Sputterpub's Blog

The day of the party dawned gorgeous. In fact, everything went perfectly until Anne saw the baby. Melissa hadn’t allowed anyone to meet Suzanne before the reception, and then she introduced her child by placing the bundle in her best friend’s arms and asking Lindy to say some words over her little goddaughter.

“Oh, but you’re a lovely one,” Lindy murmured at the tiny face. “May you be as good as you are beautiful.” She passed the baby to Melissa’s other close friend. “I pray that you’ll always love yourself as much as we all love you now,” Sarah breathed over Suzanne. “You are born under the sign of Aries, on the cusp of the Bull,” began Elizabeth as she took the bundle from Sarah. “Your rising sign is Scorpio and your moon is Aquarius. You are destined for great deeds and interesting passions.” Valerie next held the baby. “I did a reading on the day of your birth, and I dealt the cards again this morning. I see wealth in your future, and more than one great love.” She handed the infant to a puzzled-looking Anne.

“Hello, Sweetheart,” Anne crooned to the baby. She glanced up at Melissa, over to Keith, back to Melissa. “I’m so surprised at her coloring; was she tested for PKU?” The parents gave her blank looks. “Keith, you must have followed them to the nursery; did they do any tests on her diaper?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, I don’t know about a diaper test, but they were pretty concerned about the lack of testing during the pregnancy. I know they took blood from Suzanne, and they told us some of the test results will take another week.” Melissa moved closer to her husband while he spoke; she followed his words with, “What tests, Keith?” and then a shriller: “Annie, what are you talking about?”

“You know me and my medical studies; a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and I may not get it myself.” Melissa’s distress was extreme enough for Anne to begin temporizing. But she added, “PKU is Phenylketonuria, and it’s an inherited inability to metabolize an amino acid of a similarly unpronounceable name. I learned about it not long ago, and saw my first cases in the last year. There’s a simple chemical indicator that can be used on a wet diaper; in fact, I think I have a few of the test swabs with me. Let’s go into your bedroom; I left my bag there. It feels like Suzanne could use a diaper change anyway.”

Keith and Melissa went with her of course.  They watched Anne touch a Q-tip to their baby’s used diaper and they saw the swab turn as bright a green as Suzanne’s outfit. “This isn’t what I wanted to see,” Anne reported. “It indicates elevated levels of phenylalanine in Suzanne’s urine and if I’m remembering correctly, that means she has about a two-thirds chance of PKU.”

“But if it’s this easy to find, how come the hospital…?” Melissa began, and Anne spoke over the end of her question with “If you’d gone in regularly during pregnancy, the doctor would have had a better idea about what was going on, and probably would have done the simple test. As it was, they needed so much information about this baby that they took blood and sent it out for much fuller results. I’m sure you’ll hear from them soon.”

“But in the meantime,” started Keith, and Anne added, “nothing has to happen today. The first behavioral signs don’t appear until the child is at least four months old.”

“How did you…oh, I don’t know what to ask first,” Keith was shaking his head as he backed up to the bed and sat weakly.

“I’m sorry, you guys. I’m not going about this well. Let’s all sit down.” She waited for Melissa to finish changing Suzanne and to take a seat with her daughter in her arms. “The retention of phenylalanine in the patient’s body tissues inhibits the metabolism of an enzyme called tyrosine, and that leads specifically to a decrease in the formation of melanin. Most phenylketonurics are fair-skinned and have blue eyes regardless of their parents’ coloring. That’s what put PKU in my mind.

“If I’m remembering correctly, PKU is based on a recessive gene. You both must carry it. Any baby of yours would have a 25% chance of having PKU and a 50% chance of being an unaffected carrier like you two.”

Melissa began, “If I’d only…”

“No, Melissa. Don’t even start that. You need much more information that I can give, but this isn’t a terminal diagnosis. Suzanne can be fine. If you do nothing, she’s at high risk for central nervous system problems: retardation, epileptic seizures, abnormal brain wave patterns. But I think this can be controlled by diet; it won’t be an easy life, but I think if she avoids meats, all dairy, high proteins in general… Let me introduce you to your vegan daughter! I think there’s some special drink for people with PKU…Wait. You must have a diet soda around. Bring me a can.” Keith fetched a Fresca and Anne examined it. “Here,” she pointed. Sideways and next to the Nutrition Facts was the phrase PHENYLKETONURICS: CONTAINS PHENYLALANINE. “You’ll find those words on a lot of beverages.”

