The Birthing House Page 9

  ‘I’m Greer Laski, and you’re Conrad, right?’

  ‘Oh, hello, Mrs Laski . . .’

  There were three of them, ages three to eight (not counting the one in the oven) but it was difficult to tell with their arms raking gum and candy to the floor, the Whiffle ball bat knocking alternately at the cart and a smaller sibling’s head. They all had the same genderless cropped haircuts of a cult, and two of them wore identical grass-stained Spiderman pajamas. One fixed him with a drooling, open-mouthed and one-eyed stare, the other eye hidden behind a metal mesh patch hanging by a single strand of dirty medical tape. When she spoke, Mrs Laski’s voice came in an accented, babbling run. But what kind of accent? It was more than the usual Wisconsinese his neighbors let slip. This sounded like some unique crossbreeding of shine-drunk Appalachian, Elmer Fudd and Jodi Foster in Nell.

  ‘These are Anna Maybelle, Davey and Louis . . .’ (massaging her distended belly) ‘. . . this one’s a surprise. How are you settling in? Gosh, we loved that house, we sure do miss it, don’t we kids, say hello to Mr Harrison.’

  She pronounced it Miss-tawh Hay-wiss-un.

  ‘Yes, we’re doing fine.’ Conrad tried to maintain the veneer of politeness while swiping his check card in the machine.

  ‘Do you want any cash back?’ the cashier said.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Press no.’

  He did, then turned back to (what kind of name is Greer?) Mrs Laski. ‘How is your new place?’

  ‘Oh, it’s hard, ya know. It’s really hard, Conrad.’ Rea-wee hawd. ‘With the kids and the movers and ya know how Leon having trouble with crew and his back since the move, but we’re doin’ okay, aren’t we kids, honey stop playing with those batteries, no, Anna Maybelle, no new cereal this week.’

  ‘Okay, then.’ Conrad edged out of the line with his single bag in hand.

  But Mrs Laski thwarted the getaway by grabbing his shirt-sleeve. ‘I don’t care what anyone says, Conrad, that house is a perfectly good place to raise a family. God watched out for us in our old home just like he’s watching out for you now, m’kay? Oh, h’okay, Mommy has to press the button, kids, hold on a second.’

  Ah. God is watching us all.

  ‘Yeah, about that, Mrs Laski. Is there something I don’t know about our house, your old place? Leon gave me that book and if there is some significance . . . ?’

  Mrs Laski’s eyes shot up from her pocket book and held him with a hard stare, but it lasted only a second before she was smiling again. ‘Leon should have never left that with you. It’s a lotta history, ya know, Conrad.’ A lot of hiss-tow-wee. ‘He doesn’t like to talk about it, but it’s not like we’re ashamed of it.’

  With her bags in her cart, Mrs Laski dragged the train out of the line and followed Conrad toward the front doors. He knew he could outrun them, but not without appearing insane. One of the kids was now literally clinging to her leg, sitting on her foot so that the woman had to walk in a loping gait. Conrad did an involuntary and quite rude double-take when he saw that one of the boy’s hands was - oh dear God - missing three fingers and gnarled into a ball of flesh, twin nails growing out of what should have been the first knuckles. On the back of the ‘hand’ was an Idaho of lumpen black fur.

  ‘You can have it back, it’s no big deal to me either way,’ Conrad said over his shoulder, forgetting he had already torched the album. He shuffled faster past stacks of bulk water softener. Guilt wasn’t even a factor now. They were so loud and grubby, it made him feel sick to be in their company.

  ‘Oh, no no, too late for that. The book stays with the house.’

  The house? You can have the house!

  He realized, tallying it as a group, each child was malformed in some way. Jesus Christ, is she his wife or his sister?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, feeling sweat leak down his ribs.

  ‘There wasn’t no devil at work in there. Lots of lil ’uns made their way into this world thanks to those women.’

  ‘I’m not sure—’

  ‘My family’s not cursed. Accidents happen everywhere. We were happy there for a long, long time.’

  ‘Never mind, it’s not—’

  ‘Those women were there for each other in hard times. And we all come upon hard times, don’t we, from time to time?’

