can do is stare at her. When I try to speak, I produce nothing but an incoherent stutter, and it is not a show of amazement. I am truly stunned.
Karen shrugs. “I’m as sure as I can be, just going through the stages again myself.”
“But, Karen, she—”
“And she stole two of my pregnancy tests.”
“What?”
“I always kept some in the bathroom cupboard, to be able to check…how I’m doing. Well, one time, in summer, the four girls were playing family and came up to us to ask if ‘this’ was a thermometer. I was mortified! But Selena knew where I stored them afterward. When I went to get one this time, I noticed that two were missing.”
“And it can’t have been the twins again?”
“No, because I moved them into the top drawer of the bathroom cupboard. Even I can’t reach without a footstool. I don’t think I told anyone about it except Lorna and Selena that time, so I’m pretty certain she took them. And look at her! You see her more often than I do, did you not notice anything?”
“Of course I did. I saw things, but I didn’t add them up, because I’m a stupid academic who has never been pregnant. Her friend told me she was vomiting a lot, but she—the friend—took it for bulimia!”
“Well…not too far off the mark.”
“Bulimia and morning sickness? Hardly the same thing!”
“No, what I mean is that Selena was anorexic when she was a teenager.”
“Oh, come on! Nobody can be that screwed up!”
“Lorna O’Neal’s eldest daughter?” Karen throws me a speaking glance and goes on peeling. “I’m so used to seeing her all skin and bone that I couldn’t even say since when she has been looking normal. Not all that long, two years, maybe?”
“In other words, she was ill when she started college?”
“Oh, yes. Lorna never talked about it to me, never even seemed to notice it, but I thought at the time Selena isn’t stable enough for college, never mind her good grades. And she wasn’t. She missed one semester, I think after her second or third year, to go on a rest cure. Since then she has recovered her weight a little.”
“So that’s why she looks so pasty. Her behavior at college—I can’t really tell you, I’m sorry! But something must be done!”
Karen remains silent, while my mind is whirling.
“I guess I know what you mean,” she finally says, “but I can’t agree with you there.”
“But she can’t go on concealing all this! She may do herself a serious injury! In fact—”
“Oh, I thought you meant, terminate the pregnancy.”
“Well, no. Selena would never agree to that.”
For the first time Karen shows evidence of curiosity. “Do you know who the father is?”
“I’m afraid I do.”
On Friday Tim turns up at my office door.
“I need minding,” he says, a little reproachfully.
“What? I’m sorry—oh, gosh, Tim! Your tenure committee! How could I forget! When will they meet?”
“They are meeting. Have been, for twenty-one minutes and fifty-four seconds…twenty-two minutes. Can I sit down for a moment?” He does, like a poor sinner waiting for his verdict.
“Come on, let’s walk.”
“I can’t leave the building!”
“Of course you can leave the building. You think they’re going to call you in and ask you to explain note thirty-four in chapter three?”
“Why? What’s wrong with it?” He stares at me, alarmed.
“Oh, Tim. Come on, walkies.”
Tenure review makes defensive second-guessers of us all. And sots, if we are at all that way inclined. When I stand up to take my coat off the hook, I smell alcohol on Tim’s breath, but I stifled every comment I was tempted to make in recent weeks, so I stifle this one, too. I steer him eastward on my cycle path and then left into the forest.
“You cycle along here, in the dark, alone? Are you mad?” For the moment he is distracted from his plight.
“Do you think it’s too dangerous?”
“There are several frat houses along the edge of campus, and I wouldn’t like to imagine you involved in the scenes of debauchery that take place here on drunken summer nights.”
“Oh, you can’t scandalize me with a frat party. I have Sodom directly behind my cottage.” I tell him about the pickers’ camp, and this cheers him up no end.
“You mean they’ve built a camp site, all amenities provided, so that these kids can pick fruit during the day and have weed-filled orgies during the night? That’s not very God-fearing!”
“I know, but apparently they don’t care what a bunch of kids get up to