Anne didn’t have any more information to give them then. She forgot the esoterica about the isolation of phenylalanine from lupine seeds in 1881, but Melissa wouldn’t have been interested in that anyway. In fact, Melissa was only interested in protecting Suzanne. She was determined that her baby would never even see a diet soda. She was prepared to extend the ban to any other substances of danger to her daughter.

Keith’s thoughts went to business. He immediately began to envision the PKU-designed beverages he would produce. After that, he considered Melissa’s proposed ban; he couldn’t see that lasting if he wanted to make a fortune in the field. Then again, he couldn’t see going against his determined, emotional wife.

The party paled. Guests left the new family to their privacy as soon as they could, expressing ignorant sympathy and amorphous offers of help as they went out the door. Lindy and Sarah and Elizabeth and Valerie went with the rest. Even Anne departed. The parental debate began.

The procedure took place at the reproductive clinic. Melissa had continued with her thermometer and medication; they pinpointed her ovulation to occur that day. They had thought Keith would be on the table next to hers. But he had to make his contribution before they even started on Melissa. Then eggs were taken from her, to spend time in a petri dish. The resulting mixture was reimplanted in Melissa, and she was released within hours. They were warned that the procedure often failed the first time.

Melissa prepared herself for her next period. The expected day came, and she felt pre-menstrual, but nothing flowed. By the time she was three days late, her breasts were as tender as a twelve-year-old’s. She started to get excited. She also started to get superstitious.

Her astrologer had predicted that she’d conceive, and had warned her that medical intervention should be avoided after the conception. Her Tarot reader had a less severe recommendation; she cautioned against permitting any uterine intrusion, but saw nothing wrong with other medical vigilances. Her closest friends thought amniocentesis could be dangerous to the baby. Anne was alone in advising prenatal tests, and Anne was disregarded. Melissa refused amniocentesis, avoided blood tests, and ducked several examinations. She watched her diet, eliminated alcohol and coffee, walked daily, and she tried to keep the doctors out of her pregnancy.

Keith couldn’t prevail on her to go for any tests. As far as he was concerned, Melissa’s hormones were rocketing out of control, and every attempt to reason with her only made her more adamant. He worried about multiple births. He thought daily about risks. He had to console himself with the fact that Melissa seemed flushed with health, her belly looked the right size, and the baby’s activity seemed normal. He distracted himself with business. He was careful to compliment Melissa on her maternity wardrobe. She was completely unreceptive to sex or even romance during the pregnancy; he could only please her by noticing her clothes and by not interfering with her anti-examination decisions.

Their daughter was born 268 days after the IVF procedure. Labor and delivery were both relatively straightforward, and Melissa was exhausted and ecstatic when her nine pound baby girl was placed in her arms. Keith felt racked by powerful protective feelings; a surge of masculine mastery mixed with weak-kneed love in him for mother and daughter.

The baby was beautiful, but her coloring was a surprise. Keith and Melissa both came from dark-haired stock; they’d chosen the name Melanie for a girl because they liked the sound and they knew it meant “black.” They marveled at their blonde, blue-eyed daughter. “Who’d have thought we both carried recessive genes?” Keith wondered. “I think one of my mother’s brothers was blonde when he had hair,” Melissa replied, and then added, “I can get into it.  I can dress her in all the colors I could never wear.” The nurses reminded them that most white babies are born blue-eyed. They added that many babies lose their birth hair and grow a new crop in a different color. But Keith and Melissa knew they had a blonde and figured they’d better come up with another name. They agreed on Suzanne.

The new family left the hospital two days after the birth. The nurses took blood from the baby before releasing her, but all preliminary test results were good. Keith and Melissa decided to welcome their daughter home with a small reception.

“Let’s give her twelve godparents,” Melissa suggested. “She’s too special for just one. I’m sure I have a friend for each sign. Then Suzanne will be protected throughout the year.”