  Conrad finally understood, and knew that he had known all along. The women were the lost women and their midwives, broken souls who came to heal . . . and got stuck bearing children . . . like the Laski kids.

  ‘God always gave us more children, and He wouldn’t do that in no home that was cursed.’

  Something from dinner with the Grums came back to him. Gail and Big John and Steve arguing about how many children the Laskis had.

  It’s like ten little Indians over there, Steve had said.

  Could have been something rare, Gail had said. Just one of those things.

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ Conrad said, watching the flicker of dark martyrdom in her eyes.

  But she recovered quickly. ‘No regrets, Conrad.’ No ree-gwetts. ‘And who would trust a hospital any more these days, right? Those places are full of diseases.’ Mrs Laski was giggling. ‘A hospital! That would be ridiculous!’

  Roddy’s reference to the doctor. The sketched cross in the yard.

  Conrad wanted to slap her face and tell her this wasn’t funny. He realized the only things stopping him were the children, staring up at him as if he had joined their traveling circus.

  ‘I have to be—’

  ‘Do you and your wife have any kids yet, Conrad?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I have to get home.’ He did not look back as he fled to his car.

  ‘Say goodbye, kids, say bye bye mistah hay-wiss-son!’

  Ten little Indians. Some made it out, some did not.

  All of them born in his birthing house.

  The phone had not been docked long enough to hold a charge, but that turned out not to matter. Their conversation was short.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ He could tell she was crying, again or still.

  ‘I’m sorry I yelled at you, Baby. That was shitty of me. I just miss you.’

  She sniffed. ‘I went to the doctor today.’

  ‘Okay.’ The house was hot. So hot and humid it made him sway and plop down into one of the chairs at the two top. ‘What kind of doctor?’

  ‘It wasn’t a surprise. I’ve known for a while.’

  ‘A while?’

  ‘I’m pregnant.’

  13

  She was right - it wasn’t much of surprise. The rest of the conversation had been a blur. He hoped he’d said at least some of the right things. She had been too tired to go into it. They agreed to keep it a secret for a few more weeks. There was always a chance she would miscarry, and he was ashamed to feel a sliver of hope that she would. No sooner had he thought that than a wild shot of pride and longing he had never imagined filled his heart. He wanted to be a father. This was it. Time to become a man. Do it right, better than Dad.

  But that longing was fleeting, too. Something other than Jo’s new condition and Mrs Laski’s traveling circus was eating him. Something about the timing of her pregnancy did not make sense.

  He could see it only one of three ways. Jo was lying and not pregnant, which she would never do. That sort of emotional manipulation was beyond even her. The other possibility was, under the stress of the move and all the shit that had gone on leading up to it, he had forgotten having sex with his wife. That did not seem likely, because men don’t forget, ever. The last possibility was that she was pregnant with Jake-the-out-of-work-actor-fuck-buddy’s baby.

  She claimed they hadn’t had sex. But what if they had? What if she had been lying just to gloss it over and move on? He hadn’t really wanted to know one way or another before. But now he did. Oh yes, now he needed to know everything.

  Oh, this is bad. This is fucked up. How do you ask her if the child is really yours? Without detonating a nuke?

  Answer: you do
n’t.

  Then, with the out-of-control force of a nightmare, the rest of it clicked into place. Something far worse than deceit or infidelity.

  What if he was not the father because there was no father?

  What if it was the same with her as with the Boelen’s? What if it was something in this new environment? Everywhere he turned he was confronted with pregnancy, eggs, children: he had become surrounded by burgeoning life. There should be nothing frightening about that. It could all be a coincidence.

  Unless the house made things this way. Unless everyone who lived here was touched by it.

  Unless the house was hungry for more.

  14

  ‘It’s not only impossible,’ Dr Alexis Hobarth said. ‘It’s fucking impossible. Those animals have been separated, in my care and my care alone, for the past three years.’

  ‘I’m sitting on nine apparently healthy Boelen’s eggs, Alex.’

