Beaker's Dozen

  Again Mollie didn’t answer. She studied the tiny faces on her fingers. Ten of them.

  “Mollie,” the therapist said gently, “do you believe your parents love you?”

  Mollie looked at the rows of books. Many of them had the same color backs, like they were part of a set. “Yes. They love me.”

  “And how does that—”

  “They think I’m perfect.”

  “And how—”

  “I want to go home now,” Mollie said. She stood, leaving the therapist sitting by herself in the blue chair.

  At home she closed her bedroom door and dragged her desk chair in front of it. Leaning toward her dresser mirror, she studied herself, in her sleeveless Esprit tee. Blue eyes, blonde curls, white even teeth. She knew she was pretty. And strong, and smart. And now there were five other baby Mollies someplace who were also pretty and strong and smart. Except for the one that wasn’t.

  And it wasn’t anybody’s fault, they all said. It wasn’t Mommy and Daddy’s fault because they were just helping the Berringers to have a baby like Mollie. It wasn’t the scientists’ fault because they were just helping, too. It wasn’t the Berringers’ fault because they didn’t ask to have a baby that wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t the court’s fault because somebody else had to pay the court money. No one was responsible.

  But the clone baby, made out of Mollie’s egg, wasn’t pretty and strong and smart, and all the while Mollie knew whose responsibility that really was.

  It was hers.

  She waited until Daddy had left for work and Mommy was in the shower. She dressed in jeans and a sweater, pushed her hair up under a Buffalo Bills cap, and put on sunglasses. Although she didn’t exactly look like a kid who had a good reason for not being in school, she didn’t look like a dork either, which she would have in her blue dress. She put some things in her backpack, took thirty dollars from her mother’s purse, and locked Brandy in the garage so he wouldn’t follow her.

  The address had been in the newspapers at Emily’s house. PROTOTYPE EMBRYOS ON TRIAL, one paper said. And HOW MUCH IS THAT BABY IN THE WINDOW? And, in a paper with very big lettering and lots of pictures, SHELLPORT SHIRLEY TEMPLE FLOPS IN RERUN.

  Mollie had never taken the bus from Shellport to the city, but she’d seen it leave from in front of the park. She stood close to a woman in a flowered dress, and put the same amount of money in the slot that the woman had. No one noticed her.

  The bus took forty minutes to get to the downtown terminal, which was just outside a mall. A lot more people pushed and shoved, but there were also more kids by themselves. Mollie went up to a woman in a pretty red suit carrying a briefcase.

  “What bus do I take to get to Gerard Street?”

  The woman smiled at her. “I’m not sure. You can ask inside.” She pointed.

  There was no line at the bus window. Heart hammering, Mollie asked her question.

  “Bus 20. Leaves from Slot 6. You want to buy tokens?”

  She hesitated. “Yes, please. Two.”

  Outside, she found slot 6. There was a long bench to wait on, but one end was occupied by three loud teenage boys. She stood by Slot 5.

  The bus was full of kids carrying book bags that said SISTERS OF MERCY JUNIOR HIGH. Some of them weren’t any bigger than Mollie. “So he laid this bitch at Christmas vacation and now she’s knocked up,” a boy said. “And my friend said—” Mollie turned away, watching street signs.

  Gerard Street was long. It changed from stores to rows of small houses to regular houses like Mollie’s to very big places with fancy flower beds. At the end, only a few women in maids’ uniforms were left on the bus with Mollie.

  There were no reporters at the Berringers’ house. Mollie moved across the wide lawn from tree to tree, staying hidden. In the front was a big screened porch. She peered through the wire mesh; nobody there.

  The back door wasn’t locked.

  Mollie wiped her hands on her jeans. They were sweaty, but cold. Her eyes burned. It was wrong to go into somebody’s house. But not as wrong as everything else.

  She left the back door open, and listened. No sounds. And then, somewhere to her left, a baby fussing.

  The baby wasn’t in a real nursery, like Jennifer’s baby brother had. Instead there was a portacrib in the kitchen; maybe Susie had been cooking while she watched the baby. But the kitchen was empty. Through a window Mollie saw a woman in a side garden, picking daffodils. The woman wore a white uniform. She wasn’t Susie.

