Red Clocks. Leni Zumas

did the acupuncturist say?”

      “That was a mistake I won’t make twice.”

      “It works for a lot of people, Dad.”

      “It’s goddamn voodoo. Will you be bringing a date to your friends’ dinner?”

      “Nope,” says the biographer, steeling herself for his next sentence, her face stiff with sadness that he can’t help himself.

      “About time you found someone, don’t you think?”

      “I’m fine, Dad.”

      “Well, I worry, kiddo. Don’t like the idea of you being all alone.”

      She could trot out the usual list (“I’ve got friends, neighbors, colleagues, people from meditation group”), but her okayness with being by herself—ordinary, unheroic okayness—does not need to justify itself to her father. The feeling is hers. She can simply feel okay and not explain it, or apologize for it, or concoct arguments against the argument that she doesn’t truly feel content and is deluding herself in self-protection.

      “Well, Dad,” she says, “you’re alone too.”

      Any reference to her mother’s death can be relied on to shut him up.

      There was Usman for six months in college. Victor for a year in Minneapolis. Liaisons now and again. She is not a long-term person. She likes her own company. Nevertheless, before her first insemination, the biographer forced herself to consult online dating sites. She browsed and bared her teeth. She browsed and felt chest-flatteningly depressed. One night she really did try. Picked the least Christian site and started typing.

      What are your three best qualities?

      1 Independence

      2 Punctuality

      3 

      Best book you recently read?

       Proceedings of the “Proteus” Court of Inquiry on the Greely Relief Expedition of 1883

      What fascinates you?

      1 How cold stops water

      2 Patterns ice makes on the fur of a dead sled dog

      3 The fact that Eivør Mínervudottír lost two of her fingers to frostbite

      But the biographer didn’t feel like telling anyone that. Delete, delete, delete. She could say, at least, she had tried. The next day she called for an appointment at a reproductive-medicine clinic in Salem.

      Her therapist thought she was moving fast. “You only recently decided to do this,” he said, “and already you’ve chosen a donor?”

      Oh, therapist, if only you knew how quickly a donor can be chosen! You turn on your computer. You click boxes for race, eye color, education, height. A list appears. You read some profiles. You hit PURCHASE.

      A woman on the Choosing Single Motherhood discussion board wrote, I spent more time dead-heading my roses than picking a donor.

      But, as the biographer explained to her therapist, she did not choose quickly. She pored. She strained. She sat for hours at her kitchen table, staring at profiles. These men had written essays. Named personal strengths. Recalled moments of childhood jubilance and described favorite traits of grandparents. (For one hundred dollars per ejaculation, they were happy to discuss their grandparents.)

      She took notes on dozens and dozens—

      Pros:

      1 Calls himself “avid reader”

      2 “Great cheekbones” (staff)

      3 Enjoys “mental challenges and riddles”

      4 To future child: “I look forward to hearing from you in eighteen years”

      Cons:

      1 Handwriting very bad

      2 Commercial real-estate appraiser

      3 Of own personality: “I’m not too complicated”

      —then narrowed it to two. Donor 5546 was a fitness trainer described by sperm-bank staff as “handsome and captivating.” Donor 3811 was a biology major with well-written essay answers; the affectionate way he described his aunts made the biographer like him; but what if he wasn’t as handsome as the first? Both of their health histories were perfect, or so they claimed. Was the biographer so shallow as to be swayed by handsomeness? But who wants an ugly donor? But 3811 was not necessarily ugly. But was ugly even a problem? What she wanted was good health and a good brain. Donor 5546 claimed to be bursting with health, but she wasn’t sure about his brain.

      So she bought vials of both. She wouldn’t stumble upon 9072, the just-right third, for another couple of months.

      “Do you feel undeserving of a romantic partner?” asked the therapist.

      “No,” said the biographer.

      “Are you pessimistic about finding a partner?”

      “I don’t necessarily want a partner.”

      “Might that attitude be a form of self-protection?”

      “You mean am I deluding myself?”

      “That’s another way to put it.”

      “If I say yes, then I’m not deluded. And if I say no, it’s further evidence of delusion.”

      “We need to end there,” said the therapist.

      The polar explorer liked to stand on the turf roof of the two-room cottage and think of her feet being precisely above the head of her mother, who was stirring or cutting or pounding; and how many inches of grass and soil lay between them; and how she was above, her mother below, reversing the order, flipping the world, with nobody able to tell her it couldn’t be flipped.

      Then she would be called in to help boil the puffin.

       THE MENDER

      Walks home from the library the long way, past the school. The three o’clock bell is big over the harbor, flakes of bronze dropping slow to the water, bell in her mouth, bell in her scabbard. The blue school doors open: boots and scarves and shouts. Part-hid behind a bitter cherry, the mender waits. A string of Aristotle’s lanterns—the spiky teeth of sea urchins—hangs on her neck as protection. Last week she stood here an hour until the last child came out and the doors stopped; but the girl she was waiting for did not appear.

      The mender herself performed quite poorly at Central Coast Regional, which she left, fifteen years ago, without a diploma. Fails to meet minimum standards. Acts deliberately uninterested in what goes on in class. Oh bitches, it was no act. Her brain wasn’t even in the room. In class the mender made sure never to talk except to fled souls or a bulb moon blown down into the stomach of the ocean. Her brain cells thrumming in their helmet went off to the forest road, where lay mole mother torn open by owl, her spent babies like red seeds; or to frondlets of sea lawn dragged into mazes by crabs. Her body stayed in the room, but her brain didn’t.

      They come through the blue doors, little and big, bundled for weather: fishermen’s children, shopkeepers’ children, waitresses’ children. Girls with white cheek paint and black eyelids and crimson lips who are not the girl she is waiting for. The girl she is waiting for doesn’t wear makeup, at least not that the mender can tell. She smells smoke. Her aunt Temple’s brand. Is Temple close? Has Temple come—? Stupid, stupid, they don’t come back. It’s the blond weasel, who teaches at the school. His hair and his teeth go in all directions. She has seen him with his daughter and son on the cliff path, pointing at the water.

      “Looking for someone?” he says.