  Dr Hobarth was something of a jet-setting playboy in the reptile community. He’d returned Conrad’s call while attending the annual National Herpetological Symposium in DC, where he was to deliver a paper on a new subspecies of water monitor his team had discovered on a remote island in Indonesia. So far Conrad had explained the situation with the eggs, but kept his fears about his wife to himself.

  ‘So,’ the doctor said, amused, ‘what are you doing in Wisconsin, anyway? Are you out of your mind or do you just crave cheese?’

  ‘Alex, it’s not important why I’m here. What’s important is I have nine eggs in my garage. You told me yourself there was zero chance of fertilization before they reached sexual maturity, at some four years of age and six or seven feet in length. Not only that, she’s been eating like a horse since she arrived. You know a gravid female doesn’t eat, I don’t care how good a keeper you are, and I’m not that good.’

  ‘You have photos?’

  ‘Of the eggs?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No, I don’t, as a matter of fact. But I will be happy to email you photos later today.’

  ‘Where are the eggs now?’

  ‘In the garage.’

  ‘You left them with the female?’ Hobarth’s voice registered concern.

  ‘I’m not an idiot, Alex. They’re in vermiculite, sealed in tamper-proof acrylic shoeboxes, holding steady at eighty-eight degrees. Humidity here is high, so I haven’t bothered misting them.’

  ‘All right. What do you want me to say?’

  ‘How about, wow, that’s a miracle?’

  ‘A miracle? Conrad, please. If anything it’s parthenogenesis.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The animal kingdom’s version of your virgin birth.’

  ‘I’m not a biologist, Alex.’

  ‘Cases involving insects and plants are well documented. Less so with vertebrates, but it happens with some species of fish, amphibians, and, yes, even reptiles. Every now and then you read about it happening at one of the zoos. A tiger shark couple years back. A komodo dragon just a few months ago. But hold on. Don’t get excited. It is possible for a female to lay eggs without the benefit of fertilization, but it is extremely rare with reptiles, and almost impossible to prove because most of our stock comes from the wild, where the female’s mating history remains unaccounted for. Even with semi-captives such as our Boelen’s, it’s dicey because most keepers do not document thoroughly enough to disprove the animals in question have never been put with the opposite sex. But I am not most keepers. I’m the fucking Curator of fucking Herpetology at the fucking San Antonio Zoo.’

  ‘But it’s possible? This partho thing, it’s a real thing, not some Ripley’s Believe It or Not hoax?’

  ‘It’s real, but it doesn’t make any sense for your animals, or the Boelen’s in particular.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because parthenogenesis occurs only in all or predominately female populations. As with honeybees, when you have a queen and her many drones. Parthenogenesis occurs only when the queen bee, the only female in the hive, dies before reproducing another queen. The male drones panic, or their genetic make-up panics, knowing their future is lost without her. In her place they begin to reproduce, but it is all in vain. They will only bring more males into the hive, and eventually these drones will die, too.’

  ‘How do you know that isn’t exactly what happened?’

  ‘Because it’s all in the environment, Conrad. Parthenogenesis occurs when environmental conditions are near perfect, when the balance of females to males is less than ideal, or all male. On top that, the Boelen’s is such a delicate creature, even in the wild, it’s a wonder they reproduce at all. It is why they almost never breed in captivity, let alone accomplish something as rare as this kind of virgin birth. The odds of this happening in a small population of males and females . . . in your, what, your garage? Preposterous, my friend.’

  ‘But, Alex, how would she know there are males in her population? For all she knows, she is alone in the world.’

  ‘Oh, so what you’re telling me is, you’ve never put these animals in a bucket for a soak, never put them in the same bag for transport, never once shared cages, never once left one of them to crawl over another?’

  ‘Not long enough to get their freak on.’

  ‘Conrad, they don’t have to get anything on - they just have to understand, to sense that reproduction with the opposite sex is possible. It’s like us guys in a bar. We don’t even have to be in the bar, or a whorehouse. We can look through the window, smell the perfume wafting out the door. This stuff is in the air. We’ve known for some time that snakes track pheromones emitted at mating time. Believe me, the snakes know who is or isn’t next door, especially when they haven’t closed the deal since last spring.’