  Mollie walked slowly to the crib. She felt funny, light and cold at the same time. What if the baby had two heads, or no arms, or half a head? How much bad genes had Mollie given it?

  She stumbled toward the crib.

  The baby looked normal. It had blue eyes, and blonde fuzz, and was impossibly tiny. It was fussing a little, but not much.

  The refrigerator turned on with a sudden clunk, and the baby jumped and screwed up its face.

  Mollie picked her up, in her blankets. She knew to support the baby’s head, because of Jennifer’s baby brother. The baby stopped fussing. Mollie ran back through the house and out the door. The baby, held up against her shoulder, felt light. On the street, she started back toward the bus stop. This time, nobody else waited for the bus.

  A man in a green track suit jogged toward her. Mollie gathered herself up to run, but the man smiled and said, “Out for a walk with your dolly?” and kept on going.

  When the bus came, Mollie tried to hold the baby like a doll. The baby was getting heavier.

  Halfway to the city, the baby began to wail. A few people glanced at her. Mollie kept her sunglasses on and jiggled the baby against her shoulder. It still cried. At the downtown stop, the busdriver started to say something to her, but Mollie hurried down the steps and ran into the mall.

  In here nobody looked at her, even though the baby cried loudly. She went into a Rite Aid and bought some bottles with formula already in them, plus a package of Huggies. In the mall she sat on a bench and fed the bottle to the baby. A few women smiled at her, but nobody spoke until a black girl also carrying a baby sat down next to her.

  “You be stuck with your brother, too?”

  Mollie hesitated. “Sister.”

  The girl sighed. “Your mamma working?”

  “Yes.”

  “Better than not working.”

  Mollie didn’t answer. The other girl made her nervous. She was glad when after a few minutes the girl picked up her brother, who was old enough to hold a rattle, and drifted away.

  Afterwards, Mollie wished she’d talked to her longer.

  The baby finished the bottle and fell asleep. Mollie laid her on the bench and broke open the box of Huggies. She stuffed as many as would fit into her backpack and left the rest in the box. Maybe the black girl would come back and take them.

  She found a number 18 bus and rode home.

  On her block, she crept through the back yards with the sleeping baby, moving from bushes to garages to fences. Kids were still in school, even the high schoolers. Adults were at work. But her father’s car was in the driveway, which meant her mother had called him to come home.

  She crept to the cellar window, which she’d left unlatched. She laid the baby on the grass and slipped through the window onto Daddy’s workbench. Then she pulled the baby through the window and carried her to the box behind the furnace, lined with a bedspread from the linen closet. Nobody went here since Mommy got the new washer and dryer in the new laundry room off the kitchen.

  She changed the baby again and laid her in the box. Mollie still couldn’t see anything wrong with the baby. She had all her toes and everything. While Mollie changed her, the baby woke up and regarded Mollie from big blue eyes the same shape as Mollie’s own.

  “Jessica,” Mollie said. But that wasn’t right. The baby didn’t look like a Jessica. Ashley? Brittany? Nicole?

  The baby regarded her solemnly. What was aortic stenosis?

  “Don’t cry,” Mollie whispered. “Don’t cry,
Mollie.”

  She hid the diaper under an old sofa and snuck upstairs to her own room.

  “One more time,” her father said. He’d stopped shouting, but his face was still red. “Where were you for three hours?”

  “In my room,” Mollie said. Her throat hurt and her eyes burned. “No, you weren’t! Jesus Christ, Mollie, don’t we have enough problems without you worrying everybody sick? It’s your responsibility to tell your mother when you go out. Can’t you act your age, for Chris-sake?”

  “Paul, calm down,” Mollie’s mother said. “Please.”

  “I was in my room,” Mollie said. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t. “Mollie, you’ve never lied to us before,” her mother said. She was crying. Mollie tried not to look at her. The door rang.

  “Don’t answer it, Paul,” her mother said. “I don’t want to see anybody just now.”

  Her father glanced at the window. “Christ, it’s the cops.”

