66
Leaving Baltimore
Everyone has a bitch,” Mitch observed as he steered them along state route 26 out of the city, staying away from the main highways. Too many demonstrations—by truckers, motorists, even bicyclists, all claiming a shot at civil disobedience—had shut down the main routes. As it was, they had to wait twenty minutes in the middle of downtown as police cleared tons of garbage dumped by protesting sanitation workers.
“We failed them,” Kaye said.
“You didn’t fail them,” Mitch said as he tried to find an alley to turn into.
“I screwed up and didn’t make my case.” Kaye hummed nervously to herself.
“Something wrong?” Mitch asked.
“Nothing,” she said briskly. “Just the whole damned planet.”
In West Virginia, they pulled into a KOA campground and paid thirty dollars for a tent site. Mitch set up the lightweight dome tent he had bought in Austria before he met Tilde, and a small camp stove, under a young oak tree looking out over a low valley where two tractors sat idle in a carefully furrowed field.
The sun had gone down twenty minutes before and the sky was mottled with light clouds. The air was just beginning to cool. Kaye’s hair was sticky, the elastic of her panties chafed.
One other family had set up two tents about a hundred yards away, otherwise the campground was empty.
Kaye climbed through the rainflap into the tent. “Come in here,” she told Mitch. She pulled off her dress and lay back on the sleeping bag Mitch had unrolled. Mitch set the campstove down and poked his head into the tent.
“My God, woman,” he said admiringly.
“Do you smell me?” she asked.
“I surely do, ma’am,” he said in agent Benson’s fine North Carolina accent. He slipped in beside her. “It’s still a little warm.”
“I smell you,” Kaye said. She had a needful and serious look on her face. She helped him out of his shirt, and he kicked aside his pants before reaching for the shaving kit where he was keeping the condoms. As he started to rip open the foil package, she bent over and kissed his erect penis. “Not this time,” she said. She licked him swiftly, looked up. “I want you now, nothing in between.”
Mitch took hold of her head and lifted her mouth away from him. “No,” he said.
“Why not?” she asked.
“You’re fertile,” he said.
“How the hell do you know?” Kaye asked.
“I can see it in your skin. I can smell it.”
“I bet you can,” she said admiringly. “Can you smell anything else?” She pushed closer to him, lifted over his head, swung her knee to the other side.
“Spring,” Mitch said, returning the favor.
She arched her back, half-twisted, and deftly fondled him, as he nuzzled between her legs.
“Ballet dancer,” Mitch said, his voice muffled.
“You’re fertile, too,” she said. “You didn’t say otherwise.”
“Mm.”
She lifted her torso again, rolled off him, and swung around to face him. “You’re shedding,” she said.
Mitch screwed up his face in puzzlement. “What?”
“You’re shedding SHEVA. I test positive.”
“Good Christ, Kaye. You sure know how to trash a mood.” Mitch pushed back and sat with his legs pulled up in the corner of the tent. “I didn’t think it could happen so fast.”
“Something thinks I’m your woman,” Kaye said. “Nature says we’re going to be together a long time. I want that to be true.”
Mitch was at a complete loss. “I do, too, but we don’t need to act like idiots.”
“Every man wants to make love to a fertile woman. It’s in their genes.”
“That is complete bullshit,” Mitch said, and pushed back from her. “What in hell are you doing?”
Kaye hunkered across from him and rested on her knees. She made his head throb. The entire tent smelled of both of them and he could not think straight. “We can prove them wrong, Mitch.”
“About what?”
“I once worried that work and family wouldn’t fit together. Now, there’s no conflict. I am my own laboratory.”
Mitch shook his head vehemently. “No.”
Kaye lay down beside him, pillowing her head on her arms. “Pretty forward and up front, no?” she asked softly.
“We haven’t the slightest idea what’s going to happen,” Mitch said. His eyes were brimming, warm, half from fear, half from another emotion he could not define—something close to pure physical joy. His body wanted her so intensely, wanted her now. If he gave in, he knew it would be the supreme sexual act of his entire life. And if he gave in now, he worried he would never forgive himself.
