Matthew walked in, a fresh bruise appearing under his right eye. His shirt was un-tucked and some of the buttons were missing. He looked guilty as anything.
“Where’s Joseph?” I asked
“He’s calming down in another room. Deshi is with him.”
“Did he…?” I’m not sure if I wanted to hear that Joseph had beaten Cal to a bloody pulp or not. Matthew shook his head.
“Rosa, can I talk to you alone, please?” His eyes were creased from sleep; he looked disheveled, like he’d napped sitting in one of those metal chairs. Even if he had slept, it hadn’t helped him. He was a ragdoll version of himself.
I considered his request. After all the lies I’d been told, the secrets that had been kept from me, I didn’t feel like doing it anymore.
“No. If you want to tell me something, or ask me something, just do it.” I watched Orry sitting in Addy’s lap. He faced me and smiled that toothless, gummy smile that was more recognition than happiness. Like my face alone was enough for him. I was so glad he didn’t know what was going on right now. He happily played with Addy’s dried-up fingers, turned her rings around, and tried to suck on her pinky.
“Ok, well, the first thing I need to ask you is what exactly happened? Did Cal… force himself on you?”
I felt my face going red. But I had asked for this to be a public event. “If you mean did he… rape me? Then no. But the rest of this handiwork,” I drew an imaginary circle around myself in the air, “was Cal.”
Everyone seemed to collectively sigh with relief. I didn’t say anything else. Because I knew, without a doubt, that if I hadn’t stopped him, he would have. I also knew like someone knows eerily when they are about to fall or drop something that he would have killed me and maybe Orry too. I let my lids fall, closing out the concerned faces, the way they looked at me, waiting to hear the things I couldn’t say. In the darkness, all I could see was his murderous eyes swirling in front of me. I shivered and Addy instinctively pulled the blanket up further over my shaking body. I clenched my teeth, my mouth closed. I told myself to pull it together. Matthew was looking at me with sad eyes, a nervous tremor running through his fingers as he checked my wounds. I heard Apella gasp as he got me to turn around so he could look at the bruises on my back and was thankful I couldn’t see them. When he’d finished, Matthew sat down in the chair and clasped both hands together like he was praying, or trying to muster up some courage to tell us what was on his mind. I kind of wish he hadn’t said a word.
It would have been easier to hate Cal if I didn’t know the truth. If I didn’t know that he was dying, had lasted longer than he should have, that he wasn’t really himself. All of that. It was information that made me feel something for him and I didn’t want to feel anything. As for Matthew, the way I saw him would be forever changed. Yes, I would much rather not have known.
This obsession with babies, with perpetuating the human race, it’s stupid. Maybe we should have forsaken it. Lived out our lives and let it end there. We would end there. I’m pretty sure the world would have been better off. But then I think of Orry and I can’t breathe. The conflict I feel teases at the seams that hold me together until I am slowly tearing apart, each stitch popping and breaking. Because if we let it end there, he would be alone. We would all be dead and he would be alone.
Maybe that’s why it never ends.
Matthew had been silent for about five minutes, which was about all I could stand.
“What is it?” I asked, watching his hands that were gently clasped to start with, wringing each other out like he was trying to dislocate his fingers.
“I am so sorry, Rosa. This is all my fault.” He looked up at me and the agony on his face showed that he truly believed it. I didn’t.
“How can it possibly be your fault? Unless you forced him to do it, it can’t be.” Matthew was a good man. He couldn’t have done this.
“I didn’t but I may as well have.”
“What?” I didn’t understand, and looking around the room, the rest of them were as clueless as I was.
Matthew looked at the ground and stared at his canvas shoes, lifting his toes up in them, rocking his feet back and forth. “Have you ever noticed that Gus and Cal look very similar?”
I didn’t see what this had to do with anything. “Yes, Cal is Gus’s son; they’re bound to look similar.” Picturing Cal, his features, the ears poking out, the hard, sticky glare, made me cold. Remembering the way his eyes razed the room and darkened the air stunned my body and I twitched, my shoulders shaking violently.
“No,” Matthew said, shaking his head. “Cal is Gus.”
I searched people’s eyes. They looked surprised but less so than myself. Having the science background helped them come to the answer a lot quicker than me. I went through ridiculous possibilities like Gus dressed as Cal, or Cal with a fake beard masquerading as Gus. But I had seen them together. Was there two of them, twins? How was that possible when one was much older than the other? Cal called Gus Dad. I already had a headache but this made it so much worse. I had double vision and was picturing two Cal’s coming at me, laughing hysterically and calling me darling.
Matthew explained it as simply as he could: The Survivor’s had come at their infertility problem from a different angle than the Woodlands. During one of their scavenging hunts, they found a clinic in one of the main cities in China. It was a research lab, filled with partial notes and equipment. It seemed like they were attempting something—some sort of mass-produced army. Matthew thought their work was complete. It was a stupid assumption. Really, they had no idea where in the cloning process they were before the bombing, or how safe it was. But the Survivors decided to risk it. Take the technology and try to make some babies. Ten families volunteered. They made a clone of the mother and the father.
“If that’s true, where are all these kids? There should be twenty young people here—why is there only Cal?” It didn’t make any sense and the words were starting to swish around in my brain like old dishwater. My hands searched out for something that wasn’t there and then grasped a knot of sheet and squeezed it tight in my splintered fingers. Where was Joseph? I needed him here with me.
Matthew’s face was pained. Deshi put a hand on his shoulder. “Let him finish, Rosa.”
Matthew continued talking, “Everything went well, in the beginning…” he said in that hopeless kind of voice, the one where you wish things were different. “But there were holes in the instructions, in their research.” It switched to pleading. “I thought I could do it, come up with the necessary growth hormones on my own, but I was arrogant. Truth is, I was stupid and desperate. I wanted a child of my own and I let that desire lead me.” Now, justification… and this is where he lost me for a while. The scientific terms were whacking me on the head like the lashes I used to receive at school.
“The children grew normally at first and we thought it had been a success,” Matthew continued, his voice high. Everyone was looking at their feet. “I was thrilled… the parents were happy. There were children in the community for the first time in years.”
“I’m guessing it didn’t last,” I said darkly.
“Rosa!” Deshi snapped.
“No, no she’s right. Those hormones, what I created, caused the growth of other things. Tumors.” His hands were so tightly clasped, they were white. “I tried to fight the cancers but they were aggressive. They all died,” Matthew said, his voice cracking at the end. “Cal was my one success. I don’t know what happened. He was tumor free at his last check six months ago.”
I cut him off, “So Cal’s sick. I don’t see what that has to do with my attack. Are you trying to make me feel sorry for him?” The whole story was wearing me down.