"Don't be afraid for me, not yet.
Steer your own fate. It's a long way."

"Antigone," Translation by R.E. Braun. Lines 103-104. Used without permission.
 

FROHIKE:

This poor child. And she seems so mature in many ways, to the casual observer, but she's still very much a child.

"Things aren't too good for you." Seems trite and understated as soon as I see it.

Miranda shrugs. "Yeah, that's one way to put it. It's like, I used to really like going to school. I had bunches of friends, guys liked me, I got invited to parties and things, and now, I'm like, I'm total scum. I don't get it. I mean, even people who didn't like me much, they never used to give me shit. And now, I'm like, it's not even like picking on."

No, I'd say what she's been through is way beyond the normal hassling that is an inevitable part of the high school experience in America.

"Even my teachers, they used to like me. Now like all the good ones are gone. They got a bunch of new ones this year. I never get called on, and I haven't even gotten to debate yet!"

I'm mystified. This pretty, witty child, finding her life turned on its head 180 degrees-and not having a clue as to why. She's as baffled as I am.

And taking solace in alcohol.

"I could understand why you'd feel like drinking," I tell her softly.

"Hey, works for my mom. She has a bad day, she hits the tequila."

"She's trying hard to keep that down, dear. You know that, don't you?"

"Yeah, I know. I mean, I know she's not drinking so much these days, but it's like, well, you know, when she took some time off work, I figured, this was gonna be great, she wouldn't be so busy all the time. But you know what? It's worse. She's always like taking Jo to chemo-I mean, I know she has to do that-or she's doing something with Patrick, or she's working for Dana, and Langly's never here-"

"I don't think this is exactly as she would like it." Of that I'm sure. Particularly today.

"Yeah, well, she could do something about that, you know."

"I think it's been hard for her to do that."

"She has choices. I don't."

"She has fewer of them than you might think." Children don't seem to realize that adults really have less mobility to exercise their will than it would appear.

"She doesn't care about me."

"Miranda, dear, you know that's not true." I know it's not.

"Well, she's got a mighty weird way of showing it. It's like, first she was gonna have a baby, and then she lost the baby-and I know you probably think I'm a bitch, but in a way, I think I'm glad it didn't happen. It was like, okay, I felt bad about it. I shouldn't have been so mean to my mom. And afterwards, I tried to be real nice to her, and I thought we could do things again, but then Patrick comes and he like gets all the attention-"

"I thought you two got along."

"We do. I don't hate him. It's not his fault. But he's little and my mom pays more attention to him than me, and I'm tired of it."

She's angry, yes, but even more than angry, she's hurt. And confused.

All the while I'm thinking: I do such a terrible job with my own child, what the hell am I doing here?

All I can do is give her a listening ear. And some hard-won advice, which I hope to God she'll take.

"I hate this," she says, wiping a hand across her eyes. This little toughie does not like to show tears. Any kind of demonstration of weakness is an affront to her. "I hate the way things are right now. And it's like, I know why, well, I get these-I know, you probably think I'm insane-"

"No, I don't."

"I get these dreams. I get things I see. Like visions. No, not like that! I don't have little voices in my head telling me what to do!"

"No, it makes sense." I'm grateful, however, that Genie alerted me to this possibility.

"Well, they don't make sense to me right now."

"Why is that?"

"Because this is happening because of who I am. And what I am. And that can't be. Nobody'd ever put up with that again."

"Meaning?"

"Frohike, what's wrong with that I'm Jewish? I keep getting that! And it doesn't make sense. My high school's a quarter Jewish, and it's like we used to all not separate along those lines!"

"And what's happening now?"

"It's like, you can hassle a Jewish kid, nobody will do anything about it. I wasn't even supposed to run for student gov pres, but I was gonna be damned if anybody told ME what I was and wasn't going to do!"

Well, one thing you can say for Miranda: she never loses her nerve. Well, almost never. She seems to have lost a little of it now.

We have to get that fighting spirit back. That's what carries this girl. To meet little Miranda, you would think she is the most quintessential of teenagers-loves fashion, music, parties, friends. But you get to know her-and that's not an easy task, since she is not particularly self-revealing-and you find heavy reserves of moral courage, righteous indignation, and a general attitude of no surrender.

"It doesn't make sense. I mean, high school, let's face it, it kind of sucks. Like the jocks have always ruled-"

"Always, dear, always. That much has never changed."

"And then you have all the other cliques, and it's like I used to have friends in all the cliques, I had Goth friends and jock friends and skater friends, everywhere. I'm not going to have anybody tell me where I have to eat lunch."

"And people are hassling you about it."

"No kidding! It's like, we always had the born agains, they had their own clique, like a couple of them, but now, it's like they can run around and tell everyone what to do and where to sit and how to act, and this is bullshit. And when you don't bow down to them, they do things like they did to me."

