Caeli Widger - Mother of Invention

Let yourself be in that place, the therapist had said. That place of despair. What you are experiencing is compassion for your PIT. I’ve worked with serial killers and assassins, Mr. Theroux, and if I can get them to conjure that place of pain over and over, then I know we are on the road to progress.

Her words had snapped Wayne right out of his moment of “compassion.”

I’m not a serial killer, you cunt, he’d said to the therapist. Her mouth formed a perfect O. He’d gotten up from the couch and walked out of the room.

Wayne moved to the leg press, racked a few more fifty-pound plates on each side, settled onto the bench. Then he lifted his legs up against the platform in a squat position and pushed it forward. His quads said no. He pulled in air through his nostrils and pushed harder. Slowly the platform ascended. One rep. Two. His quads caught fire. Breathe. That was what everyone prescribed for everything: breathe . As if it were a choice. He got through five reps and then lay panting on the bench. Shit. Having a girlfriend had left him out of shape. He’d barely noticed, from day to day. That was how it worked, with physical decline. You pretended it wasn’t happening, until one day you were forced to confront it.

Viv’s progressions, as of now, were moderate. Some changes in skin tone, some gray in her hair, which he noticed she’d camouflaged with dye. He wasn’t sure if she was troubled by the gray. She hadn’t mentioned it to him, which hurt—did she think he’d care? Break up with her? As if it mattered remotely. As if it would affect the way he felt about her.

But he knew she was aware of her changes. He read her posts to the private LikeMe group she ran, the CleftKids. Along with Borlav and Winger and a half dozen others on the Inner Panel of the ISA. The posts were what had doomed her. They made the Inner Panel nervous. She wasn’t buying the “indeterminate” cause of AG, and eventually, they surmised from her posts, she would cause trouble.

When he thought of them separate from their grim consequences, Viv’s posts made Wayne proud. She was smarter than all of them. Eventually, he bet, she would get to the bottom of this herself. He grabbed a blue foam mat from a stack in the corner and lay on top of it for crunches. When he hit two hundred, his abdominal muscles were searing and Johnny Rotten was screaming in his ears, Eat your heart out on a plastic tray / You don’t do what you want, then you’ll fade away / You won’t find me working nine to five / It’s too much fun being alive.

He flipped over for push-ups, adding a barbell for the ascent. It hurt like hell. He finished five sets and sat on the ground, catching his breath. He’d done enough, but felt reluctant to leave the underground solitude of the gym for the bright afternoon above, where he’d be forced to deal with his obligations.

He started a final set of weighted push-ups. He wanted it to hurt until he couldn’t stand it. He braced and took a deep breath, then lowered to the ground.

He could do this. One last importation, and then this misery would be over, and he’d be free.

Except it would be replaced with a new sort of misery: life without Viv.

Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three. Fuck. The push-ups hurt. The burn was deep and good.

Maybe there was another way.

2021

Tessa and Kate sat in Adirondack chairs in the shade of an avocado tree in the Seahorse garden. Kate had propped her feet on a wooden ottoman—her ankles had swollen so much that her lower legs looked like clubs. The women of Cohort One were required to spend at least thirty minutes daily in the private garden, cordoned off from the rest of the campus by thick hedges, for vitamin D. Tessa liked to keep Kate company while she met her quota.

“I think I’m down to either Eleanor or Harriet,” said Kate to Tessa. “Partially as in Roosevelt and Beecher Stowe. Partially because I just like old-fashioned names.”

“I vote Harriet,” said Tessa.

Kate lifted her maternity shirt, baring her orbed belly, now the size of a desk globe at seven weeks, the equivalent of about thirty-two conventional weeks. “She should start bucking around in there any second now. It always happens about ten minutes after I eat. Here, come closer.”

Tessa maneuvered her chair to face Kate and stared at her belly.

“Put your hand right here.” Kate patted a spot on her right side below her rib cage. Tessa placed her palm over it. Kate’s skin was taut and warm.

“Close your eyes,” said Kate. “I know it sounds froofy, but she’s more comfortable showing off when she’s not being stared at. I think that’s just her personality. Understated. Not a performer.”

“So you already know her,” said Tessa.

“Absolutely,” said Kate.

Tessa closed her eyes and jealousy bloomed instantly in her chest. Recently, as she grew closer to the Cohort, touched them often, learned the details of their pregnant bodies—even Gwen’s, whose stomach had grown enormous, the largest of the three—a sorrow-tinged envy had started to grow inside Tessa. It came and went, sometimes undetectable, but other times, like now, as she waited for Kate’s baby to kick, it throbbed like a fresh bruise.

She missed Peter. He would return from his hike, finally, next week, but it seemed too far away. She imagined what he would look like now, after six weeks in the wilderness. Probably full bearded, grime mooning his fingernails, all of his plaid shirts spattered with mud. She thought of Python, perhaps tougher and more wolflike now.

She couldn’t wait to see him, to touch him, to be back in their bed together.

Then she felt it: a knobby twitch beneath her hand. The feeling of bone rising up to meet her hand, then retreating again, like a darting fish. Instinctively, Tessa’s eyes flew open and appraised Kate’s belly, but the baby had already quieted.

Kate grinned at her.

“You felt that, didn’t you?” She dropped her shirt back over her belly.

Tessa tried to answer, but found there was a lump blocking her throat.

“Hey,” said Kate, noticing. She took Tessa’s hand in her own. Tears began behind Tessa’s eyes and she tried to swallow them away.

“Why don’t you just do it?” Kate said softly. “Why don’t you and Peter just have a baby?”

Tessa stared at a bed of chrysanthemums, her hand still in Kate’s, struggling to get a hold of herself. “I never really wanted one,” she said. The Swiss professor’s face, his aquiline nose and long sideburns, suddenly flashed to her mind, and she felt she might be sick. She inhaled deeply, pushing the image from her mind. His face retreated, but her nausea lingered.

“Why not?” asked Kate. “For practical reasons, or philosophical, or…” She trailed off.

“Neither. It was more gut-level. Not all women have the pull. It’s an exception to the rule, but I was one of them.”

“I believe you,” said Kate.

“But then I met Peter, and he wanted to be a father. Badly. I became open to the idea. Not consumed by it, just open. But we couldn’t get pregnant. We exhausted every option.”

Kate was quiet. Then she said, “That seems especially cruel.”

“Cruel?” Tessa straightened in her chair, having regained control of herself.

“Well, to be unable to get pregnant, when you’re dedicating your career to reproductive technology.”

Tessa shrugged. “I’ve never really viewed it that way. My private life is separate from my work.”

Kate searched Tessa’s eyes. “Is it really?”