Life Services
by Robert Earle
Two reps from Iowa Life Services in lime-green coveralls stood at the door. The woman was holding the child. “Patrick Feely?” the man asked.
“Yes.”
“This is your baby,” the woman said.
The man handed Patrick the birth certificate. The baby’s name was Michael Feely.
Neighbors who had seen the truck hurried to Patrick’s place, bringing diapers, bottles, blankets, wipes, ointment, a stroller, a playpen, the works. Michael was passed around. Patrick sat in the corner of the sofa, too shocked to respond to congratulations and encouragement.
He called his parents. They said they’d drive to Iowa City from their place in What Cheer right away. He called his sister, Penny, who lived in town.
“Any info on the mother and father?” she asked.
“The birth certificate says I’m the father.”
“Want me to come help?”
“There’s already a mob here offering help.”
“You don’t want me to come over?”
“Yes, I want you to come over. Come and take the baby.”
“That’s not what the law says.”
“I know what the law says.”
“Be there in ten.”
A woman who had an infant at home offered Michael her nipple. Michael smooshed his face to her breast. Other women watched. “He knows what he’s doing,” one said. When the nipple slipped out of Michael’s mouth, she burped him and passed him across the coffee table to another woman, who laid him on a hassock and unfastened his blue onesie to change his diaper. She was as precise as a surgeon.
Penny sat on the sofa beside Patrick. “I realized as I was driving over that I’m his aunt.”
“Happy you.”
“You could take leave from law school.”
“I don’t want to take leave from law school.”
“How do you feel?”
“What do my feelings have to do with the Unwed Fathers law?” He paraphrased the law: “Since abortions are illegal in Iowa, an unwed woman who otherwise would have terminated can surrender the baby to an unwed male between twenty and forty years old chosen by lottery. The penalty for non-receipt is a one-year term in jail.”
“Did you consider refusing and going to jail?”
“I was too shocked. The whole thing couldn’t have lasted thirty seconds.”
“There’s a 24-hour baby remorse policy, isn’t there?”
“Forget law school entirely if I went to jail.”
A woman interrupted to say that the baby would be the most precious thing in his life; and if he ever got married, his wife would love it, too. She asked Penny if she were Patrick’s fiancée.
“No, his sister.”
“You’ll step in as needed, I’m sure.”
Penny and Patrick exchanged a look. Where did this lady come from?
The woman took offense. “I think this is a wonderful law. The men who impregnate women and disappear are the villains. Women who don’t want their babies have been left in the lurch for centuries.”
“Millennia,” Penny said.
“To my knowledge I have never impregnated anyone,” Patrick said.
“All it takes is one encounter,” the woman said.
“I know what it takes.”
“You don’t condone abortions, do you?”
“I’ve had an abortion,” Penny said.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
Their parents arrived: Margaret scooped up Michael and cried over him while Mel glowered at the neighbors draining out the front door. “This law is insane,” he said. “What are you going to do?” he asked Patrick.
“Penny’s going to move in with me.”
“Forget that,” Penny said.
“Mom, then.”
“We’re retired and staying in What Cheer for good,” Mel said.
“Melvin, I am the grandmother.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am. I’ll keep Michael with me in Patrick’s spare room.”
“That’s not a spare room. That’s my study,” Patrick said.
“Not anymore. When you find the woman you want to marry, she can take over from me.”
“When’s he going to find a woman when he’s studying law all the time?” Mel asked.
“Doesn’t matter how long it takes. I would have done the same thing for Penny if she didn’t have her abortion.”
“That’s not up for discussion,” Penny said.
“All I’m saying is I’ll be here for Patrick and Michael, my son and grandson. What woman wouldn’t?”
“Is that what you want, Patrick? Mom here all the time?” Penny asked.
Margaret answered for him. “What’s his choice? Now he’s in the pickle unwed mothers have been in for centuries.”
“Millennia,” Patrick corrected her. “But how’s that my responsibility?”
“It’s collective responsibility, dear. Read what this novelist-philosopher who pushed the law has written about it: If you deprive a woman of choice, take choice from the men.”
“What novelist-philosopher?”
“The heavy one with the hair.”
“She lives up the street from me,” Penny said. “Maybe we should leave Michael on her stoop.”
Mel said, “It’s like the draft during Vietnam. The state could send you over there to die. Now this. Exactly the same thing.”
“No, it’s not the same thing. It’s sneakier,” Penny said. “The agenda is to force the men who receive babies to find women and start a family. Families, that’s what Iowa’s all about. No more divorce is what comes next.”
“There’s too much divorce. I do agree with that,” Mel said.
