Page 28

Chapter Fourteen
After Carl left, I never felt lonelier in my life. The whole city seemed to raise its hackles and bare its teeth at me, and everything seemed so much harder than it had a couple of months earlier, when I was in love and every street was lit with starlight. But the one thing that I was certain of was that I wanted this baby. They would be family and my chance to start over. Every night I would come home and lie in bed with my hands wrapped around my stomach, my mind full of half-dreams and wishes I couldn’t put into words.
I did my best to take care of myself and my unborn baby. I ate as much red meat as I could afford and only smoked a few cigarettes a day. There was nothing I could do about the city air though, which seemed to shimmer with filth outside my windows. And I still had to work, spending long hours on my feet in laundries and textile factories, because only the shittiest jobs would take an uneducated pregnant woman.
I gave birth in a dingy city hospital, alone except for a disapproving nurse who kept glancing at my hands, as if expecting a wedding ring to magically appear. It took hours and the pain was unbelievable. My whole being left my body with every contraction and then came crashing down as the baby slowly, painfully inched down through my torso. My body shook with every surge and I felt like I was being torn apart from the inside out. I grew so quiet that the nurse began to feel my pulse, certain that I was dying. But I put my chin into my chest and pushed as hard as I could, feeling a bony carcass come heaving out of my body in a clatter of angles and folds.
“It’s a boy,” the nurse said, as she handed him to me. A boy. He was screaming hysterically, a high-pitched squeal that brought tears to my eyes. I held the little bundle, all wrapped in cloth, and sobbed with relief.
That night, after he fell asleep, I watched his eyelashes flutter and listened to the warm, even sound of his breathing. I brushed my hands across his tiny fingers and thought about how I wanted to give him everything. I didn’t want to raise him in a cramped apartment, chasing cockroaches away from our bed and pinching pennies to buy him a pair of shoes. I looked at my little masterpiece of a boy and knew that I would do anything to give him the life he deserved.
I suppose some part of me had worried that I was too damaged to respond normally to motherhood, that fruit couldn’t grow from a poisoned tree. And yet, the moment my son was born, I loved him in a way I’d never loved anyone before. I bet that surprises you. You probably think that a person like me could never love anyone but herself.
But that love was also coupled with a surge of hatred. I didn’t hate my son, I hated everything that wasn’t him. People seem to think that when a woman becomes a mother, she becomes a mother to the whole world. That having a child cracks her heart and her arms open, wide enough to embrace everyone. But they’re wrong. A mother is a dangerous creature. She would burn the whole world down just to make her child smile.
DAPHNE:Do you have children?
[Ruth coughs and sputters in surprise.]
RUTH:Children? I don’t even have a dog. I don’t even have a plant!
DAPHNE:It’s not an installment scheme; you don’t start with a plant and work your way up.
RUTH:I don’t know anything about kids!
DAPHNE:God, you’re like a child trapped in a woman’s body. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to take care of a baby. Kids used to do it! Your generation just goes around wringing their hands about everything. If you don’t have a master’s degree in changing diapers, you don’t feel qualified to do it.
RUTH (coolly):I guess I just want to focus on my career right now. You didn’t really have a career, I suppose?
DAPHNE:No, I didn’t. It’s a different world now for girls, even for poor ones like you and me. Back then, we didn’t really have words for gender pay gaps, or domestic violence, or sexual harassment because they weren’tbad things, they were just. . . life. So, I didn’t have the education or the training, but over time I did learn about men. I could have a master’s degree in men! I learned how I could make opportunities through them, for me and for my children.
RUTH:That’s. . . nice?
DAPHNE:Well, it was better than nothing. And you know, Ruth, if you do want kids, you’ve got plenty of time to sort your life out. You’re what? twenty-four?
RUTH:I’m thirty-two.
DAPHNE:Oh Christ.
Ruth was sitting at her shitty desk, watching the latest Daphne media coverage on her laptop. She saw a police car turn into her parking lot and she slunk down in her seat, peering around her computer. The light caught the driver’s face in profile. Was that Officer Rankin? She couldn’t be sure, but she felt a flicker of unease. It had certainly looked like him.
The local news reported that earlier in the day, there had been a protest against Daphne downtown, organized by TikToker and men’s rights activist Tucker Winn. From the footage it was clear that the protest wasn’t very well attended. Of the thirty or so people, only three were women. People were waving signs that said things like “Fry the Bitch” and “Stop the Male Genocide.” Tucker stood up at the top of the courthouse steps and began to speak. He was wearing a ribbon pin and a T-shirt that said: ‘Men’s Lives Matter.’
“Daphne St Clair is a predator who hunts men. This is the kind of woman who is celebrated in our modern society: a woman who goes after what she wants, a woman who doesn’t see men as loving authority figures but as obstacles to be removed! Now, I’m not saying women shouldn’t have rights. This is America! But women were happier when they weren’t trying to be men!”
Ruth wondered when exactly this mythical time was when women were happier. She knew that the world, and the Internet especially, were still full of people who saw all women, not just Daphne St Clair, as a threat. She remembered something Daphne had once told her. ‘Men are all for women’s liberation until it costs them something. A babysitter. A home-cooked meal. Having to learn how to iron. And the problem is everything real costs something.’
Ruth’s phone pinged. She glanced down. Another two missed calls from her mom and a text that read:Ruth, you have to stop this podcast. It’s too dangerous. Leave it alone.Her heart began to beat faster as she stared at the stark warning from her mother. A strange mix of guilt and anger percolated inside her. Of course her mother was worried. Of course she didn’t want Ruth to take this risk. But Ruth couldn’t just stop.
Tucker’s diatribe had moved on to the podcast,Ruth’s podcast. “And when I listen to Daphne St Clair’s filthy voice on that. . . that podcast, laughing about murdering two hard-working family men,two fathers, by pushing them down the stairs and in front of subway trains, laughing about killing an old man whose only mistake was to fall for her, I don’t feel shocked.Thisis the world feminists want for us! I guarantee you that leftist radicals convinced Daphne to confess so they could hold her up as a hero for the movement! So the feminists can continue the male genocide!”
Ruth closed the video, already sick of listening to Tucker. The murders of Ted and Frankie didn’t concern her. Those men were abusive assholes and the world was better off without them. But Ruth knew that Daphne had killed innocent people, that one specific murder had reverberated down through Ruth’s life, a black hole that so many people’s lives revolved around. And now Ruth was going to get the truth.
Ruth took a deep, shuddering breath and then furiously typed back.Mom, it’s her. I know it is. Daphne killed him. And I’m going to prove it.Then she turned off her phone, not waiting for a response.
There was no way she was going to drop this. Daphne St Clair had taken something from her and now Ruth was going to take everything from Daphne.
Chapter Fifteen