Tim Murphy - Christodora

But there was another feeling Milly couldn’t escape, which only seemed reinforced by the insane outburst of sadness the death was provoking in England, the people crying out in front of the castle and begging the Queen to show sadness, mercy, a soul. It was that Diana was a martyr to goodness and warmth in a world long governed by arbitrary, cold rules. Why couldn’t warmth and generosity prevail? Milly was appalled to find herself wondering this as she went around thinking idly of Diana that whole week — a week of new classrooms, faces, paperwork to wend through. Why were any boys left in group homes? This desperate thought left Milly on the brink of tears. Listening on the radio to the new version of “Candle in the Wind” Elton John had written to sing at Diana’s funeral, Milly told herself that she was crazy and probably needed a higher dose of Wellbutrin.

The following Saturday, Jared told her he couldn’t go to the boys’ home with her. The art faculty at Art and Design had agreed to meet to reconfigure and reorganize the studio space. Milly set out on her own with about twenty dollars’ worth of paper and crayons. Sister Ellen greeted her as matter-of-factly as though she were showing up for the hundredth time, not the second, and took her into the sunny rec room where about twelve boys, all between four and nine, were playing. Mateo sat alone in a chair wearing his Yankees shirt again, reading The Stinky Cheese Man , idly paddling his feet back and forth in their cheap kid-size Nike knockoffs as he read.

Milly knelt down. “Do you remember me from last week? Drawing the monsters together?”

He looked up. Did she catch just a flash of happiness on his face, of excitement to see her again, before he composed himself? “I remember you,” he said dutifully.

“Do you feel like drawing again? I brought new paper and crayons.”

“I draw every day anyway.”

This deflated Milly, leaving her at a loss for words.

“You can draw if you want to,” he added.

She had to rally. “I’m going to lay this all out on the floor here,” she said, “and if you want to, you come join.”

She moved to the open play area and engaged the other little boys. They broke out the supplies and started drawing. Milly calmly started drawing from last week’s memory a certain home in Montauk she liked, all the while encouraging the three or four boys who joined her, giving them gentle tips she thought were appropriate for an art class for four-year-olds. She willed herself not to glance Mateo’s way, which was why she was delighted when, twenty minutes later, she looked up and he was standing over her.

“Okay, I’m ready to draw now,” he said.

“That’s great,” Milly said, trying not to sound as triumphant as she felt. She reached for her bag. “Do you want to try some colored pencils? They’re more—” Should she use the word sophisticated with a four-year-old? “They’re for bigger-kid artists, so you might like them.”

He lay on his belly with his ankles crossed in the air and started in. Milly was careful to leave him alone, to mind her own drawing and focus on the other boys. Milly felt a tremendous calm overtake her; she didn’t feel any sense of having forgotten some urgent other matter, something that often nagged at her. At a certain point, she glanced at Mateo and he glanced up and bugged his eyes out at her, as if to say, What, lady? which made her laugh, which made him smile faintly as he went back to his work.

“Here,” he said finally, pushing his paper toward her.

A bloblike creature, all shades of blue and green, floated over a streetscape of pitched-roof houses and passersby — sophisticated figures for a four-year-old — walking down the street. The aquamarine creature, which hovered amid some clouds, with a sun nearby, had blank, unyielding eyes and a straight stick of a mouth.

“I like it,” Milly said. “I like all the different shades of blue and green you use. What is it?”

He took a breath, about to declare something serious. “It’s a monster that’s not mean but not friendly, either. It’s an in-between monster.”

“An in-between monster,” Milly echoed, fighting back her delight, trying to keep a straight face.

“An in-between monster that doesn’t do bad or good, he just watches everything.”

That’s what God is, she thought instantly. God just watches us and doesn’t lift a finger. “Ah, I get it,” she said. “An in-between monster. That’s very good.”

“What are you drawing?” He stood over her now, hands on his hips. He’d picked up a bit of Sister Ellen’s bossy affect.

She held the paper up to him. “It’s a house that I saw last week that I like a lot.”

Mateo examined it blankly. “Whose house?”

“I don’t know. I just saw it and I liked it.”

“You’re a good drawer,” he said.

Milly beamed. “Thank you!”

She went back to the boys’ home the next several Saturdays. One Saturday, she finally got Jared to go with her. He enjoyed himself immensely, especially with a boy named Tranell who only wanted to draw Mariano Rivera over and over again.

Leaving Ellen’s house one Saturday, he put his arm around her and asked, “Can we have a baby? I wanna be a dad and draw with my son. Or my daughter.”

She tightened inside. She’d always known that if they stayed together, this would come up. But now? They were both twenty-seven! Jared knew she was on the Pill. She laughed, trying not to sound nervous. “Um, can we table that discussion for another five years?”

“Five years?” he protested.

“Okay, fine, five months,” she said.

But she was actually dealing with that very matter in eight days, when she hadn’t had her period. She’d forgotten to take her pills to Montauk with her Labor Day weekend, the weekend Diana died. So now, without saying a word to Jared, she bought a test at the drugstore and tested herself positive. Without a word to Jared, she visited the doctor, who confirmed it. She walked out of the doctor’s office dazed. Back at work, she went in her tiny little office she’d barely settled into yet — it was only early October — and called Drew in L.A.

“Well, hello, Millipede, what a lovely surprise!”

“Do you have a second?”

Drew paused. “Why, what is it?”

“I just found out I’m pregnant. I just found out, like, twenty minutes ago, at the doctor’s. I haven’t told a soul yet.”

Drew gasped. “Oh my goodness. Well?” She paused. “What should I say? ‘Congratulations,’ or ‘Oh, dear,’ or ‘What are you going to do?’”

“‘What are you going to do?’” Milly said. “And I’m absolutely certain I’m not going to have it. I’m just not going to have it. I’m not even going to tell Jared, I’m just going to take care of it and pretend it didn’t happen and I never missed that weekend of the Pill and just move on like it didn’t happen.”

“Millicent,” Drew said sternly, “slow down. You have plenty of time to decide if it only happened a month ago. And why on earth aren’t you going to tell Jared?”

“Because he’ll want to have it, that’s why!” Milly said bluntly, as though Drew were an idiot.

“Well, doesn’t some part of you want to have it, too? People are having babies now, Millipede. I’d probably have a baby with Christian now if I accidentally got pregnant.”

Accidentally! thought Milly. What an idiot I am! “Accidentally!” she shot back at Drew. “There you go. You have no plans of getting pregnant. You have a life.”

“Yes, but I’m saying were I to get pregnant. You don’t want to even consider it?”

Milly paused and composed herself a little bit, lowered her voice. “I am not bringing a child into this world with my genes. I am not going to watch that and perpetuate the cycle.”