Most Wanted

Chapter Seven

The entrance hall buzzed with last-day activity as Christine entered the school building. Teachers’ aides hustled back and forth to the office with forms, workmen rolled handcarts of taped boxes toward trucks idling outside, and two kindergarten teachers, Linda Cohen and Melissa DiMarco, hurried to the office, looking over, grinning, when they spotted Christine.

“Christine,” Linda called out. “Your party was so fun! Stay in touch, okay?”

“Sure, thanks!” Christine kept up her smile, still trying to wrap her mind around what was going on. She had vomited this morning, but had told herself it was morning sickness. She only had to keep it together for one more day.

Melissa chimed in, “Best of luck! We’ll miss you!”

“I’ll miss you, too!” Christine beelined for her office door, but she had to pass the administrative office, where Pam and the staff were boxing files and taping bookshelves. Pam motioned to her to come in, but Christine pointed to her watch and kept walking. She reached her office, opened the door, and went inside.

“That you?” Lauren called out from the adjacent office, rising from her desk.

“Yes!” Christine called back, letting her tote bags, backpack, and purse drop onto the blue carpet. She glanced around, but she’d already packed up her office, so the place didn’t look familiar at all, much less somewhere she’d worked for almost ten years. Her desk, of brown indeterminate wood, was generic without her photos of Marcus, Lady, and Murphy, and her white walls looked so empty without her American Library Association poster of Elvis Presley reading a book, captioned READ. Her bookshelves were covered with brown paper, and her bulletin board stripped to original cork, covered with thumbtack holes like public-school constellations. Christine had left posted only her Fountas & Pinnell Literacy Scale and her favorite inspirational poster, from Maya Angelou: If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.

“Honey, how are you?” Lauren rushed over and enveloped her in a morning hug fresh enough to smell like citrusy hair conditioner.

“I can’t believe this is happening.” Christine let herself be held for a moment. “I just can’t believe it.”

“Tell me. I was worried when you didn’t call back.” Lauren let her go, her expression full of love and concern. Her curly hair was still wet from the shower, twisted up into a topknot, and she had on a gauzy smock with a bright pink T-shirt underneath.

“I’m sorry, I should have called. Believe it or not, I fainted.”

“Oh my God.” Lauren’s hand flew to her mouth.

“I know, what a drama queen.” Christine brushed dirt off her seersucker shirtdress, which she knew would get filthy in five minutes, but she’d been too distracted this morning to find the right clothes. She’d showered but hadn’t even bothered to blow-dry the back of her head.

“No, not at all! Here, sit down.” Lauren pulled out a blue plastic chair, which was undersized for students, but Christine sat down anyway, squeezing.

“Then I cried, then we talked and I cried some more, I was so exhausted I slept… the whole night.” Christine had been about to say like a baby, but caught herself.

“So why did they take it off the shelves? Is it really him?” Lauren’s eyes flared with alarm.

“They took it off the shelves pending their investigation, whatever that means. We don’t know anything more than you do. We’re going to meet with Michelle and Davidow today, after school.”

“Good.”

“But Homestead won’t tell Davidow, or us, if our donor is Jeffcoat, because it has contracts for confidentiality with our donor, and we signed a contract saying that we understood that.”

“Oh boy.” Lauren leaned against the desk, folding her arms. “So they don’t have to tell you?”

“Right; legally nobody has to tell us anything.”

“Let’s see what the investigation yields. We shouldn’t freak until we know the results. How’s Marcus? How is he handling this?”

“I conked out last night, but I don’t think he slept at all. He was on the computer in his office when I woke up.” Christine glanced at the clock and realized she had an appointment with a student in fifteen minutes, the first in a day full of appointments, before the end of the year.

“Doing what?”

“I don’t know, we didn’t get time to talk about it this morning. I just noticed he was printing a lot of things, which he never does, and he was running late this morning, which he never is.”

“The poor guy.” Lauren’s lower lip puckered, with sympathy.