“Mine was the best thing I ever did,” Penny retorted. “Stop jabbing at me.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you were.”
“Stop it with your bullshit,” Patrick said to Mel.
Margaret turned her back on the others so Michael wouldn’t hear the things that were being said. She rocked him as she went to inspect the daybed in Patrick’s study.
“The one good thing is the loophole that says men don’t have to keep the babies they’re assigned,” Penny said. “They can put them up for adoption.”
“You could look into that,” Mel said.
“So you can keep Mom stuck with you in What Cheer?” Patrick said.
“Mom’s not staying here taking care of that baby, I don’t care what she says. We did the kid stuff with you two.”
“Were we so bad?”
“I’m not saying that. I’m saying there’s a time for everything.”
“Oh, please, don’t get into the Bible,” Penny said.
“Moses, Esther, and Samuel were all adopted. Jesus, too. Joseph had nothing to do with it.”
“Give me the money, and I’ll hire childcare,” Patrick said.
“I’m retired. We can barely afford What Cheer.”
“Put the baby up for adoption right away. Don’t become attached,” Penny said.
“I already am attached,” Patrick said. “He’s got my name on his frigging birth certificate.”
“That’s ink, not blood.”
Patrick poured himself a bourbon and joined his mother in his study. She lay on the daybed pressing her cheek against the top of Michael’s head. “He’s so peachy and warm,” she said.
Patrick looked out the window at the shopping center parking lot next door whose lights would burn all night. The Publix looked closed. Likewise, the Vape shop. Pretzels and Beer was open, he knew, whether it looked closed or not. Sometimes he ran into a woman there. Sometimes they walked across the parking lot to his place. They seldom saw one another again. He didn’t want a girlfriend, much less a child. He wanted a law degree and a Porsche.
He rinsed his glass in the kitchen, brushed his teeth in the bathroom, and went to bed, lying on his right side so that he could look out the bedroom window at the night sky, its belly brightened by the shopping-center lights, its stars obscured by clouds auguring snow.
Mel and Penny kept at it in the living room. Mel had become adamant. Penny, not Margaret, should move in with Patrick.
Penny said she had the abortion because she didn’t want to start another family like theirs.
“Because you always were 100% self-centered,” Mel said, “with your bad grades and bad friends and drugs. I warned you, but you wouldn’t listen and ran away and got yourself knocked up.” All the bad stuff about Penny that fascinated Patrick. She took the risk of living the way she wanted to. He never dared.
Patrick got out of bed, opened the window a crack and let the cold air sluice over him. The fighting died down. Penny stopped crying and left. Mel used the bathroom and returned to the living room. His mother used the bathroom and did something in the kitchen and returned to his study.
He got out of bed again and went into his study where his mother was giving Michael a bottle. He stood over the bed looking down at them in the haze cast by the shopping center lights.
“What do you want to do?” she asked him.
“Get him adopted somewhere. There will be Iowa babies all over the country before long. I just need you to hold out against Dad until I get something done.”
“He was terrible in the car coming up here.”
“How can you stand him?”
“That’s not something I can let myself dwell on. This one’s my lifeline. I’ll stay with you or take him to What Cheer, doesn’t matter.”
“We don’t even know where the kid came from.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m in good health. I’ll keep him until, like I said, you get married.”
“I may never get married.”
“Then when I die, you’ll have to take him on by yourself.”
“You said you were in good health.”
“We all die sometime. I doubt I have another eighteen years left in me.”
They heard Mel crying in the living room.
“He’s the real baby in this family. You’d better go to him,” Patrick said.
“I can’t with Michael in my arms. It’ll make things worse.”
“Give him to me.”
Patrick settled Michael on his forearm from the elbow to the wrist. He heard Mel repeating what he had said to Penny about moving in with Patrick to take care of Michael. Margaret told him to leave Penny out of it. He said this could be what put Penny’s life back on track.
Margaret said, “I’m the one who needs her life on track.”
"You?!" Mel exclaimed.
Patrick stretched out on the daybed with Michael on his chest. He remembered his parents arguing at night when they thought he and Penny were asleep. Penny was the brave one who got out of bed to tell them to stop. Often that made things worse because they were fighting about her, never Patrick. Why fight about him? Patrick was never the problem.
Gradually the apartment grew quiet. He lay there expecting Margaret to come get Michael. When she did, she saw that Michael was resting peacefully on Patrick’s chest.
“I’ll leave him be and lie down in your bedroom,” she said. “Bring him to me if he wakes up.”
Patrick watched her drift into the darkened hallway. He realized he should buy some nightlights, because he could hear her grazing the walls with her fingertips to help her find her way.
Copyright © 2024 by Robert Earle