“I know you believe we’re right, and I know you’d be a good father,” Kaye said, eyes narrowed to slits. She slowly lifted one leg. “If we don’t do something now, maybe it will never happen, and we’ll never know. Be my man. Please.”
The tears came in a rush and Mitch hid his face. She rose beside him and held him and apologized, feeling his shaking. He mumbled a confused and jerking series of words about how women simply did not understand, never could understand.
Kaye soothed him and lay down beside him and for a while the breeze blew the rain flap gently over their silence.
“It’s nothing wrong,” she said. She wiped his face and looked down on him, frightened at what she had provoked. “It’s the only right thing there is, maybe.”
“I’m sorry,” Kaye said stiffly as they loaded the car. A cool current of morning air slopped up from the flat farmland below the campsite. The leaves on the oak trees whispered. The tractors stood motionless on their perfect and empty furrows.
“No reason to be sorry,”Mitch said, shaking out the tent. He folded it and rolled it into its long fabric sheath, then, with Kaye’s help, unsocketed the tent poles and clapped them together into a fasces connected top to bottom by their stretching cords.
They had not made love during the night, and Mitch had slept very little.
“Any dreams?” Kaye asked as they sipped hot coffee from the pot on the camp stove. Mitch shook his head. “You?”
“I didn’t sleep more than a couple of hours,” Kaye said. “I dreamed of working at EcoBacter. All these people were coming in and out. You were there.” Kaye did not want to tell Mitch that in the dream she did not recognize him.
“Not very exciting,” Mitch said.
As they traveled, they saw little out of the ordinary, out of place. They drove west on the two-lane road through small towns, coal towns, old towns, tired towns, towns repainted and repaired, gussied up, with their grand old homes in the rich old neighborhoods made into bed-and-breakfasts for well-to-do young people from Philadelphia and Washington and even New York.
Mitch switched on the radio and they heard about candlelight vigils in the Capitol, ceremonies honoring the dead senators, funerals for others killed in the riot. There were stories on the vaccine effort, how scientists now believed the torch had been passed to James Mondavi or perhaps a team at Princeton. Jackson seemed on the descent, and despite all that had happened, Kaye felt sorry for him.
They ate at the High Street Grill in Morgantown, a new restaurant designed to look old and established, with Colonial decor and thick wood tables coated with clear plastic resin. The sign out front declared the restaurant to be “Just a bit older than the Millennium, and a hell of a lot less significant.”
Kaye watched Mitch closely as she picked at her club sandwich.
Mitch avoided her gaze and looked around at the customers, all stolidly involved in fueling their bodies. Older couples sat in silence; a lone man dropped his wool cap on the table next to a foam cup of coffee; three teenage girls in a booth picked at sundaes with long steel spoons. The staff was young and friendly and none of the women wore masks.
“Makes me believe I’m just an ordinary guy,” Mitch said quietly, looking down at the bowl of chili before him. “I never thought I’d make a good father.”
“Why?” Kaye asked, equally quiet, as if they were sharing a secret.
“I’ve always focused on my work, on wandering around and going places where there was interesting stuff. I’m pretty self-centered. I never thought any intelligent woman would want me to be a father, or a husband, for that matter. Some made it perfectly clear that wasn’t why they were with me.”
“Yeah,” Kaye said, completely tuned in on him, as if every word might contain an answer essential to solving something that puzzled her.
The waitress asked if they needed more tea or dessert. They declined.
“This is so ordinary,” Mitch said, lifting his spoon and swinging it through a small arc to measure the restaurant. “I feel like a big bug in the middle of a Norman Rockwell living room.”
Kaye laughed. “There,” she said.
“What do you mean, ‘there’?”
“That was you, saying that. And I just felt my insides quiver.”
“It’s the food,” Mitch said.
“It’s you.”
“I need to be a husband before I can be a father.”
