Fatherless: A Novel Read online

  She checked her bag and headed toward a security line much longer than usual while opening the airline app on her tablet. Twenty-three minutes and seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, fourteen seconds until takeoff. There were twelve impatient travelers between her and the body scanner, each glaring at the front of the line, where a pregnant mother awkwardly removed her squirming toddler from a stroller while her husband scolded an older brother. The kid had climbed onto the baggage treadmill, hoping to ride one of the personal belongings tubs through the X-ray machine.

  “Breeders!” Julia heard someone say with a sneer.

  “Sure hope they aren’t on my flight,” added another.

  After three unsuccessful attempts to move through the scanner, the unruly clan finally cleared security thanks to a supervisor who overruled an entry-level officer trying to validate his existence. Nineteen minutes and fifty-three, fifty-two, fifty-one seconds remained for twelve others to pass before Julia could sprint to her gate. Still too close to call.

  Julia pulled up Angie’s message to consider her options should she miss the flight.

  HI JULIA: I’d love to reconnect! Kevin suggested that we plan a girls’ getaway. Let me know if you can arrive by 6 p.m. and I’ll reserve dinner at Ruth’s Chris and then we can stay at the Four Seasons to enjoy morning pampering in the spa. Our guest room is yours if you want to stay at the house Saturday and Sunday. I can’t wait to see you! I need a break, and a friend.

  Julia smiled, then panicked. She hadn’t intended to spend the entire weekend with Angie. One evening would have been more than enough. But she had accepted the offer anyway. Time with the family might prove helpful. Who better to gain access to Kevin’s bright spots coalition than his wife’s former, renewed best friend?

  * * *

  The cabin door closed moments after Julia found a space to stuff her carry-on bag. The flight attendant seemed eager to get his final passenger seated before the last two minutes and forty-one seconds drained from the on-time-departure countdown clock. A heavyset woman shimmied herself out of the aisle seat, clearly disappointed by Julia’s arrival.

  Julia looked beyond her temporary torture chamber to see her other tormentor, an ornery looking five-year-old boy freshly incensed by a father’s tongue-lashing—the same kid who had delayed the security line to turn the X-ray machine into an amusement park ride. Noticing the child’s flustered parents and baby sister seated across the adjoining aisle, Julia decided to take a shot. “Want to sit in the middle seat to be closer to your mommy and daddy?”

  “I wanna look out the window!”

  Of course.

  Buckling her belt while the large woman squeezed back into her seat, Julia breathed a sigh of relief over having made the flight.

  “Welcome aboard American United Flight two-five-five to Washington, DC,” the voice said with haste. Julia tuned out the captain to plan her next three hours. She needed to act preemptively before either seatmate could initiate conversation. Remembering the journal files Jeremy Santos had given her a few days before, she reached for the tablet buried in the shoulder bag she had stuffed in the space beneath her feet. A quick retrieval provided the ideal excuse to lock herself behind an invisible wall of solitary confinement.

  “My name is Tyler. What’s yours?”

  In no mood to chat, Julia placed her index finger over her lips to imply the captain expected silence from every passenger.

  “Can I play a game?” the boy asked, after glancing to make sure his parents weren’t listening to his hushed request. “My daddy lets me play games on his tablet in the car.”

  Ignoring the question, Julia searched her bag for an age-appropriate consolation prize. “Would you like a breath mint?”

  The boy nodded eagerly before forcing a mock gag at the wintergreen scent.

  The lights dimmed for the video safety instructions. Seven minutes later Julia opened the Santos folder while the kid admired his bird’s-eye view of the snowcapped mountains below.

  The folder contained two icons. The first, labeled SYLVIA SANTOS’S JOURNAL, contained files sequenced from August of 2023 through a final entry entered the morning of Antonio’s transition. The second, titled ANTONIO’S MUSINGS, contained less than half as many files.

  Julia chose the mother’s journal. Tempted to read the last date first, she decided to start at the beginning out of respect for Jeremy’s intent.

  August 19, 2023: Last week we brought Antonio home from the hospital. He’s a perfect little gentleman, never crying except when hungry. Last night he slept through the night. Jeremy didn’t do that for months. Ramon seemed relieved. He’s been on edge over the responsibility of another child. Seems we’re off to a good start. Thank you, God, for another beautiful boy!