  Mollie looked at the dark window, but from this angle, all could she see was her own reflection. She looked instead at the floor. This part of the house wasn’t over the furnace; only the fruit cellar was underneath her feet.

  “Paul Carter? We’d like to ask you a few questions, please.”

  Mollie started to hum, so she wouldn’t hear.

  “. . . disappeared this morning . . . whereabouts of both you and your wife . . . search the premises . . .”

  She beamed the humming through the floor, down to the baby. “Not without a warrant,” her father said. “What the hell is this, anyway? Why would I have her? We’re fighting a lawsuit to avoid having to raise her!”

  —in the treetop, when the wind blows—

  “What are you really after?” her father shouted. “We have a lawsuit pending against these people! You’re not coming in without a search warrant!”

  —the cradle will rock—

  “You just do that!” her father said. The door closed.

  —when the bough breaks—

  “Not possible,” her mother whispered, and even through her humming, Mollie heard her. She looked up. Mommy and Daddy both stared at her. She hated them.

  “Mollie,” her mother whispered, “where were you this morning?”

  “I was in my room,” Mollie said.

  She sprawled across her bed and pretended to sleep. Her mother opened the door. Light slanted across the pretty carpet, the expensive canopy bed. AVERAGE COST OF TEST TUBE BABY TOPS $80k, Emily’s newspaper said. Mommy closed the door softly. A few minutes later Mollie went down to the basement.

  The baby was crying. It was three hours since Mollie had fed her. Did babies always need to eat so soon? Mollie gave her another bottle and changed her diaper again. This time the diaper was poopy. Mollie got some on her hands. She breathed deep to keep from puking, and washed her hands in the old laundry tub.

  But the baby was still crying. Mollie put her on her shoulder and walked, jouncing the baby with each step, the way she’d seen Jennifer’s mother do. She hummed softly and patted the baby on the back. The baby stopped crying, but every time Mollie stopped walking, she started again.

  “Please, sweet baby, please sweet baby . . .” Mollie crooned. Pretty soon it was a prayer, and then Mollie was crying, and the baby wouldn’t stop crying, and Mollie’s legs hurt but she had to keep going because nobody wanted this baby with the broken thing in her heart, nobody would accept the responsibility, and the baby was hers, was her, please sweet baby please sweet baby—

  She was sobbing and walking and patting, and the baby was wailing, when feet clattered down the steps and her mother said, “Oh, my God.” The policeman holding a piece of paper didn’t say anything, and Mollie couldn’t see him clearly anyway because her eyes were burning, but even through the burning she suddenly saw the revolving light beyond the cellar window, red and blue and red again, mirrored in the metal side of the cold furnace.

  “I don’t care!” Mollie screamed. “You want her to die!”

  “Nobody wants the baby to die, Mollie,” her father said. His face was all smoothed out and his eyes were wide open, like he was very surprised by something. Brandy crouched beside him, his furry face on the floor. “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand nobody wants her! She’s made out of me, and nobody wants her!”

  “She’s not made out of you. She’s . . .”

  “Nobody loves her because she’s not perfect! I’m the only one who will take care of her!”

  “Mollie, the baby will be placed in a foster—”

  “I hate you!” Mollie screamed.

  Her father reached for her. Her mother, on the phone with the therapist, fumbled with the receiver and dropped it. Outside, the trucks and cars and vans of the reporters clogged the street. Mollie shoved her father away and ran upstairs. Brandy raced after her.

  “Mollie, you come back here!” her father shouted.

  She didn’t. She ran past her own room and into her parents’ bedroom. Her eyes burned. There was the bed they did it on, with the gold trim and the green bedspread. They made babies here, her father putting his penis into her mother . . . fucking. And then the people had come, all the people she’d answered questions for and looked pretty for . . . been perfect for . . . She grabbed her mother’s nail scissors off the dresser and started hacking at her curls. Her father rushed into the room and started toward her.

  She threw the nail scissors at him.

  He stopped, gasping, even though the scissors had bounced off his arm.

  “I hate you!” Mollie screamed. “You make babies out of me and don’t love them when they’re not . . . I’m not . . .”

  Her father started toward her again. She grabbed a metal bookend and threw it at him. Then she grabbed the other one and threw it at the mirror, which shattered.

