The Mad Scientist's Daughter (36 page)

  She paused, listening to the river and the creak of the woods. The humidity made the air as gauzy as a butterfly net. Her eyes slid open. She looked at the man laughing in the surface of the moon. There were still those times when she wanted nothing more than anything to pull out her comm slate and type the string of numbers and letters that once tethered her to Finn. She wanted to talk to him, to apologize to him, to see his words to her appear on the screen. But that code only tied her to the house now.

  More and more, though, she found that the urge to call him had faded, that it was enough to go outside with her baby and look up at the sky.

  "Some nights," Cat said, and she thought of her son, a translucent pink curl spinning inside of her. "Some nights your daddy goes out on the surface where it smells like the Fourth of July and he looks at Earth. At us. When you're born I can show you pictures of what he sees. But really he's looking at the two of us, here on Earth, waiting for him to come home."

  The moonlight refracted off her damp eyelashes.

  "Some nights," she said. "He's even forgiven me."

  She knew they were all lies, but when she spoke she spoke the truth.

 

Cat was pulling weeds in the garden when she heard the gate scraping open across the loose, dry soil. She leaned back on her heels and rested one hand on her stomach and brought the other hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. It was her father.

  "The garden," he said. "My God. It's just like when your mother was alive."

  "Thanks." Cat smiled at him. "What's up?"

  Her father shuffled forward across the narrow stone path, over to the black metal chair Cat had bought at one of the antique stores in town and then set up next to the gush of wisteria. He sat down, his body hinging at the waist. Cat turned to face him. For a moment he just sat, his arm crossed over his knees, his eyes squinting at some point in the distance. Then he spoke.

  "You visited Dr Condon."

  Cat didn't move. The grass prickled the backs of her legs. The sun warmed her skin. Distractedly, she laid her arms across her stomach.

  "How did you know?"

  "I called her." Her father shifted in the chair. "I saw you'd bought a charter plane ticket to Kansas. Thought I'd investigate." He paused. "I'm not angry."

  Cat listened to the blood pounding in her ears.

  "Granted," he said, "if you had asked me point-blank about it, about going up to visit her, I'd have… discouraged you. But to protect you more than anything else." He shrugged, looked over his shoulder. "I can't help but want to protect you. And that must have been… so painful."

  "I'm an adult."
Even though I don't feel like it sometimes.

  "Oh, I know." Her father laughed a little to himself, then let his grin fade away into a frown. "I know."

  "Daddy, I'm sorry I lied–"

  "It's not that." He pushed his hands through his thinning white hair and looked at the sky. The plants in the garden rustled. "Cat, I'm sick."

  For a long time, the only sound was the sound of the wind, rushing through the garden, rushing through the pine trees in the woods. Cat's first thought was that he had a cold. She would need to make him soup tonight. But as she looked at him – his gaunt face, the loose skin hanging off his arms – she began to understand.

  "What?"

  "I'm sick. I've been sick for a long time."

  "What," she said. The heaviness of tears welled up behind her eyelids. She dug her hands into the soil. "What do you mean a long time?"

  Her father bit his lower lip and looked away from her. "I mean," he said, "a long time."

  "Why didn't you tell me?"
Why didn't I ask? Why didn't I notice?

  "I wanted to protect you. The first episode, Finn was able to help me, you know–"

  "Finn!" Cat wanted to leap to her feet and pound her fists against the lemon tree but her pregnancy weighed her down like an anchor. "You knew since before Finn left! And you didn't tell me? Oh my God." She covered her face with her hands. Dirt streaked over her eyes, over her cheeks. It covered up her mouth.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "You seemed so unhappy, I didn't want to burden you–"

  "What is it?" She dropped her hands to the ground. "Tell me that at least. Is it… Are you dying?"

  Her father sighed. He let his head drop. "We're all dying," he said softly. "We all die. But I have… a growth. In my brain. It was a little over two years ago when I found out. Maybe two and a half. Please…" He looked at her then, and already he looked like a ghost. "Please. I understand if you don't forgive me, but I ask–"

  "Daddy," said Cat. She had begun to cry without realizing it. Tears streaked the dirt from her face and onto the top of her blouse. "How long do you have?"