  ‘Shit,’ Conrad said.

  ‘Speaking of, how’s your rack these days, chum? Things between you and the missus going all right since the move? You sound a little backed up.’

  Conrad ignored the swipe. ‘Have I ever lied to you?’

  ‘Well, there’s a simple way to prove all this one way or another.’

  ‘Yeah, what’s that?’

  ‘Hatch the eggs. We can fingerprint the DNA on the hatchlings. If there’s paternal contribution, we’ll find it.’

  ‘You can do that now?’

  ‘It’s not cheap, but you hatch these Boelen’s, the zoo will pay for it.’

  ‘I guess that’s something,’ Conrad said, dissatisfied but out of ideas.

  ‘You’ve got eggs? Fine, take care of them. Keep me posted on their development. When they hatch, I’ll see that we’re published and we’ll go to Costa Rica to celebrate.’

  Conrad heard chatter in the background and the doctor cleared his throat.

  ‘I’ll let you get back to your talk, Alex. Good luck with that monitor paper. Maybe they’ll name the thing after you.’

  ‘That is my intention. We’ve an excellent shot at Varanus salvator hobarthi, as is only proper considering I discovered the little beasties.’

  ‘You deserve it, Alex. Sorry I bothered you.’

  ‘Conrad?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I don’t care how it happened. You hatch those eggs, it’s a hell of an accomplishment.’

  ‘Thanks, Alex.’

  ‘Dr Hobarth to you, knucklehead.’

  Conrad slipped the cordless into his pocket and stared at the eggs in the box. The black, volcanic-looking vermiculite soil was slightly moist and sticky, the eggs leathery, free of fungus, healthy. No sign of movement within, even when he shone a flashlight over the smooth, opaque surface. He wasn’t really expecting to see much - it would be another hundred days before they hatched.

  If they hatched. Man, that would be something.

  He thought about Jo and the life she carried inside of her now. He tried to feel the same welling of pride, but it wasn’t the same. Compared to the delicate Boelen’s, adding one more child to the six billion souls ravaging the planet seemed trivial. Or maybe it was a proximity thing. T
he eggs were here, now, under his watchful eye. Jo was in another state, pulling herself away from him with every passing day.

  He hoped that when she came home he would feel that the life within her was his creation, too.

  15

  By the time Conrad finished their evening walk, he could smell the ozone in the air and the humidity was like a fist of moist cotton balls in his chest. Fat drops fell on his skin, warm as bath-water. Just before he made it home he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to see Gail Grum waving him over.

  ‘One second!’ Conrad let the dogs in and darted across the Grums’ lawn.

  ‘You made it just in time.’ She was laughing when he joined her under the covered porch, where she had established a narrow wicker living room. Gail had to raise her voice above the din of the rain. ‘What would you like to drink? I have beer or iced tea.’

  ‘Iced tea. Please.’

  When Gail returned with his tea and a Sierra Nevada for herself, another arc of lightning illuminated the gray afternoon haze.

  ‘How’s the job hunt?’

  ‘I’m still gainfully unemployed.’

  ‘Oh, goodie. Now that I know you’re free you can’t say no. Nadia told me how you rescued her from that awful Eddie the other day. Very smooth, Conrad.’

  The gist: Gail and Big John were embarking on a road trip through Kentucky and Tennessee. Bourbon distilleries, horseback rides, something involving a canoe. She showed him B&B brochures. The stated purpose was to visit a sister, but Conrad gathered the real motive here was to re-ignite the dying cinders of their middle-aged sex life. One of the stops was named Lovers Last Ranch, for God’s sake. Pay Per View, massages, balcony spas . . . yes, Gail had good reason to be excited. She was already out the door, practically vibrating with visions of saddling Big John up for one last ride into the sunset.

  ‘The catch is,’ she said, sipping the beer.

  The catch was Nadia. She had been ‘acting up’ all last year. Her freshman ‘adventures’ at UW Madison had led her down some ‘wrong paths’ with ‘poor choices’ in friends and this summer she had ‘relapsed’ several times.