  Her father gripped his arm. Her mother stood in the doorway with her fist in her mouth. Mollie flung everything around the room: clothes and drawers and books and pillows.

  “I hate you!”

  “Mollie! Stop it!” Her father, his arm bleeding, caught her and pinned her arms to her side. Another piece of the mirror fell out of the frame, into a silvery pile. Mollie could hear the baby cry even though the baby wasn’t here anymore, the policeman had taken her away. “Stop it! You hear me! Stop it!”

  Crying and crying—

  “Stop it! Mollie!”

  She bit him hard.

  He dropped her. Mollie backed away from him, suddenly calm. Downstairs, the baby cried.

  Then the crying stopped.

  In the abrupt silence, Mollie and her parents looked at each other. Her mother, dead white, said in a quavery voice, “Mollie, look at this room, you’re . . . you’re responsible for this mess . . .”

  “No,” Mollie said. “I’m not.” And then, “Nobody is.”

  Brandy tried to lick her hand, but Mollie pushed the dog away. She walked to her own room and shut the door.

  GRANT US THIS DAY

  Every writer balances continually between blatancy and obscurity. Make your point absolutely obvious through strongly patterned actions, conventional characters, and explicit exposition, and readers say, “That one was overwritten—really belabored it, didn’t she?” Make your point cunningly subtle, naturalistically hinted at only through symbolism and suggestion, and readers say, “Huh?”

  With “Grant Us This Day,” I missed. No one who read the story in print seemed to realize what I was doing, which was a pretty good indicator that I hadn’t succeeded in doing it. Virtually nobody I spoke to got the point. Consequently, this is the only story that has been altered for this collection. I have rewritten the last few paragraphs, in the springing-eternal hope that somebody will.

  WHEN I FINALLY FOUND GOD, HE WAS SLUMPED AT THE COUNTER IN a Detroit diner, stirring his coffee. The dissolving creamer made little spiral galaxies. He had a bad sunburn. I slid onto the next stool.

  “God?”

  He looked up. A little gray flecked his dark beard but on the wh
ole he looked younger than I’d expected. Maybe thirty. Maybe twenty-eight. His jeans were grimy. “Who wants to know?”

  “Daniel Smith.” I held out my hand. He didn’t take it. “Listen, God, I’ve been looking for you for a long time.”

  He said, “You got to read me my rights.”

  “What?”

  “My Miranda rights. I know I screwed up, all right? But at least do it by the local rules. Let’s get at least one part of this right.”

  “I’m not a cop,” I said.

  “Not a cop?”

  “No.”

  “Just my luck.” He slumped even lower on the stool, elbows resting on the counter, which bore some deep indescribable stain the shape of Africa. God traced it with one finger. Two teenage boys banged noisily through the front door; the waitress eyed them warily. “Then you’re a divinity student, right? Colgate? Loyola?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t find some ancient manuscript proving I exist in corporeal form?”

  “No.” The boys slid into a corner booth. Their jackets rode up, and I caught the flash of steel.

  “You didn’t consult a lama in a monastery on top of a Tibetan mountain—old, most old?”

  “Not that either.”

  God sipped his coffee and made a face. “Then who the hell are you?”

  “I’m from the Committee.”

  Even with his sunburn, he paled. “Oh, man.”

  “Well, that was one of the problems, certainly.”

  God slammed his spoon onto the counter and sat up straight. “Look, I know I screwed up. I know it has problems. I’ve already admitted that.” He glanced around the diner. In the booth opposite the boys, a hooker sat with an enormously fat man eating a taco salad. He talked with his mouth full; she was asleep. The fat man hadn’t noticed. The waitress limped past, carrying a platter of greasy burgers. She had one leg shorter than the other.

  “Nonetheless,” God said, surly now, “from the Committee’s viewpoint I did everything right, so why bother me, man? I filled out the application in triplicate. I listed my previous work. I filed by the deadline. I submitted work that met your bureaucratic guidelines: neatness, originality, aptness of thought. What’s more original than kangaroos? Or a hundred years’ war? A hundred years for a single war! So why hassle me now?”