  "Years, probably," he said. "I don't know. They don't know. It's not… It was that one time, and I feel great most of the time. You know I'm still working. They gave me medication. I take it every day, I promise. Finn got me in the habit." His shoulders shook. "I'm fine," he said. "I'm fine."

  Cat felt as though her entire body was disintegrating. The baby turned over inside of her.

  "Why didn't you tell me?" she asked.

  "To protect you." He gave a short nod. "Yes, to protect you. You had so much sorrow in your life. I couldn't bear to add to it."

  Cat took a deep breath. She wiped her muddy tears away. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry I didn't realize."

 
 I'm selfish
, she thought, and then she thought it over and over.
I'm selfish. I'm selfish.

  Her father stood up. Cat pulled herself to her feet, struggling the way she always did now. Her father clucked. "Don't apologize," he said. "I kept it a secret. I didn't want you to know."

  "Why are you telling me now?" Cat walked across the garden so she was standing close enough to hug him. Her father laughed.

  "You were brave enough to go see Dr Condon," he said. "And she's insane. I figured you must be brave enough to deal with this." He spread his hands out in front of him. "I can't treat you like a child anymore," he said. "I'm sorry."

  "Don't be." Cat leaned her head against his shoulder. "Don't be."

• • • •

For the next few weeks, Cat was on edge around her father. She expected him to collapse into her arms at any second. But he always stayed standing, and he didn't like when she reminded him to take his medication in the evenings.

  "You sound like Finn," he said. "Like a goddamn alarm clock." She had come down to the laboratory and stood in the doorway, leaning her weight against the frame. Her father waved an arm at her. "Don't you worry about me. Worry about that baby."

  And eventually, as Cat realized her father was not about to die, as her belly grew heavier, she found herself almost reverting back to the way things had been before. A very faint miasma of dread hung over her actions, like the scent of expensive perfume. But it was so subtle and so slight that she was able to ignore it. Most of the time.

  One day Cat was in the garden spraying the thick, fragrant jasmine with rationed water from the hose, watching as the droplets condensed in shimmering rainbows in the hot sunlight, when something wet and warm dripped down her leg. She dropped the hose and cried out and water sprayed across the front of her dress. She knew what she was supposed to do; she had gone over it at dinner with her father, whenever he changed the subject away from his illness. There had been a suitcase packed next to the front door for the last seven days. For an entire week, she kept missing items of clothing. Now it was time.

  She stumbled into the house and shouted for her father. She found one of the intercom consoles and pressed the button. "Daddy," she said. "Daddy, it's time."

  The house responded with its usual creaks and moans. She pressed the intercom button again. "Daddy!"

  "I'm here." His voice was just behind her and she turned, steadying herself against the wall. He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. His chest heaved. "I ran up the stairs," he said. "Are you having contractions?"

  "My water broke."

  He nodded and took her by the hand. Cat barely had time to think. It didn't hurt yet. She touched her fingers to her bellybutton.
Baby, baby
. She couldn't imagine the world with her baby any place but inside her.

  They drove to the hospital two towns over. Fifteen minutes away something ripped Cat in half, a sharp burning pain that made her shriek and kick out her legs and bang her knees against the dashboard. Her father glanced at her. Sweat glistened on his brow.

  "Hold on, Kitty-Cat," he said.

  Cat leaned against the car seat. The pain dissipated, leaving behind an imprint, like a ghost. Sweat beaded up out of the pores on her back. Sunlight slanted through the car window, yellow and hot.

