up. He plots her temperatures on a sheet of graph paper. We want, he tells her, to time the ovulation spike. Each time they have sex, he draws a little X on their chart.
Three more months, three more periods. Four more months, four more periods. Herb assaults Imogene’s peaking temperature with platoons of X’s. She lies in the bed with her toes pointed to the ceiling and Herb rummages around on top of her and grunts and the spermatozoa paddle forth.
And nothing happens. Imogene cramps, finds blood, whispers into the phone, “I’m a fucking Swiss timepiece.”
The university lets out. The brewer’s blackbirds return. The lark sparrows return. Imogene plods through the backyard filling her feeders. Not so long ago, she thinks, I’d be stoned in public for this. Herb would divorce me. Our crops would be razed. Shamans would stick garlic gloves into my reproductive tracts.
In August, the biology department administrator, Sondra Juetten, gives birth to a girl. Herb and Imogene bring carnations to the hospital. The infant is shriveled and squinty and miraculous-looking. She wears a cotton hat. Her skull is crimped and oblong.
Herb says, “We’re
so
excited for you, Sondra.”
And he is excited, Imogene can see it; he bounces on his toes; he grins; he asks Sondra a series of questions about the umbilical cord.
Imogene stands in the doorway and asks herself if she is generous enough to be excited for Sondra, too. Nurses barge past. Drops of dried blood are spattered on the linoleum beside the hospital bed; they look like tiny brown sawblades. A nurse unwraps the infant and its diaphragm rises and falls beneath the thin basket of its ribs and its tiny body seems to Imogene like the distillation of a dozen generations, Sondra’s mother’s mother’s mother, an entire pedigree stripped into a single flame and stowed still burning inside the blue tributaries of veins pulsing beneath its skin.
She thinks: Why not me?
Wyoming tilts away from the sun. Goodbye, wood ducks. Goodbye, house wrens. Goodbye to the little yellow warbler who landed on the window feeder yesterday and winked at Imogene before continuing on. The abandoned tires freeze into the earth. The birds make their brutal migrations.
“What about you two?” Herb’s brother asks. This is Thanksgiving, in Minnesota. Herb’s mother cocks her head, suddenly interested. Herb’s nephews clack their silverware against the table like drummers. “You guys thinking about kids?”
Herb looks at Imogene. “Sure. You never know.”
Imogene’s bite of pumpkin pie turns to cement in her mouth. Herb’s sister-in-law says, “Well, don’t wait too long. You don’t want to be rolling to flute recitals in a wheelchair.”
There are other moments. Herb’s two-year-old nephew climbs uninvited into Imogene’s lap and hands her a bookcalled
Big Fish, Little Fish
. “Biiig!” he says, turning the pages. “Biiiig fish!” He squirms against her chest; his scalp smells like a deep, cold lake in summer.
A day later Herb tugs Imogene’s sleeve in the airport and points: There are twins by some newspaper machines with tow heads and overalls. Maybe three years old. They are jumping on the tips of their toes and singing about a tiny spider getting washed out of a waterspout and when they are done they clap and grin and sprint in circles around their mother.
When Imogene was twenty-one, her parents were killed simultaneously when their Buick LeSabre skidded off Route 506 a mile from home and flipped into a ditch. There was no ice on the road surface and no coming traffic and her father’s Buick was in good repair. The police called it an accident. For two weeks Imogene and Herb stood in a variety of overheated, overdecorated living rooms holding Triscuits on little plates and then Imogene graduated from college and promptly moved to Morocco.
She lived three years in a one-room apartment in Rabat with no refrigerator and one window. She could not wear shorts or skirts
Three more months, three more periods. Four more months, four more periods. Herb assaults Imogene’s peaking temperature with platoons of X’s. She lies in the bed with her toes pointed to the ceiling and Herb rummages around on top of her and grunts and the spermatozoa paddle forth.
And nothing happens. Imogene cramps, finds blood, whispers into the phone, “I’m a fucking Swiss timepiece.”
The university lets out. The brewer’s blackbirds return. The lark sparrows return. Imogene plods through the backyard filling her feeders. Not so long ago, she thinks, I’d be stoned in public for this. Herb would divorce me. Our crops would be razed. Shamans would stick garlic gloves into my reproductive tracts.
In August, the biology department administrator, Sondra Juetten, gives birth to a girl. Herb and Imogene bring carnations to the hospital. The infant is shriveled and squinty and miraculous-looking. She wears a cotton hat. Her skull is crimped and oblong.
Herb says, “We’re
so
excited for you, Sondra.”
And he is excited, Imogene can see it; he bounces on his toes; he grins; he asks Sondra a series of questions about the umbilical cord.
Imogene stands in the doorway and asks herself if she is generous enough to be excited for Sondra, too. Nurses barge past. Drops of dried blood are spattered on the linoleum beside the hospital bed; they look like tiny brown sawblades. A nurse unwraps the infant and its diaphragm rises and falls beneath the thin basket of its ribs and its tiny body seems to Imogene like the distillation of a dozen generations, Sondra’s mother’s mother’s mother, an entire pedigree stripped into a single flame and stowed still burning inside the blue tributaries of veins pulsing beneath its skin.
She thinks: Why not me?
Wyoming tilts away from the sun. Goodbye, wood ducks. Goodbye, house wrens. Goodbye to the little yellow warbler who landed on the window feeder yesterday and winked at Imogene before continuing on. The abandoned tires freeze into the earth. The birds make their brutal migrations.
“What about you two?” Herb’s brother asks. This is Thanksgiving, in Minnesota. Herb’s mother cocks her head, suddenly interested. Herb’s nephews clack their silverware against the table like drummers. “You guys thinking about kids?”
Herb looks at Imogene. “Sure. You never know.”
Imogene’s bite of pumpkin pie turns to cement in her mouth. Herb’s sister-in-law says, “Well, don’t wait too long. You don’t want to be rolling to flute recitals in a wheelchair.”
There are other moments. Herb’s two-year-old nephew climbs uninvited into Imogene’s lap and hands her a bookcalled
Big Fish, Little Fish
. “Biiig!” he says, turning the pages. “Biiiig fish!” He squirms against her chest; his scalp smells like a deep, cold lake in summer.
A day later Herb tugs Imogene’s sleeve in the airport and points: There are twins by some newspaper machines with tow heads and overalls. Maybe three years old. They are jumping on the tips of their toes and singing about a tiny spider getting washed out of a waterspout and when they are done they clap and grin and sprint in circles around their mother.
When Imogene was twenty-one, her parents were killed simultaneously when their Buick LeSabre skidded off Route 506 a mile from home and flipped into a ditch. There was no ice on the road surface and no coming traffic and her father’s Buick was in good repair. The police called it an accident. For two weeks Imogene and Herb stood in a variety of overheated, overdecorated living rooms holding Triscuits on little plates and then Imogene graduated from college and promptly moved to Morocco.
She lived three years in a one-room apartment in Rabat with no refrigerator and one window. She could not wear shorts or skirts
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