  August 30, 2023: I’m finally feeling rested enough to journal again. Nina took the boys last night to give Ramon and me a break from diapers and the feeding schedule. I’ve healed up pretty well so we made love for the first time since seven months pregnant. Probably a mistake since I haven’t had my episiotomy follow-up exam. I’m a bit sore this morning. But neither of us could stop ourselves. I think it relieved some of Ramon’s stress. Mine too.

  September 5, 2023: I nearly had a heart attack today when Jeremy dropped Antonio on his tiny head. He insisted he was strong enough to hold his brother. My heart melted when he bent over to kiss Antonio’s hairless forehead. It happened when I left them for a second to grab the camera. I’m such an idiot! I’m grateful he fell on the rug instead of hitting the end table. I would never forgive myself if I let something like that happen. I wasn’t going to tell Ramon, but Jeremy blurted out “Antonio fell on his head!” as soon as Daddy walked in the door. The lack of fear in Ramon’s eyes scared me. The baby is fine, but I’m a bit shaken.

  The further Julia read the larger the gaps became, once or twice per week at the beginning dwindling down to once every few months toward the end. Either Sylvia Santos lacked journaling discipline or, more likely, Jeremy had screened and selected specific entries to reveal a central narrative. Julia scanned through the newborn years, trying to piece together the main plot of Act One.

  Scene One: A young wife tries to preserve her sexually charged marriage despite a husband who resents the interruption of two kids.

  Scene Two: Sex becomes infrequent as she becomes less available to him and he seems less interested in her.

  Scene Three: The husband becomes more patient with their waning passion. Too patient. She fears he has been having his needs met elsewhere but is too frightened to risk confrontation.

  Scene Four: Early signs something is wrong with Antonio trump concerns about the marriage. Mom hides her worries and avoids genetic testing because she doesn’t want to further disenchant an increasingly detached dad.

  After nearly thirty minutes of reading, Julia noticed a long gap between the next two journal dates. She clicked the first, which was much longer than prior entries. The start of Act Two.

  September 12, 2026: I’ve been crying most of the past two days. My worst fears are true. The doctor said Antonio’s slow development is caused by a motor neuron disease. I can’t remember the initials or what they stand for. All I know is that he won’t get better. The doctor said he will most likely get worse over time. He wouldn’t say how much worse since the disease has usually infected adults. Infected is the wrong word. Inherited. He said Antonio has a genetic disorder that could have been screened out.

  I feel so guilty.

  How am I going to tell Ramon? I’m glad he’s out of town. I need to think.

  Nina and Marcos said they would pray for healing. They go to a church where people do that sort of thing. They said I needed to have faith. But the doctor told me Antonio would gradually lose all use of his limbs and his voice. Dear God! Why my son? Why anyone?

  Julia opened the next journal entry, propelling her more than six months forward in time.

  March 21, 2027: Ramon is gone. He walked into the house after driving home from the airport yester
day and said we needed to talk. He looked slumpish, like a kid forced to tell the neighbor he smashed his window with a baseball. I knew something was wrong when I noticed him carrying a large, new suitcase instead of the travel bag he’d taken three days earlier. I asked him to wait a minute because I was in the middle of bathing Antonio. He started to fidget, like I was messing up his perfect plan. I didn’t know the other woman was in the car impatiently waiting for him to wrap up the last-minute detail of his marriage and family.

  He slunk into our room to pack his clothes. He found Jeremy hiding in the closet.

  “Close the door, Daddy,” he said. “I’m playing hide-and-seek with Mommy!” I had forgotten about the search.

  The bastard told Jeremy first. I learned of my divorce eavesdropping on a little boy’s nightmare.

  “You have to go where?”

  “Don’t worry, buddy. I’ll visit you all the time. I just can’t live with your mommy anymore.”

  Holding Antonio in a towel at the door, I started to cry. Not for me. For Jeremy. I saw the panic in his face, a five-year-old desperately trying to think of how he might prevent his daddy’s exile. He looked at me, pleading with his eyes. “Do something to make it all right.”

  I should have listened to Nina. She suspected an affair. I got mad at her, partly because I knew she was right. Ramon had been pretending for more than a year. I had been tiptoeing around his agitation and apathy ever since receiving Antonio’s genetic profile.