"That's always a scary thing." High school, the ultimate conformist society.

"Like we have these guys, they're like these Christian athlete self-righteous bastard types, and they see kids smoking or something, they'll beat the crap out of you."

Straight Edgers. I shudder. In high school.

"I've gotten notes like someone's gonna teach me a lesson." She looks downright terrified now. "I am like so scared, every day, to just get up and go to school, and nobody around here has any time for me, just to help me out. I mean, I'm just a kid!"

Yes, in fact, she is just a kid. Precocious, sharp-tongued, insightful, but still only a child.

"Like some people I know, this one guy Ben, he like goes to their Bible study and says that he's born again just so people won't beat him up. He and I talked and I know he's not really into it, but it's like that's what's happening, and I'm not doing it."

I applaud her...but I also actually fear for her safety here.

She gives a rueful little smile. "For the first time in my life, I think there might be something to home schooling. My mom could teach me. If she'd take the time."

"Miranda, I'll tell you what." This flows out of my mouth before I even think. "Tomorrow night. You and your mother. You both go out, just the two of you. Alone. Martha and I will come over, and we'll look after Patrick and Langly. And that way, you two can be alone and you can talk. With no distractions, with no Patrick clamoring for attention-"

"Which he always does."

"Well, honey, he's four, and he's a lot like Langly."

"Pretty scary, huh?" But she grins a little on that one. Her first real smile of the night. "I mean, I like Patrick. He's really sweet, and he loves me and thinks I'm great and all, but he's just such a brat sometimes."

"That he is."

She looks wide-eyed and surprised. "You mean I'm not the only one that's noticed?" She laughs.

"No, dear, he's a handful."

"And Langly, I mean, we get on each other's cases, well, we used to, but he's like never here anymore. Mom says he's got Darth Vader for a boss, and I understand that-"

"No, dear, I'm not sure you do. You do know what Langly does, don't you?"

"Something with cryptography. That's what Mom says."

"Well, that's true. But you do know where he works, don't you?"

"Yeah, at the Pent. Right?"

Oh hell. They never told her.

"Things are...he's very, very busy right now." This sounds just so lame, I could kick myself, but if Langly and Allison don't want to reveal where he is during the day, they might have their reasons.

Probably the wrong ones. But they might not be happy if I provide her with information they are trying to withhold from her.

They shouldn't do that. This child has a way of finding things out...and I've seen her when all is revealed to her. It's not a pretty picture.

"Miranda, tomorrow night. You go out with your mother. You both need it. I think she needs it as much as you do." And I do.

She looks at me a bit skeptically. "You'd do that for me?"

"Now, how could I deny the best wedding planning partner in the world something so small?"

She leans over and kisses me on the cheek. "Thanks, Frohike." She takes a deep breath, and collects herself. "Now, can we work on my trig?"

"With pleasure, dear."

Finally, problems I know how to solve.
 

It takes her a while, and we're engrossed in solving some problems involved when I hear a loud rap on the door. It's a familiar one-I recognize my son's lack of subtlety.

"Martha says you're down here. Oh, hi Miranda."

"Hi. Your dad's helping me with my homework. We're just about done."

"How're you?" He looks totally whipped. Deep indigo rings are visible under his eyes, and the skin is chalky.

He shrugs. "Okay."

"And you exam?"

"Went fine. I think. Anyway, just came to tell you, not gonna be home tonight." He shuts the door.

I'm about to open my mouth to protest-he's almost as sick as she is. He needs to get home and rest. He's not going to get much this way.

Miranda gives me a clear, steady gaze. No words, but something in her expression just says, let it go.

We return to a universe where I can deal with the questions at hand.
 

BYERS:

So far, all is quiet tonight. No errant bullets flying at our windows. The glass people are finishing installing the last of the bulletproof glass throughout the house. We have a pane of stained glass which I love over the hallway, and I had to negotiate heavily to keep that; we settled for installing one pane over it. I'm sorry, but I have a loft there where I work, and watching the sun come through that glass, I'm not going to sacrifice that small privilege.

This is one of those times I'm grateful to have a trust fund. If I had to pay for this out of my salary, I'd have to find a second job-and a third and fourth, most likely. This sort of thing does not come cheap.

And I have homework.

Juliet seems intent on the idea that our child will be born at home. I'm very uneasy with this, but I agreed that I would research the material and formulate any arguments I might have based on the information available, as opposed to my own biases.

So John Fitzgerald Byers, him being me, is cruising the World Wide Web for information on midwifery and home birth. This is not my usual form of research.

And I'm surprised and encouraged by what I am finding. For someone who researches health care delivery systems-admittedly, childbirth is not an area I've previously focused on, but now I have a vested interest-I'm shockingly ignorant in this area.

