In the final weeks before the birth, she enjoyed cooking and freezing as much food as possible. This was maybe a typical pregnant woman thing to do: prepare for the days ahead with reheatable casseroles and lasagnas. Louise applied a slightly inappropriate energy to these cooking endeavors. Augie bought a freestanding Sub-Zero freezer for her, and she overwhelmed it with individually wrapped and marked meals. Either a baby or a nuclear winter was coming — in either case, they would not starve. The frenzied cooking of those last few weeks was the most satisfying time of her life so far. It had a twisted optimism. It included a future, which was something she hadn’t seen before. Louise abandoned all thoughts of turning herself in. She had to be who she was for quite a while. She at last had no choice. The baby anchored her, finally, in her world. When she gave birth to Jason, she finally found something she believed time would not ever betray or dwindle. The feeling she had for her son was sentimental, it was frightening, it was unimpeachable. It was self-negating and beyond love. It was an ungentle feeling, this baby love.
Jason was a demanding child. Before him, the most profound feeling she had had was an all-points loneliness. This loneliness was so profound as to be almost abstract: she felt distance from her distance. There was nothing abstract in Jason’s need for her. It was desperate and constant and loud.
Louise had felt — for so long — hopelessly different from everyone else. She realized that her despair came from not being truly known by anyone. She understood the animal need to be recognized, to be familiar to others. Her anonymity was what colored her unhappiness, and it only worsened over time. The fear abated, the paranoia, the nightmares. Even the violence, the act, the failure — all of these faded with time. But her loneliness, the crucial difficulty of her underground life, had grown ever deeper and colder — inescapable.
So was it any surprise that the event that changed her life was Jason? Here was a creature to love and look after in some authentic, permanent way. More than that, he was her obligation. If she turned herself in, who would take care of Jason? Could she abandon him when clearly he required her specific looking after? It was her body that fed him, and her voice that soothed him. Having Jason was either the best thing she ever did or the most selfish. It was certainly the second act in a life that had been entirely circumscribed by her first act, with all the same complications of being both selfless and selfish. Both.
She discovered a whole new set of fears. She watched him breathe at night in his crib. She wondered if his breath would stop as randomly and mysteriously as it seemed to have started. She feared his fragility. She feared losing him. But she recognized these feelings as what any mother felt anywhere. Any one of us could have bad luck. Any one of us could lose a baby. No mother could be truly secure or certain. We could all get sick and die. We could have broken, deformed babies. We couldn’t control how the child was treated by the world. Or the man. This enumeration of fears comforted her. Calmed her. She was no longer a unique being in a unique position. It wasn’t just her — to be a human is to be perpetually insecure, always edging on death, chaos, the uncontrollable. Being a mother made this apparent. And you get this small window where you can give your child a feeling of unconditional security, no matter how much fear you feel. In creating this sanctuary for your child, you feel comforted in your own anxiety.
She now viewed the world in a different context. We all can and will be overwhelmed in the middle of the night by the given. And seeing how it is all so fraught and doomed, why not take the greatest risks? Louise felt a cosmic calm as she held her baby and promised to protect him for as long as she could. Giving birth for her was a revolutionary act. How could she embrace uncertainty more profoundly?
She held Jason under her chin and breathed the scent of his soft hair. To close her eyes and inhale gave her enormous pleasure. It was a kind of bliss that made her thoughtless and tearful.
One day, when he is old enough to take care of himself, I will sit him down and tell him all about my life. I will turn myself in and do my time. He will understand.
Occasionally, over the years, she would ask herself, Does he still need me? Is it time yet? And it wasn’t simple, because he would always need her.
When August had his accident, she saw the effect it had on her son. In the eight years following August’s death, Jason rarely mentioned his father. He never once asked any questions about his death. It was as if August had never existed. More than ever this made her believe it was not yet time for her to act.
Louise observed her son these days, and he was his own person. Just not an adult. Some near-adult. Jason was soft and doughy. He hardly looked at her anymore. At dinner, he read. The rest of the time he was in his room. If she spoke to him, he displayed such weary indifference. If she touched his shoulder, he flinched. Occasionally, she caught him smiling with her. Other times he stared at her with intense scrutiny. She didn’t mind when he said sharp, even cutting things to her. She was instead pleased that he had wit and intelligence. But most times it was clear he regarded her as a source of annoyance, if not embarrassment.
Even so, she couldn’t turn herself in yet. Not only could she not tell him yet (soon, maybe) but there was at long last another compelling reason to stay out of jail. She would miss Jason unstoppingly.
PART EIGHT. 2000
Ergonomica
“OUR VISION is a totally intentional community designed by Allegecom for franchising and profit. We will build on what was learned in our first community: green and self-sustaining, but not too. No gray water or too much trouble. Nothing primitive. Green for what is seen. Feel-good relief. Diverse, but not too. Different kinds of people but all with the same desires and goals — to be deliberately there. A gated community, naturally. Communal, but not really. No elimination of private property, for God’s sake. No shared lawn mowers or water heaters.
“What I am saying is we have the opportunity to make money on certain back-to-the-earth desires, for alternatives to suburbia. People who are alienated by malls and material bombardment. We can give them what they desire. We can take that spirit and exploit it for a franchisable experience if we truly understand it. People want a nostalgic, knowingly referenced community experience. But they don’t really want anything truly alternative. They don’t want a wife-sharing, Manson-esque, un-American, no-property communalism.
“We have chosen a site five hours north of New York City. Technology allows a postsuburban environment. Let’s call it a radiant posturbia. We don’t need proximity to cities. We are wired. The land we are looking at is near New Harmon, New York. One of those deserted, dying places that will grant us huge tax incentives if we build there. It is rural and beautiful but totally depressed and cheap. Moreover, it has a history of alternative community. In the nineteenth century it had a community of Christian socialists. In the early ’70s it was a women-only commune. Now it will continue its history as alternative to the city, to crime, to pollution.
“A commune and a corporate community are not all that different. A corporation is merely a commune with different values. But like a commune, everything is organized around a collusion of interests. It creates an inside and an outside. And let’s not forget, all communities are exclusive. By definition you exclude all that is outside the community. A corporation has rights and privileges that are distinct from its individual owners’, just as a commune has collective interests that supersede each individual’s interests. Both allow groups of people to act in concert but without consequence.