“Whoa, Mom,” Keith rebutted. “I know you have a lot of odd friends from your artsy industry, but that plan is too far out. How about just your four advisors?” He paused at Melissa’s frown and then added, “That way, she can have one godmother for each season of the year.” Melissa liked that reasoning and they issued invitations.

Their caterer arranged the food, but Melissa supervised décor and wardrobes. She avoided the traditional baby pastels in favor of black, white and spots of pure primary colors. She dressed Suzanne is bright green, which showed off the baby’s surprising coloring, and she clad her recovering body in basic black. It wasn’t until the day before the party, as Melissa was reviewing the RSVPs and the seating arrangements, that she realized they hadn’t invited Anne.

“What were we thinking about when we talked four advisors?” she blurted stridently. “How could we have forgotten Anne?”

Keith suggested that their omission was natural. “After all,” he reasoned, “she stopped being ‘an advisor’ once you stopped listening to her. You refused her counsel after conception…” Keith’s voice faded as he saw the unreceptive expression on his wife’s face. He tried: “Anyway, it’s not too late to invite her.”

“But she’ll change our symbolism! Remember that we settled on four godmothers for the four seasons? Well, that’s wrecked when we add a fifth.” She started to walk out of the room in frustration, and whipped around at the doorway to add, “It’s like we’ve changed the shape of things into a pentagram, and that’s a symbol for black magic!”

There was no reasoning with her then. In a few hours, she came to her own conclusion: Anne must be invited and must be treated with the same honor as the other four. But Melissa was less excited about the reception from that moment forward.

Once upon a time a captain of industry met a queen of fashion. This was in the early post-industrial age, in north central California, in the county of Marin. The captain, a bit of a pirate named Keith, was actually an attorney by education but a businessman by instinct. He made his fortune developing and distributing the beverage idea of a bankrupt client. The idea was iced tea brewed from various flowers and tastefully spiked with vitamins; the client had paid Keith’s invoice with the transfer of recipes, and Keith’s marketing acumen had taken it from there.

Keith was forty-eight and never-married when he met Melissa at a gathering in Tiburon. She was forty-two and recently delivered from her second childless union. Their realtor Paul introduced them; they stood facing each other in Paul’s showcase living room, where they were expected to begin admiring Paul’s lover’s artwork, with an eye toward purchase. Instead they admired each other. Keith was tall, fit, with good teeth, brown eyes, and a full head of dark hair. Melissa looked Greek or Italian: olive-skinned with almost black hair, thick and wavy, dark eyes, a solid but graceful figure. She dressed well – she was a fashion consultant/personal shopper after all – and she silently approved of Keith’s cashmere and denim.

They were married within three months. Friends counseled each of them to wait, he to protect his assets and she to consider her earlier attempts at marriage. “What’s the rush?” each was asked, and “If the relationship is worth pursuing, then it can stand a little test of time,” each was advised. But the fact was, the couple wanted to start a family, and they heard their biological clocks loudly ticking.

The wedding was as magnificent as two hundred thousand dollars. They pitched the party in Sausalito and had almost five hundred guests. Melissa looked exquisite in antique lace and seed pearls. Keith was imposing in cream angora. The guests moved to three different bands and the fountains flowed with good champagne. Even though the party went long and well, the couple had the energy to consummate their union on their wedding night. That was the advantage to such a short acquaintance before marriage; they’d by no means burned out yet. “Rrrr,” Keith rumbled as he climbed on Melissa that night. “I can’t seem to get enough of you.” And “Mmmm” she murmured as she curled around him the next morning: “time to get up.”

Melissa was disappointed when her period started two weeks after the wedding, but she didn’t get concerned until two cycles later. At first, she figured they were making love so often that Keith wasn’t getting the time to build up a good sperm count. But after a month of marital bliss, the couple’s activity decreased. They weren’t intimate every night. That ought to be enough of a break for Keith, Melissa reasoned. So she consulted her gynecologist.