Being quantitative in orientation, I go for the statistics and raw numbers first. If the research was designed properly, and the results are lawful, then perhaps this is a viable plan. According to my analysis and doing my own quick tabling, only 6 percent of certified nurse-midwives have been sued in their professional lifetimes, versus 60 percent of obstetricians. Positive outcomes with no complications range around 93 percent, versus 70 percent of hospital births in a population similar to women in Juliet's demographic. CNM's apparently choose their clientele carefully-if they feel there is significant risk in the situation, they will not accept a client.
And the ones that have websites all appear to have sufficient medical back up readily available to them.

The orientation appears to be on birth as a natural, normal life event, as opposed to one based on the disease model, and when you read it that way, it does make sense.

Natural and normal for whom? This doesn't feel natural and normal for me.

Then again, I'm not the one doing the carriage and delivery. Of course, if Juliet goes this route, then I will very much be part of the process.

Childbirth classes. I wince. Of course, regardless of where she decided to deliver, I don't think I have a way of getting out of this one. And ultimately, I probably don't want to. There's just something about it that's so...

UnWASPlike.

I laugh in spite of myself. I am such a WASP. Whatever experiences I have had, whatever knowledge I possess, I'm still something of a slave to my genetic and social legacy.

Juliet is working at her computer, which is on the other side of the loft. "John? Have you come up with anything yet?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"Well..."

"What's your argument here?" She continues to click the mouse as she speaks.

What is my argument here?

"Um...well...that I'm a wimp?"

She bursts into her rich, musical Juliet-laugh. "Try again."

"That I'm really uncomfortable about it?"

She continues to laugh. "Keep going."

"That...that...all right, we'll do some interviews."

I'm rewarded with that luminescent smile. "Thank you."

Oh God. What have I gotten myself talked into?
 

I return to the world of my own research, a world where I am at ease. Used to be at ease, anyway. I'm not uncomfortable with the protocols.

What I am upset with is what I'm seeing in those protocols.

One of the trends of the early millenium is unionization of physicians. This has been occurring more and more. In 1999, 6 percent of all physicians were unionized. It's now something like 24 percent, a 400 percent increase. Still not a majority, but nonetheless a force to be reckoned with.

And the current administration definitely takes a union-busting attitude, and has applied political pressure to more than a few labor organizations. This is making the PATCO strike of 1981 look like a day in the sandbox.

I myself am somewhat on the fence where labor unions are concerned. Obviously, I'm from a family that has it in their interest to be nonsupportive. Yet I also know from historical readings that unionization only becomes a possibility when working conditions have deteriorated to a point that the entire work environment is nonfunctional.

And more and more occupational groups are clamoring to unionize, and more and more strong armed tactics are being employed to keep this trend in check.

This, of course, is not in the newspapers or electronic media available to the public. To listen to the news, you'd think we were on our way to building utopia. All at a time when things have never been more dystopic.

Is this the sort of world we have chosen to bring our child into?

No, definitely not.

But did we get a choice of the sort of world we have?

Yes, and no. I think more no than yes.

On the other hand, I think I understand now part of the desire to pass one's genes along. There is the desire for immortality, of course. But something else plays as well.

I think it's because every time a child is born, there's new hope being born with that child. Granted, they will not all live up to that promise. But there's always the chance, and we crave that chance, with a vengeance.

Because while we breathe, we hope.
 

I'm in the process of reducing my paper to where I can publish it in TMB. Even with ruthless butchering, it's still far too long. I may not talk a great deal in conversation, but give me a computer, and I'll go on forever. When I was a student, I'd get assignments to do 15 to 20 page papers. For me, the hard part was getting it down to that size, as opposed to having enough to fill it up.

And I've always wondered about that, because the fact is, I'm only one human being, and I've never considered myself having all that much to say.

But I will publish this study. I may not be able to do it via normal academic channels, but that's the beauty of having your own publication and being one of the editors. You get to decide what's fit to print.

And unlike the rest of the media, we don't insult our readers' intelligence. The average TMB reader is college educated, many of them with advanced degrees. Granted, advanced degrees do not make you intelligent-I can certainly prove that by my own existence. But there are many thoughtful, literate individuals out there who want to hear what we have to say. We don't do sound bites. We do careful data collection and analysis, something that's lacking in almost any publication or broadcast you'll come across in this day and age.

And we're discreet. We don't advertise. You have to get on certain web sites in order to even learn of our existence. Granted, those web sites are a bit diverse-you can reach us via MENSA, and also, if you know where to look, the Cartoon Network web site.

And you can tell how things are going by the subscription numbers. When things are going well, our numbers tend to be flat.

Right now, we have a record number of new subscribers, and very little in the way of drop off of older ones. Good for us in a sense, but a bad trend nonetheless. I almost feel as though we might be profiting from others' misery, and sometimes this makes me feel rather dirty.

We do, however, need some new office equipment...
 

