I’ve known women who didn’t want children because they’d been the oldest of a large brood; they’d already done the job. And I’ve known a pathetic few who had such a toxic relationship with their own mothers that they wouldn’t risk initiating another mother-child relationship no matter who was going to be the mom. But Merle refused motherhood on principle.

Merle is mad at God. She thinks our species is too flawed to survive. She doesn’t want to participate in a game we’re doomed to lose. She’s brilliant, my Merle, but like any person she tends to repeat the phrases which mean the most to her. I can close my eyes and see her oration: she is standing, green eyes rounded and shining, face emphatic, dark hair moving with her head, right index finger extended at the end of a bent arm angled 45° away from her body, punctuating every other syllable. “Read the Bible,” she commands. “If it’s the book of God, then it’s the journal of a mean, jealous, violent being. Read 1 Samuel 5 and 6, and convince me that any one else is reading the damn book.” Or: “God’s best skill is irony,” she’ll declare. “And face it: irony is just a divine form of sarcasm. We all know sarcasm is the cheapest form of wit. You do the math.” She gets herself so worked up that her body trembles a bit. Her nipples stiffen. Only her orations and cold will do that.

She says motherhood is insidious and overglorified. Pretty much any female can do it. We talked about it the other day. We took a walk along the edge of the headlands and we stopped at the cove overlook, to watch the sea lions. It took us awhile to conclude that the red flag-like material floating in a tide pool was afterbirth. We saw the adult and pup in the pool, but we didn’t recognize the placenta for what it was until they left the pool for their first swim together, mother nose-nudging her child into the waves, and the sea gulls landed to pull the afterbirth like taffy.

“See?” Merle argued after her natural awe subsided. “It’s work more than it is pain. That’s why it’s called ‘labor.’ And don’t let anyone tell you it’s different for people than it is for other animals. They’re delusional. It’s like the folks who maintain that their dogs don’t feel cold, living outside in northern California. Hah! Dogs feel cold; they just don’t complain.” Merle speaks with such authority that my first impulse is to believe her. She was born a woman, so even though she hasn’t had any children, maybe she knows more than I? But I doubt it. I’m very empathetic, and I have a twin sister. I think even in utero I was learning to feel like a woman does. And my sister and I have always understood each other. No: I think Merle may know just because Merle somehow knows. Maybe she’s psychic. Maybe it’s her genius. But she seems to get ideas differently than other people. Her startling statements often turn out to be right. We tend to go with her strong impulses.

That’s why we’re sojourning at Sea Ranch. I thought everything was going well in our little Nevada hide-away. After Oz joined us, we three settled into a comfortable routine, with me as usual maintaining our domestic systems, Merle writing and performing her bits of consulting magic which contributed (at this point unnecessarily) to our income, and Oz recovering from the last five stressful years of his personal and business life. I thought Merle was enjoying the reconnection with Oz; I know they spent hours together composing collaborative poetry.