For the next half year, Melissa took her temperature each morning before she got out of bed, charted her ovulatory pattern, and made sure they did it when she was likely to be fertile. To say the act lacked spontaneity is a bald understatement, especially when Melissa spent her post-coital minutes with her feet up against the wall, maintaining her pelvis in the position most encouraging to the little swimmers. Keith and Melissa tried to have a good attitude about their efforts, but each missed the good old few months of their courtship.

Melissa became more depressed with each period. She saw her doctor again, who prescribed an ovulation enhancer and ordered tests for each of them, but she also consulted an astrologer, a Tarot interpreter, her two closest friends, and a bisexual midwife acquaintance named Anne. Keith directed his attention to business; he was in the process of taking TechTonics from a West Coast concern to a national venture.

The medical test results were discouraging. It turned out that Melissa’s uterus was positioned at a difficult angle for conception. In addition, she was peri-menopausal and not ovulating regularly.  Keith had a subnormal sperm count coupled with low motility. It was unlikely they’d conceive without intervention.

“Women over forty shouldn’t try to have babies,” Dr. Winterscheidt commented to his wife that night, after he’d given the news to Melissa and Keith. “I know that’s a weird thing for a reproductive clinic director to say, but older women are just asking for trouble.” Natasha disagreed. “You’re looking at it with blinders on, Bill. You only treat women who have problems – the others aren’t referred to you – and you shouldn’t generalize from your medical practice to all of womankind.”

Melissa’s counselors advised her to do whatever was necessary to have a baby. The stars and the cards were auspicious. Her friends were familiar with the in vitro fertilization (IVF) process. Anne told her to move quickly, while she still had some viable eggs left, or she’d find herself carrying a fetus made of Keith’s sperm and some other woman’s ovum. Keith approached the question analytically. Their relative infertility seemed entirely age-based, but they were fit for their ages and stood to outlive the statistics. It was expensive science, but they had the money. He saw no reason why they shouldn’t take advantage of the available technology. They agreed to go for it.

Meanwhile, she began to agree with her father about the divorce. Wayne grew happier the longer he was apart from Sandy, and he gave Valerie much better attention. Sandy continued to be coldly practical and inattentive. Wayne fell in love with Cynthia and even that enhanced Valerie’s life. Cynthia was generous and fun-loving, and she came with a son two years older than Valerie, an attractive boy named Jake.

Wayne’s household was an interesting one, and it wasn’t hurt by all the money. E-den.com went public, and the value of Wayne’s options made him a nouveau-millionaire. Then 2Buy.com acquired it and took the lid off Wayne’s net worth.

Valerie had to spend half her time with her mother. Sandy was making money too, but it was four hundred dollar an hour accounting fees for dot.coms, so the ride wasn’t nearly as impressive as Wayne’s. Sandy’s additional wealth just fed her arrogance; she was driving Valerie to distraction with status-seeking and perfectionist behavior. The bad dreams ended when Valerie lost all control one night and screamed at her mother, “I know why Dad divorced you, and he was right!”

Relations between Sandy and Valerie deteriorated even more quickly after that. Valerie would have moved in permanently with her father except that Sandy resisted it, on principle. So she had to spend almost half of every week with her mother. Sandy snooped and reasoned. Valerie sneaked and raved.

Sandy wanted to marry again, and she dated systematically. Valerie was a part-time intensely critical observer. She watched her mother add up the pluses and minuses of a man. She heard Sandy describe a guy as lots of fun who was no fun at all, but who was “suitable.” In fact, none of the strategic romances worked out. It got to where Valerie could detect the slight pink of attraction as well as the soothing blue of dissipation in Sandy’s relationships.

By the time Valerie was fourteen she was physically mature. She wasn’t particularly horny for Jake, but she asked him to escort her to a school dance. She liked him better than any of the boys in her class, but she wasn’t after his body or offering hers. When they took a break from dancing it was because they were tired, and when they couldn’t find chairs together they rested standing up, with her leaning against him. It was good after all the bouncing around to sway slowly to the music. His fingers at her waist were warm. She didn’t feel like stopping them when his hands began to travel up and down her torso, in wide caressing circles, and then around her breasts. It didn’t turn her on; it just felt good. And if it was a little embarrassing, then that was good practice. And if it blew her mother away, hearing later how she and Jake were hauled out of the room by the uptight chaperones, well, that would be a little wake-up.

