The Oregon Experiment by Keith Scribner

said.
    “It’ll be a wonderful place to raise your children,” Roger said.
    God, what if they were here that long? What if he got tenure but couldn’t land an offer back east? She and Scanlon would come to appreciate the restaurants; they’d imagine growing old here, grateful they lived in Douglas and not down the road in Tangent or Burnt Woods, Boring, Shedd, or Drain. Their kids would grow up boastful, “born and raised” Oregonians. There’d be 4-H. Her daughter would go on dates in proud pickups. A son in vo-ag and the high-school pistol club. Or they’d move to a commune in the hills—her son’s life spent juggling and sewing bells to his floppy velour jester’s hat, her daughter worshipping the moon andmaking art with her menstrual blood. Would her daughter have a baby of her own at nineteen?
    Naomi had already surrendered one baby to a life that was out of her control; she would raise the rest of her children as
she
chose.
    The Adirondack chair tipped too much weight onto her lower spine, so she shimmied forward and sipped her lemonade, tuning back to the conversation as Scanlon touched her arm and said, “We love it here.”
    Blaine and Roger gazed at him, open and engaged. They were comfortable.
    She flashed on the first time she’d ever seen Scanlon—at a party in New York thrown by an industry friend whose husband worked for the mayor. Scanlon was telling a joke to six or eight people, and she watched, thinking he was handsome, then charming. Dark curly hair, broad shoulders, a habit of touching two fingers to his chin when he paused for timing. His audience leaned in, eagerly waiting for what came next. He sipped his wine, as if he’d never let the punch line go, then delivered it—irreverent and crude—and everyone broke into laughter, including one woman who wasn’t apt to find much humor in “bitch.” But he’d won them over—Naomi too—and she decided she’d meet him before the night ended. When she did, she was surprised to find he didn’t work at city hall, having met plenty of men who used their bright eyes and quick smiles to win sympathy and votes. He’d be a good leader, though, she thought. And she’d been seduced, even aroused, to learn he was an academic, using his charm not for money or power but to engage students, and for jokes at parties, and to unknowingly attract her.
    She’d had no sense of smell for over a year when she agreed to go to the party, only because her friend, a nose, promised her it was her
husband’s
party,
his
friends. Most of Naomi’s were noses, a few were chefs, one tasted for a wine importer and wrote off and on for
Wine Spectator
. By this time, she could barely taste food. Good wine, except for the numbing effect, was wasted on her. Hoppy porters she could taste, and she appreciated the fizz. “The kale’s yummy,” Naomi had said, mostly to herself, one night at dinner, and the conversation immediately shifted. “Can you really taste it?” one friend asked. “For me the smell of the sesame’s a big part of the flavor,” another observed. “What
does
it taste like? To
you
?” asked another. They intended no malice. To them, Naomi was a curiosity. A subject to explore. And, she felt as months passed, an oddity. Pitiable. Shecouldn’t bear to be around them and made more frequent excuses until she was seeing no one except her father, who drove into the city once a week to take her out. She was drowning in loss.
    That year her baby’s birthday was harder than ever—a ten-year-old boy—and with the loss of her nose, the one frayed connection she had to him had been severed. She’d heeded the advice of doctors and adoption counselors that she not hold him after he was born but now knew that had been a mistake. She hadn’t realized how quickly they’d snatch him away, or how empty that would leave her. She’d also agreed to a closed adoption—no names, no contact—choosing file 372-NY because “mother” was a middle-school art