look across the room at me. Glances were exchanged; lips pursed. I could practically hear their thoughts: Bad luck for her. Wonder if she’ll keep it. Has to be pushing the envelope on the big three-five. And there could be other problems. No need to mention the D word.
Not many issues outranked a low Q score, but trisomies were on the top of the list of lousy outcomes. Down syndrome, in particular.
When the receptionist called my name, a thing happened. My baby, my little-person-to-be who I had already named and loved, already sung to sleep with old lullabies my grandmother had taught me, stirred somewhere deep inside my swollen body. I thought: Screw nature. Nurture counts more. And I knew I had a hell of a lot to give in the nurturing camp.
So I walked out the way I’d come in, eighteen weeks full of baby-to-be, no envelope with a magic number inside it, no fodder for a decision that would end up being more Malcolm’s than my own. I spent two hours that afternoon looking up Google images of prenatal Q reports and forging the one I’d later show my husband. It would say, I decided, 9.3 in large, silver-toned ink. A good number. A fine number. And it was the first time I made the right kind of choice after a series of poor ones.
SIX
I’m halfway down my driveway, fiddling with the Acura’s windshield wiper controls and cursing the defogger that’s been on the fritz for months now, when the yellow bus honks. It’s a different sound than the light but piercing ping of the silver and green buses. This is a sound that shakes you, like when you’re rolling steadily down a highway, humming along to top forty or classic vinyl, and out of nowhere a tractor-trailer driver yanks hard on his cord, blasting its horn at you. Most of the time, I think they do it for no reason at all.
The yellow bus, though, seems to have a reason.
It’s moved one house farther along and isn’t parked in front of the Campbells’ house anymore but in front of the blue and white colonial where Judith Green lives. It honks again.
I’m already late, so I tap in the school secretary’s number and hit send.
“Davenport Silver School,” the secretary chirps. “This is Rita. How can I help you?”
I tell Rita a lie about my car’s battery and ask if she’ll send a substitute to my morning biology class. “They can work on their chromosome mutation essays,” I say, thinking that first-year high school students in my day were still memorizing phases of the Krebs cycle, not working out advanced genetic theory. “I’ll be there as soon as I can get the car jumped.”
“No problem, Dr. Fairchild. Your freshman class is performing way above the benchmarks this semester.” A tapping of keys as she checks numbers; a pause as she seems to be considering the kindest way to remind me of the cost of tardiness. “And your Teacher Q can handle a few tenths of a point. Nasty weather to have car trouble in, though.”
“Yeah,” I say. Then I end the call and wipe fog from the driver-side window with my sleeve as the front door of the Greens’ house inches open. Judith’s mother comes out first, arms wrapped around her body so tightly her hands almost meet at the back of her waist. She’s got a terry-cloth robe on—not nearly enough protection from the rain—and her face moves in small, chipmunk-like motions, like she’s chattering from the cold.
Except it isn’t cold today. Only pissing rain.
Now Judith steps out. She’s dressed in jeans and a windbreaker, not her usual Harvard Crimson uniform with the knife-pleated skirt and vest, ivory blouse freshly pressed. Her mother hands her a flat yellow card, then steps back inside for a few seconds. When she returns to the porch, she’s carrying a single suitcase, which she sets down so she can fold Judith in her arms. The terry-cloth robe sags open and slips off a little, but Sarah Green doesn’t seem to notice.
Then the bus honks again.
I want to put the Acura in gear and race toward it, scream at the driver. Give them five more fucking minutes, will