Valerie had no idea that Sandy would go ballistic like that. She should have had a clue when Sandy told her to get in the back seat; afterward she understood her mother arranged it so she wouldn’t slap Valerie, no matter what.

That arrangement is also what saved Valerie’s life. They were about halfway to her mother’s house, speeding too fast on the curving dark road in that unincorporated golf course community, when Sandy lost control of the Lexus and plowed into a huge tree. The front of the car was extremely condensed.

Valerie had a horrible choice: leave her mother to try to find help, or stay with her, be with her. She could barely make out a pale blue-gray fog in the car between them, thickest near her mother’s face but shredding into the air as she looked. She took her mother’s hand and thought love to her.

Sandy’s chest was crushed and her femoral artery was severed. In most doctors’ opinions, either injury was enough to kill her, given the way she was wedged in and the amount of time it took to get her out of the car. Still, some folks think it’s a little strange that Valerie didn’t go for help. But they don’t know about blue-gray clouds. Valerie’s glad that she and her mother made peace.

Valerie’s time then was spent in a cycle of size-limited classes at her neighborhood school, afternoon lessons in music, riding, and art, and family time filled overtly with quality TV and national-park vacations and covertly with bickering. Her father was always passionately happy about a successful venture or miserably self-pitying about a failure, and he was then experiencing a string of bad choices in business ideas. There’s no doubt he was a challenge to his wife. But Sandy seemed to lack even the most basic emotional connection to him; she earned her living as an accountant and she approached everything with dollars-and-cents pragmatism, and as far as Valerie is concerned, her mother never understood how to just love Wayne and let him have his feelings. Even when he began to assert his unhappiness Sandy debated with him; Valerie will never forget the night she overheard her father beg for couple’s therapy. “Don’t be silly, Wayne,” Sandy reasoned in that grating calm tone of voice. “We don’t need that. We’re just going through a rough patch. All couples do. It’s not so bad.”

The next morning, on her two-block walk to school, Valerie saw the raccoon. It was in the far corner of the schoolyard, beyond the playground, where the trees and tall grasses hid empty Dorito bags. She’d seen animals there before but this one behaved differently: it walked round and round in a four foot circle, tail down, chirping lowly and wobbling now and then. It paid no attention to Valerie. She stared fascinated at a pale cloud of smoky lavender near the raccoon’s eyes.

“Oh,” she mouthed silently toward it. “I’m sorry. I hope this is not painful for you.” The animal paused and then wobbled on in its circle. Valerie felt it would be disrespectful to leave.

She remained at the spot until after the Animal Control truck arrived and the uniformed lady got out, until after she’d watched the raccoon roped around the neck and pulled over the chain-link fence and into a wire cage, until after she’d heard the lady say, “a lot of these fellas showin’ up lately with the Distemper.” Then Valerie resumed her walk to class, arriving late, wishing the raccoon a good death.

She tried to tell her parents about the event that evening, but Sandy and Wayne were distracted by their enmity. Her father’s latest venture had taken off and he was riding a wave of self-confidence again. He wasn’t needing a mate. Wayne had suffered a childhood contaminated by the toxin of parents who hated one another but stayed together for the child; he for one did not believe in toughing out a bad marriage. “Better,” he said that night and almost out of nowhere, as Valerie passed him the potatoes, “to split up now than continue to subject Valerie to this.”

“Excuse me?” Sandy sputtered in surprise. Her normally pale cheeks flushed red.

“I think we need to separate.”

“I think we need to talk about this somewhere else,” Sandy countered, and Valerie watched as a pale blue-gray cloud formed between her parents’ faces and then seemed to tumble upwards dissipating like smoke. Wayne became impassioned and began to yell, Sandy grew more didactic and efficient in tone, and still Valerie saw it fade away between them.

Valerie’s nightmares began that night and continued until she was twelve. Purple blue gray visions of death, everywhere to everyone she loved. During that year and a half she went to five psychiatrists, seven psychologists, an acupuncturist, and a herbalist. Sandy and Wayne divorced and each bought new houses and arranged shared custody. Valerie considered bulimia but really didn’t like to vomit. Her self-esteem wasn’t quite low enough for anorexia nervosa. Catatonia appealed, but she couldn’t figure out how to induce it. Her diagnoses were non-specific.