“It certainly isn’t the food. I’m shaking, Mitch.” She held out her hand and he let go of the spoon to grasp it. Her fingers were cold and her teeth were chattering though the interior was warm.
“I think we should get married,” Mitch said.
“That’s a lovely idea,” Kaye said.
Mitch held out his hand. “Will you marry me?”
Kaye held her breath for a moment. “Oh, God, yes,” she said with a short puff of resolve.
“We’re crazy and we don’t know what we’re in for.”
“We don’t,” Kaye agreed.
“We’re on the edge of trying to make someone new, different from us,” Mitch said. “Don’t you find that terrifying?”
“Utterly,” Kaye said.
“And if we’re wrong, it’s just going to be disaster after disaster. Pain. Grief.”
“We are not wrong,” Kaye said. “Be my man.”
“I am your man.”
“Do you love me?”
“I love you in ways I’ve never felt before.”
“So fast. That’s incredible.”
Mitch nodded emphatically. “But I love you too much not to be a little critical.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’m troubled by you calling yourself a laboratory. That sounds cold and maybe a little out of it, Kaye.”
“I hope you see through the words. See what I hope to say and do.”
“I might,” Mitch said. “Just barely. The air feels very thin where we are, right now.”
“Like being on a mountain,” Kaye said.
“I don’t like mountains much,” Mitch said.
“Oh, I do,” Kaye said, thinking of the slopes and white peaks of Mount Kazbeg. “They give you freedom.”
“Yeah,” Mitch said. “You jump off, and you get ten thousand feet of pure freedom.”
As Mitch was paying their bill, Kaye walked toward the rest rooms. On impulse, she pulled her phone card and a piece of paper from her wallet and lifted the receiver on a pay phone.
She was calling Mrs. Luella Hamilton at her home in Richmond, Virginia. She had persuaded the number out of the hospital switchboard at the clinic.
A deep, smooth male voice answered.
“Excuse me, is Mrs. Hamilton in?”
“We’re having an early supper,” the man said. “Who wants her?”
“Kaye Lang. Dr. Lang.”
The man mumbled something, then called out “Luella!” and a few seconds passed. More voices. Luella Hamilton picked up the phone, her breath briefly pounding on the mouthpiece, then familiar and calm. “Albert says this is Kaye Lang, that right?”
“It’s me, Mrs. Hamilton.”
“Well, I’m at home now, Kaye, and don’t need no checking up on.”
“I wanted to let you know I’m no longer with the Task-force, Mrs. Hamilton.”
“Please call me Lu. Whyever not, Kaye?”
“A parting of the ways. I’m heading west and I was worried about you.”
“There’s nothing to be worried about. Albert and the kids are all right and I’m just fine.”
“I was just concerned. I’ve been thinking about you a lot.”
“Well, Dr. Lipton gave me these pills that kill babies before they’re very big, inside. You know about the pills.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t tell anybody, and we thought about it, but Albert and me, we’re going ahead. He says he believes some of what the scientists say, but not all, and besides, he says I’m too ugly to be messing around behind his back.” She let out a rich, disbelieving laugh. “He don’t know us women and our opportunities, does he, Kaye?” Then, in an undertone, to someone beside her, “Stop that. I’m talking here.”
“No,” Kaye said.
“We’re going to have this baby,” Mrs. Hamilton said, coming down heavy on have. “Tell Dr. Lipton and the folks at the clinic. Whatever he or she is, he or she is ours, and we’re going to give him or her a fighting chance.”
“I’m glad to hear that, Lu.”
“You are, huh? You curious, too, Kaye?”
Kaye laughed and felt her laughter catch, threaten to reverse to tears. “I am.”
“You want to see this baby when he comes, don’t you?”
“I would like to buy you both a present,” Kaye said.
“That’s nice. Then why not go find yourself a man and get this flu, and we’ll visit together and compare, you and me, our two fine youngsters, all right? And I’ll buy you a present.” The suggestion carried not a hint of anger, absurdity, or resentment.
“I might do that, Lu.”
