The Bride of Catastrophe Read Online Free Page A

perfectly wrought latch and smacked the greenhouse door open with her flat hand. She was sorry it didn’t shatter, the fine old thing with its row of wrought-iron fleur-de-lys along the ridgepole to keep the pigeons away. The emblem of wealth, comfort, and enervation. People would ask: “What does your husband do?” “Why, he raises praying mantises,” she’d have to say. The creatures marched out, turning their cold, curious faces toward their liberator, and streamed away. They’d have baked to death before the Sunday Times ad came out in any case.
    So, his project sputtered as hers was born. With each contraction, she loathed him more violently, until he seemed to be the force that convulsed her, the author of all her pain. And then the storm was past, the room was quiet, there were a few soft clouds in the sky, and in her arms, the baby. Seeing it, red and wrinkled, eyes screwed tight, fist up in futile defense against the light—she was overwhelmed with tenderness, for everyone, even for him. She remembered how badly they’d wanted each other, how their first touches seemed to be sacred. Here I was, whole, like the love that produced me: their new life, their real life, could begin. There had been a rabbit; from now on they would believe in this rabbit together. Exhausted, proud, filled with feeling, she smiled up at her husband, she forgave.
    â€œRetarded, indeed,” she said. “Look at her. She’s brilliant!”
    He recoiled. Yesterday she’d known the baby would be an idiot; now it was brilliant before it opened its eyes. For months she had despised him, and he’d believed she was right: never mind his intent, he had nearly killed them, and this child would shamble beside him for life as the visible proof of his guilt. Now she’d changed her mind, and he was to forget his anguish, dance and sing? To agree would be to consign himself to the fire of her madness.
    â€œDon’t be ridiculous, Claire,” he said, and she, her bubble of hope burst, turned away.
    â€œBrilliant,” she repeated, though what her imagination conjured in my scrunched little face was more than brilliance: some kind of supernatural talent that would prove her own hidden genius and so resolve all her torments, sing her demons to sleep finally, make her whole. She held me closer, she kissed my forehead with that smile of infinite warmth that must certainly have reminded him of the way she had loved him once, showed what he’d be missing from now on.
    *   *   *
    â€œ A HUSK ,” Philippa cried, “the inseminator cast aside! A mother is red in tooth and claw. Praying mantises indeed.”
    I couldn’t help laughing. It was so good to see them as pawns of nature—if this were true, I wouldn’t have to go back and back over their story in my mind, trying to understand what poisoned their love, so I could look for the antidote.
    *   *   *
    THEY BROUGHT me home, stood over me terrified, working up their courage to change the diaper. How did you avoid hurting such a tiny, fragile thing? It needed them every second; Claire would barely fall asleep after a feeding before it woke crying again. Its diaper was dry, it wouldn’t take her nipple, what was wrong? Claire held it—her daughter—tight, rocking her, saying, “It’s all right, it’s all right, your mama’s here,” waiting for maternal grace to take effect, for the baby to relax and sleep. But fretting turned to screaming, until Claire was sobbing too in the fear that she couldn’t give what the child needed, that she was not a natural mother.
    Ted slept through untroubled; she’d have liked to smash his skull. He’d rather have killed her than marry her, now her daughter had been born under an evil star. The baby whirled its arms like propellers, and Claire cried so deeply, she sounded to herself like an animal baying, low and