A lot of kids grow up early – old people would know this if they paid attention or remembered – and girls mature sooner than boys. But Valerie was exceptional; she was born old.

Her infancy was observant and her toddlerhood was deliberate. She used to unnerve Sandy, the way she would gaze at her and Wayne when they smoked and talked or drank and talked: little baby in a Johnny Jump-Up, slowly twirling on a toe and staring at her parents, instead of bouncing with glee like a normal child.

Valerie didn’t stand until she’d already figured how to get back down. She didn’t take her first steps until she’d mentally mapped out a run. She wouldn’t talk until she could converse in paragraphs.

When she reached the age of articulated magic, when other five- and six-year-olds were describing imaginary friends and comparing ideas about how each of them would use three wishes, Valerie began to sense death. Of course she didn’t recognize her ability at the time, and didn’t name it until she read her first vampire novel at twelve, but she could sense the imminence of soul-departure or, as she later came to call it, the inexorable dissipation of spirit.

The initial, incomplete event, on which she cut her psychic teeth, took place in the local hospital right before her tonsillectomy. She was five and totally unprepared for the operation; neither her parents nor the doctor had seen fit to explain surgical procedures to such a little kid. After prepping her with a rectal temperature reading (!) and a few perfunctory injections (ouch), and before laying her out on a sheeted table and covering her face with the ether-soaked, color-screaming metal cage, between those two hideous events, some nurse parked the little girl in a wheelchair in a corridor, placed her own chart in her lap, and told her to watch the man on the gurney across the hall.

That was undoubtedly a keep-the-child-busy strategy, but Valerie took it seriously. She focused on the immobile man, assuming that the papers on her lap concerned him. It seemed to her that there was a vague cloud around the edges of him, hinting of purplish-gray and more apparent near his chest and face than anywhere else. It was a sight better detected from the corners of her eyes than from the fronts, and it seemed to be dissolving away from the man, like smoke, while she watched.

Two people came then, dressed all in white, and they began to push the man on the gurney away from Valerie, down the corridor. She couldn’t get out of her wheelchair, but she objected vigorously. They ignored her and kept pushing. They hardly noticed that she was upset – it was a hospital after all, and she was a patient – and they never dreamed that her complaints were attempts to warn them that the man on the gurney needed help.

Another nurse appeared, and she spun Valerie’s chair around into the tonsillectomy chamber. While a crew of grownups restrained and anaesthetized the struggling child, the man on the gurney coded and died down the hall.

Two years after that, when she was seven and a half, they found the hurt bird. Valerie was in the back yard trying not to hear her parents argue and she noticed fluttery panicked movement in the leaves under the big oak. She investigated, moving away from her father’s hot complaints and her mother’s cold reasoning. It was an immature robin, cat-mauled but alive, and Valerie’s attentive posture distracted her parents from their vehemence. They came to her and put their hands on her shoulders, but neither Wayne’s optimism nor Sandy’s practical attitude got through to her. She gazed at the bird and tried to make out the pale blue-gray edge that flickered around it. She helped her parents bed the animal in a rag-lined shoebox, but she was neither upset nor surprised that it died.

Death and other manifestations of life come seldom to the suburbs; it was another three years before Valerie had occasion to experience her strange sense. Three years of school and car-pooled enrichment outside the house, and eddies of parental tension within. Valerie didn’t enjoy those elementary times. She knew she was supposed to be carefree and happy but she didn’t feel that way, and as she looked around at her classmates and playmates, she concluded that many children were not enjoying childhood the way the adults thought they did. The more athletic ones had a better time than sedentary kids like Valerie. The fuckups got more attention than the well-behaved. But what Valerie and the other kids hated most was the impotence. They abhorred the directives about what to eat, when to sleep, and whom to respect. It was nearly as oppressive as being told how to breathe. And those discomforts were exacerbated by the strictures of safety: the cul-de-sacs (dead-ends!), the sidewalks, the escorts.