“I know.” Christine leaned over, unzipped the first tote bag, and started unpacking the gift bags. She was giving each of her students a book, a squiggle pen, and a self-addressed postcard, so they could tell her their impressions of the book. It was lucky that she had bought the gifts and packed the bags last week, because she never would’ve had the energy last night.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“No, I’ll let you know what happens tonight.” Christine pulled out the gift bags and set them on the desk. She’d customized the gifts for each of her students, so Cal Watson, a second-grader with tracking problems who loved dogs, got a puppy-themed gift bag with a copy of Fun Dog, Sun Dog. Talieeta Choudhoury, a sixth-grader who had reading comprehension problems but was obsessed with pirates, got a copy of Treasure Island in a black gift bag; the book was a reach for Talieeta, but Christine had put an encouraging note inside, telling her to give it a shot. Gemma Oglethorpe, a first-grader who struggled with her sight words, got Hot Rod Hamster in a floral gift bag, because it was impossible to find a hamster-themed gift bag.

Lauren helped her unpack. “You are so sweet to do this. You must have spent a fortune.”

“It wasn’t that bad.” Christine flashed back to her early teaching career, when she first realized how much of their own money teachers spent on their students. It had come as a surprise, but she never begrudged it and didn’t know any teacher who did.

“So what are you thinking? How are you dealing?”

“Until yesterday, I was super happy. I thought I was carrying this adorable baby, and the truth is, I wasn’t really focused on the donor. I forgot all about him. I think of this baby as our baby, Marcus’s and mine.” Christine unpacked the bags, on autopilot. “Or at least, as my baby, but not because I made a ‘genetic contribution,’ as they say. But just because it’s in me.”

“Of course, that makes total sense.” Lauren gestured at Christine’s belly. “I mean, you’re pregnant. Duh.”

“But now all of a sudden, we’re back where we were two months ago, talking about sperm donors and ‘genetic contributions,’ and now it feels so strange, like everything is ruined.” Christine felt her eyes film but blinked them clear as she loaded the gift bags onto her empty desk.

“But it’s not ruined, it’s not ruined yet.”

“Honestly, yes it is. You don’t even know what Marcus said to the doctor last night.” Christine stopped short, knowing that if she told Lauren what Marcus had said, Lauren would permanently hate him, in the way of all true BFFs.

“What did he say?”

“It doesn’t matter, he didn’t mean it. Well, he did mean it, but he didn’t mean it to hurt me.” Christine kept unpacking the gift bags. “I mean, if I go back two months ago, when I was still thinking about the stupid donor, I thought I was carrying the baby of a medical student. Now I could be carrying the baby of a serial killer.”

“What are you saying?” Lauren frowned deeply, still helping her unpack.

“I’m saying I don’t know what’s inside me.” Christine shuddered. “Is it a bad-seed baby? Is it ‘Rosemary’s Baby’? Is it ‘Alien’?”

“Oh honey, no.” Lauren squeezed her arm. “It’s none of those things. It’s your baby.”

“And who else’s? Who’s the father? The biological father, that is.”

“Who cares who the biological father is?” Lauren touched her arm. “It doesn’t matter who the biological father is. You are the mother, and you’re going to be a great mother, and it’s going to be a great baby-”

“I don’t know if that’s true.” Christine checked the clock and she only had three minutes before Gemma showed up. “You know what I was thinking about on the drive in? I used to feel great about the baby, connected to the baby, but now I feel distant. I get that it’s a part of me, but it’s not a part of me that I’m so happy with right now.” Christine stopped unpacking for a moment. “If I had known that Donor 3319 was capable of murder, much less serial murder, I never would’ve picked him. Homestead never would’ve taken him as a donor. Right?”

“Okay,” Lauren said slowly.

“So, we can’t pretend it doesn’t matter just because that’s the way it turned out.”

Lauren blinked. “Okay, I get that.”

“Good.” Christine resumed unpacking. “Can you imagine when it comes time to tell him who his father is? First, your dad isn’t your biological dad. Second, your biological dad is a serial killer.”

“You’re getting ahead of yourself.”

“I have to. That day will come. We talk in therapy about disclosure, how to tell our friends we used a donor, how to tell our child.” Christine kept unpacking. “That’s the kind of news that can destroy a child. And if we don’t tell him, can you imagine if he finds out on his own?”

“You’re getting carried away-”

“No, I’m not. By the time he grows up, there’ll be major advances in technology. You read about facial recognition software, he’ll use it. It’ll be an app on his damn phone. It’s not a secret we can keep.”

“Okay, here’s what I think.” Lauren’s dark eyes flashed with intensity. “You wouldn’t have picked him if you had known, but now you have what you have. It’s not what you expected, isn’t it like a kid with special needs or reading problems? You adore your students. It doesn’t matter to you that they’re not what their parents expected.”

