Perfect People

28

Later, the house was filled with the sweet smells of burning charcoal and hickory chips. John, out on the deck, was fiddling with the barbecue. Two thick tuna steaks he had brought home were lying in a marinade on the kitchen table. Naomi was mixing a salad, and feeling a rare moment of tranquillity. Peace inside herself. All her fears locked away – if only for a few fleeting moments – in another compartment.

Got my life back.

The phone was ringing for about the tenth time. John, prodding the coals with a toasting fork, didn’t react. She debated whether to let it go to the answering machine, then suddenly wondering if it might be the Dettore Clinic, picked up the cordless receiver and pressed the switch.

‘Hallo?’

She was greeted by the hiss of static.

‘Hallo?’ she said again, her hopes rising that it might be the ship-to-shore phone with a bad connection. ‘Hallo? Hallo?’

Then a woman’s voice, American, unfriendly with a hard Midwest twang, said, ‘Is that the Klaesson home?’

‘Who is that calling?’ Naomi asked, on guard suddenly.

‘Mrs Klaesson? Am I speaking with Mrs Klaesson?’

‘Who is speaking, please?’ Naomi said.

More insistent now. ‘Mrs Klaesson?’

‘Who is that, please?’

‘You are evil, Mrs Klaesson. You are a very evil woman.’

The line went dead.

Naomi stared at the receiver in shock. Then, hands trembling, she switched it off and hung it back on the wall. She shivered. It suddenly felt as if the sky had clouded over, but through the window the strong evening sun was printing sharp, clear shadows like stencils across the yard.

She was about to call out to John, then held back. It was just a crank. A nasty crank.

You are evil, Mrs Klaesson. You are a very evil woman.

The woman’s voice echoed in her head. Anger clenched her up inside.

‘It’s ready,’ John said ten minutes later, presenting Naomi at the candlelit table on the deck with her favourite dish, and slicing it open to show it was cooked exactly the way she liked it, seared on the outside, pink in the centre.

‘Tuna goes on cooking after you take it off the heat, that’s what people don’t realize; that’s the secret!’ he said proudly.

She smiled, not wanting to tell him that the smell was suddenly making her feel sick, and that he told her the same thing every time he cooked tuna.

He sat down opposite her, spooned (his secret recipe) mustard mayonnaise onto her plate, then helped her to salad. ‘Cheers!’ He raised his glass, sweeping it through the air is if it were a conductor’s baton.

She raised hers back, touched his glass, her head swimming with nausea, then ran to the bathroom and threw up.

When she came back he was sitting waiting, his food untouched.

‘You OK?’

She shook her head. ‘I – I just – need-’

Peas, she thought, suddenly.

She got up again. ‘Just need something to settle-’

She went into the kitchen, opened the freezer compartment and took out a bag of frozen peas and carried it back out to the table.

‘You want peas? Want me to cook them for you?’

She tore open the pack, separated one pea from the frozen mass and popped it in her mouth, letting the ice melt, then crushed the pea between her teeth. It tasted good. She ate another, then another, and felt a little better. ‘These are good,’ she said. ‘Eat yours, don’t let it spoil.’

He reached out a hand and took hers. ‘Remember, women get cravings during pregnancy; maybe that what’s happening.’

‘It is not a craving,’ she said, more irritably than she had intended. ‘I just want to eat a few frozen peas, that’s all.’

The phone rang. John stood up.

‘Leave it!’ she snapped.

He looked startled. ‘It might be-’

‘Leave it! Just leave the bloody phone!’

John shrugged and sat back down. He ate some of his tuna, and Naomi broke off and chewed more peas, one at a time. ‘How was your day?’ he asked.

‘Lori rang. She’d read the piece.’

‘And?’

‘Why the hell did you have to tell that woman, John? The whole city knows; the whole of America knows – probably the whole bloody world knows. I feel like a freak. How are we ever going to bring our child up normally out here?’

John looked at his food in awkward silence.

‘Maybe we should move, go to England, or Sweden, just go to some other place.’

‘It’ll calm down.’

She stared at him. ‘You really think that? You don’t think Sally Kimberly – and every goddamn television station and radio station in the country – hasn’t got a date marked down in their diary for six months’ time, when the baby’s due?’

He said nothing. In his mind the question was swirling, Who the hell are the Disciples of the Third Millennium?

There were all kinds of fanatic groups out there. People who believed their religious convictions gave them a right to murder. And he was thinking about the faces of his colleagues earlier this morning. The enormity had only really struck him today. He and Naomi were doing something the world wasn’t ready for. It would have been fine if they’d kept it a secret.

But now the genie was out of the bottle.

A car door slammed. Nothing unusual about that, except Both of them heard it. Sensed something.

More press, probably.

He got up from the table and crossed the hall to the living room, which looked down onto the street, without switching on the lights. Through the window he could see several news cars and vans still out there. But there was a new vehicle among them, a plain grey van with no radio, television or newspaper insignia, parked right outside the house, beneath a street lamp. It was old and tired-looking, with a dent in the side, and dusty. The rear doors were open and three people stood behind it, a man and two women, unloading something that looked like wooden poles. The small gaggle of reporters still out on the sidewalk had made a space for them and were eyeing them warily.

John felt a prick of anxiety.

The man was tall and thin, with long grey hair pulled back into a ponytail, and shabby clothes. The women were shabby, also. One, also tall, had long, lank brown hair, the other, plump and short, had her hair cropped, almost a crew cut. They raised their poles in the air and now he could see they were placards.

They formed a group on the sidewalk, each of them holding a placard aloft, but he couldn’t read the wording.

Somewhere in his study, he remembered, he had a pair of binoculars. It took him a few minutes of rummaging through the chaotic jumble to find them. Pulling them out of their carrying case, he went back into the living room and focused on the placards.

One read, SAY NO TO GENETICS.

Another read, TRUST IN GOD, NOT IN SCIENCE.

The third read, CHILDREN OF GOD, NOT OF SCIENCE.

Then he heard Naomi’s voice, trembling, right behind him. ‘Oh no, John, do something. Please, do something. Call the police.’

‘Just ignore them,’ he said, trying to sound brave, not wanting her to see that he was as disturbed by them as she was. ‘Bunch of loonies. That’s what they want: publicity. They want us to call the police, cause a confrontation. Ignore them; they’ll go away.’

But in the morning the protesters were still there. And they had been joined by a second vehicle, an ancient, very battered green Ford LTD station wagon with darkened windows, and two more very tough-looking women holding placards.

ONLY GOD CAN GIVE LIFE. ABORT SATAN’S SPAWN NOW.