those solid seven, eight, even nine hours, night after night? For him to have his biorhythms restored while she lay wide-awake, fending off the g-word and worrying about the Cohort. Were they sleeping now, on their high-grade mattresses in their guest rooms at the Center, or were they wide-awake also, staring into the darkness?

GwenKateLaTonya.

Eventually, Tessa had slept. A little.

Now it was 5:16 a.m. She wanted to be on the road in an hour, to beat traffic, but she wasn’t ready to get up, not just yet. Peter had half woken, draped himself around her, and fallen back asleep. It felt good to be lying against him, his breath deep and steady. At the bottom of it, she detected a faint wheeze. He had asthma, long controlled with a daily corticosteroid, but when the season changed from winter to spring, the wheeze emerged. The sound seemed like evidence of his vulnerability, and Tessa thought of all she’d denied him. Vacations, weekday dinners. Lingering in bed in the morning. A baby. He accepted so much about her—her choices, that her career came first.

Why had she denied him last night? Would it have killed her to have gone through with it, to have given him a little more time, to have actually made love?

Tessa moved her arms across Peter’s back, massaging him awake. She looped her arms over his torso to reach his stomach, planed her hands over his taut, defined body, pulled him over to face her.

He blinked in the glow of the KindClock.

“In a better mood this morning?” He smiled. His teeth strong, white, even. He’d already forgiven her, in his sleep. Upon hearing Peter’s voice, Python awoke and hopped onto the bed in a single motion. Peter scratched him behind the ears and then pointed to the door.

“Downstairs, dude,” he said, and Python trotted off to wait by the front door for their morning walk.

“Yes, a much better mood,” she answered. “I’m sorry for last night.”