Q

by Christina Dalcher

Sex, euthanasia, abortion. All conveniently collected under the umbrella of It.

“If they tell me its Q is one-hundredth of a point lower than nine-point-five, I’m getting rid of it,” said a pale woman behind her mask of painstakingly applied cosmetics. “Just like I did the last time.”

The problem here is childishly simplistic: The jobs are disappearing and the people aren’t.

Joe might not have made the grades in high school, and he had as much use for standardized college entrance tests as a cat does for a set of roller skates, but he wasn’t stupid. “This whole country’s getting crazy,” he said. “And it’ll get worse before anyone figures it out.

The best thing when she’s like this is to sit down across from her. So I do that. And I start rocking, matching her time, being a mirror image metronome of Freddie. After a few minutes, she’s back with me, back in the now.

Conscious use of NLP mirroring?

The problem, I think, is that I’ve got a husband who’s so intensely wrapped in his überintelligence bubble that imagining any world outside that cocoon is impossible.

Malcolm’s absolute silence, on the other hand, isn’t a calming force. It’s jarring and violent, this stone wall. There’s too much room for wonder and speculation.

“You don’t want her here at all.” Malcolm says nothing, which really means he says it all.

I felt for Moira then. I feel for her more now as I realize that Malcolm, with double the income I bring in and half the late days, will always be the fitter parent. Most men are—even the ones who aren’t.

Somewhere in my daughter is a filter made out of steel. Or titanium. Or Kryptonite. Reality comes and goes for her, and at this moment, the only reality for Freddie is the smile on her Oma’s face and the soft pressure of her Opa’s hand on her back and promises of ginger cookies with warm milk at the kitchen table.

But then, nothing ever seemed to fit Malcolm Fairchild, not naturally. He simply adapted the world to his own ways, forcing it to fit.

No more struggling, no more pinching pennies to cover the electric bill. We’d fit into the world, and make the world fit us. We’d create our very own master class.

As usual, justice boils down to how high you can keep your Q rating.

She drifts off to sleep, that glorious place of escape where nothing can hurt us.

Women have been losing their children since they’ve been having them. Cholera. Cancer. War. None of it fair.

I fear for my youngest daughter, currently sitting on a yellow bus,

For an intelligent, educated woman she shold know that younger isthe correct comparison between two.

What he meant when he said this was that he wasn’t interested in my body, and I thought that was hilarious and not hilarious at the same time.

The thing of it is, why should I have to choose? What’s so fucking wrong about wanting to be wanted? In all the ways.

Maybe all mothers are semi-insane. Maybe that’s part of the deal we make when we decide to let our bodies become hosts, when we lie with our legs spread and our insides knotted in pain and push and push and push until we think we can’t push anymore, when we hold vigil during sleepless nights in rocking chairs and recliners, sweating over the slightest changes in a tiny creature’s appetite, body temperature, weight.

Mostly, it makes me wonder whether we’re born with bigotry in our blood or if hatred of the strange has to be taught.

He’s got blue eyes; she has brown. Go with the one most like you. She’s fat; he’s thin. Go with the one who looks more like a mirror image. He’s Irish; she’s English. Identify with the known.

I feel a sense of disgust when I think about humans turning against humans, one cold shoulder and one “my kid is better than your kid” at a time.

We’ve always done this, we humans in our little societies. We categorize and compare and devise ways to separate ourselves into teams, not so differently from the rituals of a grade school gym class.

But I knew then what the deal was—a simple matter of trading myself for my baby, should it ever come to that.