MARTHA:

Liquor never tasted so good, and its effects have never been so welcome. Good thing, too-Ally makes these things to land you on your ass. She's tiny. How she's still walking and talking and seemingly unaffected, save for a few extra giggles, is beyond me.

And talking to her provides me with some welcome insights, both into the woman and the world in which we have entered. I normally find her reserved in the extreme, but she only needs a little bit of tequila to talk more freely. She still isn't garrulous, but she does say more tonight.

The overall impression I get is that she feels as though she fell down a rabbit hole three years ago, and she's still trying to make sense of the experience.

Aren't we all?

We talk a little about our deceased husbands. I get the impression she really doesn't talk about this much.

She, too, regards his death as suspicious-shorter, more violent in a sense than Daniel's perhaps, but equally suspect. She's not sure if it's because it's her way of explaining it to herself or if her husband has just rubbed off too hard on her.

I don't know about her case, but in mine, I suspect it strongly-and that was before I ever got into this crowd.

Most of my impressions of her have been accurate-her primary focus is her husband and children, and she's fiercely protective of them. She's vicious in her assessment of Langly's boss, although she punctuates her comments with huge gales of giggles at imagining ways of torturing the boss, and in spite of her apparent meekness, I would not want to be the person to cross her on matters regarding her loved ones. Her distrust of people outside her familiars is almost xenophobic, the most I've noticed even in this group. She expresses that she's working a small amount, and in a sense misses her old routine.

"Girl, you're not missing anything," I assure her. Except a whole lot of misery.

"So everyone tells me," she looks unconvinced. "Know what I miss?"

"No."

"The paycheck."

From what Mel has told me, she can live nicely without the paycheck. I'm envious.

"In my family, having your own paycheck was sort of your license to be human. I'm not having an easy time with this."

I think money has a great deal more symbolism to her than to me. For me, money has always been simple survival. Nothing more. I don't connect it with power, with agency, with self-worth. Then again, growing up in the military and then marrying into it, there was never any extra floating around, particularly after Daniel became ill. I'd been in the deficit column for so long I'd forgotten what black ink looked like.

Thank you, James Arthur Byers. I'll never be rich, but I have one less worry now when I lie down at night.

And it occurs to me: I am rich. Not in the cash sense, but being with Mel, I feel like the most loved and cared for woman on the planet.

He's back from the dungeon. He says nothing, simply nods his head slightly, and I excuse myself.
 

He's quiet on the way back to the apartment for a time.

"Michael is staying with Kelly tonight."

Oh ho. Spoken matter of fact, no ranting, no raving. Of course, the child is sick, and one does make allowances, but I take progress any way I can get it.

And privacy.

We're barely in the door when clothes begin to be shed. I'm out of my scrubs in nearly record time, thanks to the assistance of Mel's capable hands.

Did I mention that tequila makes me really horny? And I had three drinks.

This man is in trouble. I hope his heart can take it.
 

Lovemaking tonight is furious in its intensity. We're still not exactly the fastest guns in the east, but there's an urgency about it that we both feel as it throws us over the precipice of passion. I cannot believe that this is me, Martha Williams Small, the same girl who when first making love with Daniel somewhere back about a thousand years ago, insisted that the lights be off when she got undressed and into bed.

I got better over time, but I have never felt the sense of abandonment I do with this man. Which is very strange. Abandon is hardly one of the words to describe him in his every day life-he is generally restrained and reserved.

Fortunately for me, he gives that up when we make contact. And I feel so safe and comfortable in being with him. There is a protectiveness about him which is positively delicious.

Daniel was always loving, caring, and passionate in his own way, but I was very much on my own for much of my married life.

This is different.

Our scars, our imperfections, they're all on display, and they're not simply tolerated, they're cherished. Battle scars from living our lives, and now we can share them with one another.

Our hearts are beating so fast now that I worry slightly about Mel, but that worry dissolves into air when he pulls me in to kiss me, again, hard, warm, moist.

He looks ecstatic...and when he's in this state, he has the face of an angel. There's so much sweetness there, just so much tenderness, those eyes holding more emotion than I ever imagined possible.

"Martha," my name comes out softly, almost like a mantra, from his mouth. I know this call well now. It means that he wants to join now.

And believe me, he's ready. And I'm happily ready to oblige him.

We always stay still for a few moments when we're first as one. I like feeling him just being there, just being the same body with him, and he seems to feel the same.

I'm on top of him tonight. I can watch his every expression, see him give way to ecstasy.

Finally, we have to run with it. I can feel a few soft thrusts begin, which give way to stronger ones, and finally, release. I feel his wetness and heat melt inside of me.

And this is a man who appreciates the afterglow. We always lie there, just soaking in the scent of one another, soft kisses exchanged, arms gently clasping the other.

As I drift off to sleep, I have one thought.

We need to get Michael out of the house more often.

END OF PART 72