Miranda July - The First Bad Man

“What’s behind your back?”

She opened her empty hands in front of herself. Now she was rolling her eyeballs to the side of the room in a strange way.

“What are you doing? Why are you looking over there?”

Her eyes jumped back. She pressed her lips together, raised her eyebrows and shrugged.

“Is the card over there?”

She shrugged again.

“I don’t want to know where it is.” I sat down on the couch. “This is probably unethical.” I waited for her to draw me out. There were still ten minutes left in the session. Ruth-Anne sat down and rubbed her chin, holding her elbow and nodding significantly. She seemed to be acting out the role of a therapist in a mocking way, like a child pretending to be a therapist. “I don’t want to break my promise to Clee,” I continued, “but I also want the option of knowing. What if there’s a problem? What if we need his medical history? Do you think that’s wrong?”

Something slid down the wall. Ruth-Anne’s eyes grew wide but she made a great show of ignoring it.

“Was that the card?”

She nodded vigorously. She had hidden it behind one of her diplomas. It now lay on the floor. I averted my eyes.

“It doesn’t need to be hidden like an Easter egg. Just put it in your desk drawer.” She leapt to the card and rushed it not to her desk but out the door to the receptionist’s desk, slamming the drawer as if the card was a rascally character, prone to escape.

“Where were we?” she said, returning breathlessly and folding herself back into the therapist pose.

“I asked if you thought this was wrong.”

“And I’ve been telling you.” She was suddenly herself again, dignified and intelligent.

“What do you mean?”

“You wanted to play like a child, so we played.”

I slumped back into the couch and my eyes ached with dry tears. This is why she was so good, always finding a way to take it right to the edge.

“You can throw out the card,” I said, winded.

“I’ll keep it there as long as you want. Our lives are filled with childish pranks, Cheryl. Don’t run from your playing, just notice it: ‘Oh, I see that I want to play like a little girl. Why? Why do I want to be a little girl?’ ”

I hoped she wouldn’t make me answer this question.

“Have you ever considered being birthed for a second time?” she asked.

“Like born again?”

“Rebirthing. Dr. Broyard and I thought it might be a good idea.”

“Dr. Broyard? You talk to him about me?”

She nodded.

“What about patient confidentiality?”

“That doesn’t apply to other doctors. Would a pulmonologist withhold information from a neurologist?”

“Oh, right.” I hadn’t realized I was such a serious case.

“We’re certified”—she gestured to a certificate on her wall—“to work as a team.”

I squinted at the certificate. TRANSCENDENTAL REBIRTHING MASTERS CERTIFICATION II.

“Do you really think it’s necessary?”

“Necessary? No. All that’s necessary is that you eat enough to survive. Were you happy in the womb?”

“I don’t know.”

“After a session with us you will know. You’ll remember being a single cell and then a blastula, violently expanding and contracting.” She grimaced, contracting her upper body with a tortured shiver and then groaning with expansion. “All that upheaval is inside you. It’s a heavy load for a little girl.”

I pictured lying on the floor with Ruth-Anne’s groin against the top of my head. “Why does Dr. Broyard need to be there?”

“Good question. The baby may have consciousness even before fertilization, as two separate animals — the sperm and egg. So we like to begin there.”

“With fertilization?”

“It’s just a ritual symbolizing fertilization, of course. Dr. Broyard would play the role of the spermatozoa and I would play the ovum. The waiting room”—she pointed to the waiting room—“becomes the uterus and you come through that door to be born.”

I looked at the door.

“He’s here with his wife this weekend, a special trip. How’s Sunday at three?”

“Okay.”

She glanced at the clock; we were out of time.

“Should I—?” I pointed to the scraps of paper on the floor.

“Thank you.” She checked her phone messages while I knelt down and gathered the pieces of envelope. I carried them out with me, not wanting to clutter her wastepaper basket.

After slipping the envelope back between the books and repositioning the soda can tab, I clicked back through Grobaby.com. Nothing about the blastula expanding and contracting. I stared at a cartoon fetus, biting my fingernail. This website was not a how-to guide. If the thing in Clee was in any way relying on my narration, there would be major gaps in its development. I saw a lazy, text-messaging, gum-chewing embryo, halfheartedly forming vital organs.

Embryogenesis arrived the next day; I splurged on expedited shipping. Its nine hundred and twenty-eight pages weren’t neatly divided into weeks, so it seemed safest to start at the beginning. I waited until Clee was done eating her kale and tempeh. She settled on the couch and I cleared my throat.

“ ‘Millions of spermatozoa travel in a great stream upwards through the uterus and into the Fallopian tubes—’ ”

Clee held up her hand. “Whoa. I don’t know if I want to hear this.”

“It already happened, I’m just recapping.”

“Do I have to listen?” She picked up her phone and headphones.

“Music might be confusing — it has to hear my voice.”

“But my head is way up here.”

She scrolled through her phone, found something with a thumping beat, and nodded at me to go on.

“ ‘The successful sperm,’ ” I orated, leaning toward her round belly, “ ‘merges with the egg and its nucleus fuses with the egg’s nucleus to form a new nucleus. With the fusion of their membranes and nuclei the gametes become one cell, a zygote.’ ” I could see it so clearly, the zygote — shiny and bulbous, filled with the electric memory of being two but now damned with the eternal loneliness of being just one. The sorrow that never goes away. Clee’s eyes were shut and her brow was sweaty; it wasn’t so long ago that she was two animals, Carl’s sperm and the ovum of Suzanne. And now the same thing was happening inside her, a new sorrowful creature was putting itself together as best it could.

The next morning I greeted my bosses with empathy; you would think a thing made of you would at least remain on speaking terms. Suzanne and Carl hadn’t heard from Clee in months. They sat as far away from me as possible, hands folded on the tabletop, a demonstration of civility. Jim smiled encouragingly; it was my first meeting of the board. Sarah took notes in my old chair, off to the side. I was formally welcomed and Phillip’s resignation was acknowledged.

“He’s not in great health,” Jim explained. “I vote for sending him a basket of mixed cheeses.” More likely he was too ashamed to show his face — and he should have been. Sixteen! A sixteen-year-old lover! When Suzanne argued against retirement benefits for Kristof and the rest of the warehouse staff, I found myself rising from my seat and jabbing my fist in the air like a person who knew something about unions. Taking Phillip’s place was wonderfully emboldening. When the vote fell in my favor, Suzanne mouthed “Touché.” She was studying my hair and clothes, as if I was someone new. I called Sarah Miss Sarah — like a servant. Suzanne laughed at this and asked Miss Sarah to bring us more coffee.

“You can sit down, Sarah,” Jim said. “Those two are just playing around.” I felt drunk with camaraderie. All these years I’d been looking for a friend, but Suzanne didn’t need a friend. A rival, though — that got her attention. When the meeting adjourned we both went to the staff kitchen and made cups of tea in silence. I waited for her to begin the conversation. I sipped. She sipped. After a while I realized this was the conversation; we were having it. She was giving me her blessing to care for her young and I was accepting the duty with humility. When Nakako came in, Suzanne walked away. For honor’s sake we would keep our distance.