“This isn’t that.” Christine had thought it over. “A child with special needs is just a child who needs more help than someone else. A child of a serial killer, or whatever mental illness that makes someone a serial killer, may be a child who has a lifetime of no connections with other people. Of anger, of pain. Of isolation, of violence. He could grow up to harm others, to kill others, even to kill us.”

Lauren gasped. “What?”

“Lauren, be real. You’ve heard the stories about parents who have to lock their kid in his room so he doesn’t come out and kill them at night. You think I’ll sleep easy, knowing that my child has half the genes of a serial killer?”

“You can’t inherit being a serial killer.”

“Let’s not get technical, okay? I’ll be waiting for the other shoe to drop, won’t I?” Christine felt her throat tighten. “And even if I can deal with it, do you really think Marcus can?”

“That does worry me. He has to buy in.”

“Look, maybe I can love this baby, raise this baby, no matter who his biological father is. Marcus was almost there. But all that’s changed.” Christine felt it was true as soon as she said it aloud, like when Marcus had, last night. “He’s acting different. Colder. We’d come so far, but now it’s undone.”

“Do you think he’s blaming you that you even went with the donor instead of adopting? Or if you picked the wrong one?”

“Please, that’s what I’m thinking. I’m the queen of second-guessing. I’m asking myself a million what-ifs.” Christine unpacked the last gift bag. “If I know him, he’s blaming himself because if he hadn’t been infertile, we wouldn’t have this problem in the first place.”

“Oh boy.”

“It’s just going to bring everything back for him, all his feelings of inadequacy, and his reaction when he feels bad about himself is to withdraw.” Christine looked over, feeling ragged and sad. “Remember when he first got diagnosed? It was like living with the turtle who kept sticking his head inside his shell. We’ll probably have to go back into counseling.”

“If that’s what you have to do, that’s what you have to do. You guys love each other and you will get through this.”

“All I know is, I don’t feel like he’s in it with me. I feel like I’m in it alone.”

“Honey, you’re not alone. You got me.” Lauren looped an arm around her shoulder.

“Aw, thanks.” Christine scanned the desk, blanketed with festive bags, and it looked like she was having a party, which was the effect she had wanted for her students, even if it clashed with her current state of mind. Just then there was a knock on the door, meaning Gemma had arrived. Lauren left to meet with teachers, and Christine started her day, though Gemma was too distracted by her hamster book to concentrate on her drills, but allowed that she was “over hamsters” and moving on to guinea pigs.

Christine saw one student after the other, working with them when she could, dispensing their gift bags, listening to their last stories and little worries, giving them her final words of encouragement, hugging them all good-bye, and reminding them to keep up with summer reading. She knew that even the younger grades would be given summer homework by their other teachers, but her reading students had made so much progress during the year, she didn’t want them to lose it in just two months. She didn’t care what they read, just that they read, even if she wasn’t going to be their teacher anymore.

Christine accepted small gifts from the moms who stopped in, because Nutmeg Hill allowed it, and she was happy to see the moms and grateful for their kindness, whether their gifts were gift-wrapped boxes from a department store or tin-foiled loaves of home-baked banana bread. She truly believed it was a privilege to teach their children, and she told them so, with tears in her eyes.

Last, she said good-bye to Pam, the office staff, and her fellow teachers, holding back more tears though she felt an undercurrent of sadness and profound loss. There was no emptier-feeling day than the last day of school, when the desks are pushed together and the chairs turned upside down on top, and she’d felt that way even when she had been a student herself. Both of her parents were high-school educators, so she’d never doubted that her work had meaning, especially teaching children to read, because reading was the cornerstone of self-esteem, success, and even a simple pleasure that was lifelong. She had expected that her last day of school would be bittersweet, knowing she’d be leaving teaching behind, as well as students she loved, but she’d been willing to give everything up for a baby of her own and a happy new family.

My wife could be carrying the baby of a serial killer.

At the end of the day, Christine left the building alone, deep in thought, her head down. She didn’t know what to think or expect. The rug had been pulled out from under her, and she felt hopeless, rudderless. She knew what she was leaving behind, but she didn’t know where she was heading.

Except to see a therapist, with her husband.