“We get along, Kaye. Thanks for caring about me and you know, looking at me like I was people and not a lab rat.”
“May I call you again?”
“We’re moving soon, but we’ll find each other, Kaye. We will. You take care.”
Kaye walked down the long corridor from the rest rooms. She touched her forehead. She was hot. Her stomach was unsettled, as well. Get this flu and we ‘II visit and compare.
Mitch stood outside the restaurant with his hands in his pockets, squinting at the passing cars. He turned and smiled at her as he heard the heavy wood door open.
“I called Mrs. Hamilton,” she said. “She’s going to have her baby.”
“Very brave of her.”
“People have been having babies for millions of years,” Kaye said.
“Yeah. Piece of cake. Where do you want to get married?” Mitch asked.
“How about Columbus?”
“How about Morgantown?”
“Sure,” Kaye said.
“If I think about this much longer, I’m going to be completely useless.”
“I doubt it,” Kaye said. The fresh air made her feel better.
They drove to Spruce Street, and there, at the Mononga-hela Florist Company, Mitch bought Kaye a dozen roses. Walking around the County Magistrates Building and a senior center, they crossed High Street, heading toward the tall clock tower and flagpole of the county courthouse. They stopped beside a spreading canopy of maples to examine the inlaid and inscribed bricks arranged across the courthouse square.
“ ‘In loving memory, James Crutchfield, age 11,’ “ Kaye read. The wind rustled through the maple branches, making the green leaves flutter with a sound like soft voices or old memories. “ ‘My love for fifty years, May Ellen Baker,’ “ Mitch read.
“Do you think we’ll be together that long?” Kaye asked.
Mitch smiled and clasped her shoulder. “I’ve never been married,” he said. “I’m nai’ve. I’d say, yes, we will.”They walked beneath the stone arch to the right of the tower and through the double doors.
Inside, in the Office of the County Clerk, a long room filled with bookshelves and tables supporting huge, scuffed black and green volumes of land transactions, they received paperwork and were told where to get their blood tests.
“It’s a state law,” the elderly clerk told them from behind her broad wooden desk. She smiled wisely. “They test for syphilis, gonorrhea, HIV, herpes, and this new one, SHEVA. A few years ago, they tried to get the blood test removed as a requirement, but that’s all changed now. You wait three days, then you can get married at a church or by a circuit court judge, any county in the state. Those are beautiful roses, honey.” She lifted her glasses where they hung on a gold chain around her neck and scanned them shrewdly. “Proof of age will not be required. What took you so long?”
She handed them their application and test papers.
“We won’t get our license here,” Kaye said to Mitch as they left the building. “We’ll fail the test.” They rested on a wooden bench beneath the maples. It was four in the afternoon and the sky was clouding over swiftly. She laid her head on his shoulder.
Mitch stroked her forehead. “You’re hot. Something wrong?”
“Just proof of our passion.”
Kaye smelled her flowers, then, as the first drops of rain fell, held up her hand and said, “I, Kaye Lang, take you, Mitchell Rafelson, to be my wedded husband, in this age of confusion and upheaval.”
Mitch stared at her.
“Raise your hand,” Kaye said, “if you want me.”
Mitch swiftly realized what was required, clasped her hand, braced himself to rise to the occasion. “I want you to be my wife, come hell or high water, to have and to hold, to cherish and to honor, whether they have any room at the inn or not, amen.”
“I love you, Mitch.”
“I love you, Kaye.”
“All right,” she said. “Now I’m your wife.”
As they left Morgantown, heading southwest, Mitch said, “You know, I believe it. I believe that we’re married.”
“That’s what counts,” Kaye said. She moved closer to him across the broad bench seat.
That evening, on the outskirts of Clarksburg, they made love on a small bed in a dark motel room with cinder block walls. Spring rain fell on the flat roof and dripped from the eaves with a steady, soothing rhythm. They never pulled back the bedcover, lying instead naked together, limbs for blankets, lost in each other, needing nothing more.
The universe became small and bright and very warm.