“We mean to structure our lives according to the Codex’s principles,” Haven said. “To serve mankind as an example, by living an ethical, rational life.”
“It would be hard for me to argue with that, wouldn’t it?” Orson said, giving a tight little laugh. “That would mean disagreeing with myself!”
“We also plan to reestablish the antediluvian fraternal order of Philadelphia on a coral atoll off the coast of Hawaii,” the woman said. “We plan to live out all of our manifold iterations there, synchronously, so that we may finally experience death.”
“Tut, Miss Menügayan!” Haven said smoothly. “Let’s not burden our host with specifics.”
The silence that followed was highly subjective in nature. For Haven it was a tranquil intermezzo; for his colleagues, to judge by appearances, it was a breathless pause; for Ursula it was a span of blank bewilderment; for Orson it was the nightmarish silence of fate.
“How old are you?” he asked abruptly.
Haven smiled and ran a thumb across his downy upper lip. “In this iteration,” he said, “I’ve just turned twenty-six.”
“No offense, son, but you look about twelve.”
“I age at a reduced rate, Mr. Tolliver. I keep my metabolism at a minimum. I also try to keep out of the sun.”
Orson came to his senses and got to his feet. “I’m sorry, kids. What you say is certainly very stimulating, but I can’t join your society at the present time. Now if you’ll pardon—”
“Join us?” Haven said, breaking into a grin. The others were already laughing. “Join us, Mr. Tolliver? There’s no need for that. You’re the spiritual head of our entire movement.”
* * *
Orson stood in a kind of Greco-Roman squat for a while after his callers had left, replaying the conversation in his head; then he drifted back into the parlor and stared into space like a mongoloid, which was still an acceptable term at the start of the seventies. He reached for his meerschaum — he’d started smoking it the year before, as a publication day gift to himself — but set it down as soon as Haven came to mind. Gradually, grudgingly, the image of his personal evangelist withdrew, replaced by the recollection of what his wife had told him in the kitchen.
He glanced across the parlor at Ursula. She was sitting in his father’s old overstuffed chair, her posture characteristically perfect, her face a dappled field of light and shadow. He felt suddenly faint.
“I’m thinking about what you told me,” he said in a circumspect voice. “There’s a trick to understanding it, I’m sure. But right now it’s making me feel kind of funny.”
Ursula sighed. “There’s no trick to it, Orson.”
“There is a trick,” he said. “There’s got to be.” He studied her face. “It doesn’t seem to bother you at all.”
“I think it’s a wonderful thing to have happened.”
He shook his head slowly.
“Look here, Orson. You should have told me if this was a thing you were against — and you ought to have taken precautions. Enzie told me you were in favor of this, and I took her at her word.”
“That’s bullshit. You’ve never taken anybody at their word in your whole life.”
“Softly now, please.” Her English had gone subtly pidgin, the way it often did when she was angry. “Genny and I talked about this via telephone, and I did this with Enzie as well. I can’t believe one of them didn’t say so to you. Or maybe this is something you forgot.”
Orson took hold of the bridge of his nose and pinched it fiercely. “Something I forgot?”
“Every idiot knows how to keep this from happening. You never once used a—”
“Hold it right there, Ursula. What have my sisters got to do with this? Was this something they planned?”
Ursula said nothing for a time. “You must know that I care about you, Orson.”
“Answer the goddamn question.”
“Your sisters have their reasons, always, for the little plans they make. I’m learning this myself. Why do you think they brought me to this place?”
Orson hesitated. “Because of school,” he said finally, though he knew, as he said it, that Enzie had cut all ties with the university years before. “Because of Enzie’s work, I mean. Out of a common interest in science.”
“I thought so, too,” Ursula said softly. “But I’ve revised my understanding.”
Orson said nothing for the time it took his dizziness to pass. She waited patiently for him to speak.
“There’s no escaping this family,” he murmured at last. “I thought that there was — I was sure that there was — the first time I left.” He looked at her. “I’ve learned my lesson now.”
“It’s about time, Mr. Tolliver.” She smiled. “Our due date is November seventeenth.”
XXI
“Good” or “bad” entrances, Kubler writes, are more than matters of position in a sequence. Every birth can be imagined as set into play on two distinct wheels of fortune: one governing the allotment of its temperament, the other ruling its entrance into the sequence. When a specific temperament interlocks with a favorable position, the fortunate individual can extract from the situation a wealth of previously unimagined consequences.
This achievement may be denied to other persons, as well as to the same person at a different time.
Though by no means the religious type, Ursula accepted her pregnancy (after due deliberation) as the will of the powers that be. My father’s take was somewhat more complex. For a long list of reasons, Orson had decided not to have children, not ever, and he was certain — as certain as he could be, without recalling a specific conversation — that Ursula had tacitly agreed. Among his reasons were: Ursula’s unfinished doctorate, global overpopulation, the small but persistent possibility of a thermonuclear strike by the Soviet Union, loss of sleep, crib death, his own questionable suitability for fatherhood, shit-sodden diapers, the educational crisis, the Vietnam War and childbirth-related changes to the morphology of the uterine wall. Ursula’s mother had once told her that time accelerated wildly for a mother once her baby was born; this idea had made her shiver, she’d once confessed to her husband, with a kind of voluptuous horror. Parenthood struck them both, Orson had always assumed, as an investment with a dubious return. What sane person could disagree with that?
* * *
I always find myself skipping the chapters of biographies that deal with the subject’s childhood — the dog bites, the rickets, the portentous aversion to breast milk — so I think I’ll spare posterity the bother. I came as a surprise to my parents, maybe even a shock, but they adjusted to my presence gracefully. I was considered “promising” in the standard sort of way, though I can’t recall why; I was loved, in the standard sort of way, at least by my doting, long-suffering mother. I liked to drink the vinegar in the pickle jar, I remember. I threw a ball like a girl. I made a landscape out of boogers on the wall beside my bed.
Orson loved me too, I believe, by his Orson-ish lights — but there wasn’t anything standard about it. Either he saw me, Mrs. Haven, or he didn’t. This seemed mostly to depend on how his writing was going, but it also had to do with something else: something grand and adult and hard to visualize, like the stock market or virgin birth or barometric pressure. On days when I was visible to him, he’d make up a story in which I was the conquering hero, or try to get me to throw a ball properly (which I hated), or drive me to the movies in his mustard-yellow Buick. On days when he didn’t, he’d walk past me—through me, if I wasn’t careful — as if I were a trick of the light.