  And then they were at the hospital, and Cat was flying down a corridor as bright as the inside of a fluorescent light bulb. Another contraction and she arched her back against the wheelchair and screamed. Then she was in a room, in a bed, covered in papery sheets. The nurse-bot gave her one pill after another. Her father stood beside her in a gown the color of mint gum. When the contractions came she grabbed his hand and screamed. A robot arm whirred across the ceiling of the room, dropped down, slid something cool and metal into the base of her spine. After that the contractions didn't make her scream, though she could feel them still, she could feel her body stretching out numbly, her legs in two holsters, the doctor's white hair bobbing up and down just in her line of vision. She felt the baby moving inside her. She forgot all the ways in which she was supposed to breathe. Even with her father standing beside her she forgot.

  She was falling apart. She was the shell of a cicada. The baby was pushing its way out into the world and she was just its husk, the thing that carried it to life–

  "I see the head," said the doctor, and Cat was overwhelmed with euphoria.
A head
. Like a real person, not a fetus but a person. She heard all the voices of the people in the room. She heard the robot whirring her pain away, its hand cradling the nerves of her spine.

  "Almost there," said her father. "We're almost there, Kitty-Cat."

  Cat tried to smile but her body was shaking and sweating and the muscles in her mouth refused to move. A starburst of intensity. She looked up at the bright ceiling.

  Wailing. Wailing like the chime of bells. It sounded so far away.

  "He's here," said someone female. One of the nurses. "Would you like to meet your son?"

  Cat nodded because she was exhausted. For a moment she felt a rising sense of hysteria. They were bringing a wriggling bundle of blue cloth toward her. What if he looked like Richard? What if she looked into the face of her son and it was Richard's eyes that looked back at her, Richard's mouth twisted up in the anguish of being out in the world?

  The nurse slid the baby into Cat's arms. He was heavier than she expected, and warmer. She wiped the red liquid away. His eyes were blue but they were dark, like river water rather than ice. His skin as pale as her own. A generic little baby nose, a generic little baby mouth. Cat wept. Her tears flowed over her cheeks and dropped down on his forehead. She wiped them away with the base of her thumb. The baby stopped crying and watched her.

  Her father leaned over the side of the bed, his eyes bright and smiling above his paper mask.

  Immediately, Cat knew the name she wanted. She looked down at her son, her beautiful son.

  "Hello, Daniel," she said.

 

They brought Daniel home on a hot, sunny day, the first of many hot, sunny days to come. Her father drove. Cat sat in the back seat of the car, curled up next to the plastic baby seat, watching Daniel's tiny chest rise and fall. He had fallen asleep as soon as they got on the highway. She was overwhelmed by his smallness. She brushed the pale silk of his hair away from his forehead and he turned toward her, face scrunched up, his eyes a pair of wrinkles in the folds of his skin. Her father hummed tunelessly in the front seat.

  Cat closed her eyes. She wanted to sleep.

  It was difficult for her to get used to her new life with the baby. He woke up crying in the middle of the night and Cat had to trudge across the hallway to his nursery, formerly the room where Finn used to tutor her, to cradle him in her arms or change his diaper or feed him. She spent the next few months, which became quickly enough the next year, in a perpetual sleepless haze. Her mind never quite seemed to belong to her. Some days, during the brightest and hottest part of the afternoon, she felt as though she were dreaming even though she was still awake – voices seeped in and out of the white noise of the trees and plants and the house settling into its foundation. Sometimes she looked at Daniel and didn't recognize him. Those were the times she took him to her father's laboratory and left him lying in his inflatable playpen as her father worked on what he promised wasn't dangerous in the slightest, and she stumbled up to her bed (or sometimes Finn's bed) and slept.

  But other times when she was with Daniel she was so overwhelmed with love that she would have to sit down to steady herself. Once she was bathing him in the kitchen sink, rubbing honey-colored soap into his fine hair – it had darkened since she brought him home, away from Richard's impossible blond and toward her own auburn – and the sunset spilling in through the window turned the kitchen a warm, luminous pink. Daniel laughed and splashed water across her face and then clapped his hands together. The room spun. Cat plucked him out of the water and held him close to her chest, laughing, feeling the warmth of his tiny fragile body. His fingers curled around the damp ends of her hair, and she understood in that moment why women choose to have children.