Jack Ketchum - Right to Life

She could imagine her breathing inside the box. The rise and fall of her breasts. The slow small shift inside her belly.

Could imagine the cord like driftwood to which the baby clung, tossed in a rich warm sea.

It was only by accident that she found the equipment.

Months had passed and by then much had changed.

She knew who they were for one thing.

Stephen and Katherine Teach. Forty-six and forty-four respectively. They’d met seven years ago on a ward at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Sussex, New Jersey — she knew where she was now too, a small rural town hours northwest of the City — where he was a patient and she was his day-nurse. He had nearly put his eye out with a chunk of wood when his power-saw hit a knot in a two-by-four. They’d dated. Married six months later.

Both were only children with no living parents. Kath was Catholic and Stephen was a Baptist though neither went to church much anymore. Stephen liked to brag that it didn’t matter, he’d read the Bible six times over cover to cover including the begats, he was his own church. They liked action movies and comedies and Chinese food and pizza. They disliked housework completely. Especially doing the dishes. As though the remains of a meal were revolting to them. They had no discernable hobbies unless you counted the anti-abortion rallies and demonstrations they could no longer go to now that Sara was with them and you counted the Organization. They read only magazines — not even the newspaper. They got their news off the TV screen. Said it was easier.

They owned a CD player and never used it. Instead they watched TV.

Katherine was barren.

That was the word they used. Barren.

They’d always been saddened by this. They felt that a baby would solidify the bond between them. At least Kath did.

Nowadays she rarely spoke to Stephen.

So she learned all this from Kath. Who was lonely. Who was bored. Who spoke to her a lot.

And who — for lack of a better, more hideous word — had become her lover.

Since that first afternoon with Kath astride her outside the Long Box she had come to her more and more frequently. Always alone. Usually at night when Stephen was asleep but sometimes during the day on lunchbreaks or on weekends when he was out of the house on some errand or other, about once a week at first and then twice a week and then nearly every night.

She seemed entranced by Sara’s body. You’d have thought it were a beautiful body but it wasn’t. Not anymore. At least not to Sara’s thinking. The body was heavy and slow. The waist was gone, the belly huge. A ragged dark line ran from the top to the bottom of her abdomen. Her legs were swollen. Blue veins mapped the surfaces of her breasts. Her nipples leaked pale nearly colorless colostrum.

All these Kath licked and squeezed and bit. Lapped at the colostrum. Caressed the swollen belly as though caressing the baby inside it. I’m a nurse, she said. I’m just going to examine you.

Kath never did bathe or shower nearly often enough.

Her insides tasted bitter.

What Kath did to her and made her do seemed to shame her and excite her all at once. When it was over she would always want to talk. Chattering away like she was talking to some girlfriend. About her patients at the hospital or the job Stephen was working on. About the weather and her car needing a tune-up and the phone bills and the payments on the house and the movie they’d seen on HBO the night before. Whatever. Nervous talk with her eyes averted while Sara stood tied to the X-frame or more often to the chair or the sliding panel of the Long Box.

She would tell her stories of the Organization that were just as bad as Stephen’s.

One day she showed her pictures. Black-and-white photos of her father watering his lawn. Of her students playing kickball on the Winthrop schoolgrounds. Of her sister stepping out of her car with a shopping bag in her arms.

Of Greg. Walking some tree-lined street in Rye between his wife and son.

She was tied to the chair.

“He’s handsome,” she said. “I don’t blame you for wanting to make it with the guy.”

“We didn’t just make it. We were lovers.”

“What about the wife and kid?”

“What about them?”

“They’re a. family. Look at them. They look happy together.”

She looked at the photos again. At least he wasn’t smiling.

“They weren’t.”

“It’s still a family. Why would you want to break up a family?”

“I didn’t.”

“You would have. You would have sooner or later.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“I think it’s fucking selfish of you. You’re better off here. It’s better for everybody.”

If what Kath felt was a mix of shame and excitement Sara felt only the shame. But as with Stephen she submitted. Not to do so would be murderous as well as suicidal. The photos were proof if she even needed proof by then. The Organization existed. Whether they knew it or not, everyone she loved was depending on her behavior.

Stephen had shown her a pistol one afternoon. He said it was a.45. Spun the barrel for her. Threw the safety. Pointed it at her. Clicked.

She’d already seen the shotgun. Very up close and personal.

She behaved.

And as a result the whippings and the torture became less frequent. She hardly even saw the headbox anymore. They let her out of the Long Box now for long periods at a time. Insisting that she exercise for the baby’s sake. Upper body bends. Belly-crunches. Leg lifts. Diagonal curls. Her diet still consisted mainly of sandwiches but they gave her juice and and milk and herbal tea and the occasional leftover Chinese takeout or slice of pizza.

She was allowed to dress.

Faded print housecoats or shifts that even with her belly still hung loose on her frame. Kath said they’d belonged to her mother and they looked it. Cheap old ladies’ clothes that were hopelessly out of style. But she was as grateful for them as she’d have been for Ralph Lauren originals. She was not allowed panties or a bra.

She still had to strip on demand.

But it was Kath these days who did most of the demanding.

After the first three months or so Stephen had changed. She could pinpoint easily exactly when the change began.

The last time she’d disobeyed him.

The first and only time she’d tried to run.

She was upstairs by then, out of the cellar a good part of every evening and weekends so she could do the housework Steven and Kath both hated. At first she was appalled at the state of the place. A nice place basically, or it could have been. Two bedrooms, one bath, a living room, a small kitchen and dining area and an attic, built just after the end of World War II on somebody’s GI Bill. But everywhere evidence of casual filth and disorder. A film of grime over everything in the bathroom, balls of hair and dust in every corner, crusted toothpaste in the sink. Dust thick on all the furniture. The drapes needed washing. The rugs needed washing. The kitchen was a greasy mess.

But she set to all of it gladly. Anything to relieve the isolation and boredom and depression of the basement. At the kitchen sink she could look out a window to the yard and the trees and squirrels and the birds pecking at the lawn and rarely even think that beyond the trees they’d buried a man. She could open the windows and let in cool fresh air.

Though she set to it carefully too. Any mistakes and she was up on the X-frame again or tied to the chair, her pregnancy be damned.

The cat seemed always at her feet.

After a while she got the house in shape and from then on it was only maintenance. Vacuuming, dusting, laundry, cleaning after meals.