  Ramon said he needs more than I can give. He’s right. I miss the days he couldn’t keep his hands off me. Kids change things, especially one like Antonio. I guess it’s my own fault. I fell for the red-hot lover instead of a plain-vanilla guy like Nina’s husband. I think Marcos has hugged Antonio more often than Ramon has. I’ve known Antonio was doomed to grow up without his father’s affection. Now Jeremy will too.

  God forgive me.

  God help me.

  A tap on her wrist startled Julia, reminding her of her imprisonment. She looked up to notice the flight attendant handing her a small carton of chocolate milk.

  “Would you pass this, please?”

  She handed the drink to the eager child. He punched the tab and took his first sip, a tiny trickle of brown escaping the side of his mouth. It dripped onto the corner of a half-finished coloring book page.

  Julia studied the boy’s carefree face, trying to imagine him in place of another five-year-old watching a father pack, weeping after another cancellation of a promised visit, pleading with his mother to let Daddy come back home. She turned and looked across the aisle at Tyler’s father, a plain-vanilla husband rubbing his wife’s arm as she stole a nap while their baby gulped a bottle of juice.

  The kind of man her sister Maria would never notice, let alone date.

  The kind of breeder her best editorials scorned.

  The kind of daddy the boy seated beside her would kiss good night.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The eighth and final pretzel clung stubbornly to the bottom of a tiny plastic bag, resisting Julia’s attempt to secure one last tease of nourishment. She should have eaten before boarding the plane but had failed to account for the two-hour time difference. Landing in DC at one o’clock eastern meant flying right through her usual lunch. A diet soda and mini carb packet couldn’t compete with the aroma of a turkey-and-salami sandwich her plump seatmate pulled from a large lap purse or the apple slices Tyler had consumed between sips of chocolate milk. Her stomach growled beneath the hum of jet engines propelling 350 passengers toward the most powerful city on earth.

  With more than an hour remaining on the flight Julia debated between reading more of the Santos journals and compiling a list of questions for her upcoming interviews. Despite the human drama of the Santos story, her career depended on understanding and exposing the cryptic Bright Spots proposal. She closed the journal folder to open her calendar, where she found two Monday appointments.

  10:30 A.M.: NEVADA CONGRESSWOMAN NICOLE FLOREA (CAPITOL BUILDING)

  3:00 P.M.: TRISHA SAYERS, CEO OF HER LOOK INC. (101 WATERSIDE COURT NEAR NATIONAL HARBOR OFFICE COMPLEX)

  Paul had arranged the interviews with both longtime acquaintances. He had said Nicole Florea would be a great voice to counter any anti–Youth Initiative rhetoric. Florea was a respected fiscal conservative, so she would be difficult for anyone on the radical right to marginalize. Trisha Sayers, a heroine of capitalism who embodied the dramatic ascent of the fairer sex, could bring celebrity and glamour to the debate. Together they would provide a strong voice for progressive ideas. That was the easy part. Getting inside the mind of anti-progressives would likely prove much more difficult.

  Before drafting a list of interview questions, Julia immersed herself in the topic. She had compiled a CliffsNotes version of the Youth Initiative controversy starting with the 2036 presidential election cycle.

  It was the heyday of the new conservative movement that won elections in landslides by promising an economic utopia. It took credit for curtailing restrictive governmental regulations on the burgeoning genetic technologies industry. Nearly a hundred thousand ideas had been filed with the global patent office since 2031, when the movement had managed to pass the Genomic Frontier legislation removing many restrictive ethical safeguards from university and corporate scientists. Most inventions had attracted massive infusions of research and development funding from aging venture capitalists hoping to cash in on a gold rush of health-care and life-enhancement innovations.

  Julia recalled one of her earliest editorials. She had been a young journalist at the time. She reluctantly praised fiscal conservatives who had courageously defied their religiously rigid base. “It’s high time level heads started to find common ground with social progressives,” she had written.

  RAP Syndicate ran a daily feature in the Life and Tech department highlighting some of the most promising new developments. She recalled several headlines.

  CANCER EXTINCT IN FIVE YEARS?

  HORMONE GLAND REFURBISHED IN 90-YEAR-OLD MAN

  WILL ARTIFICIAL WOMBS SAVE US FROM STRETCH MARKS?

  OBESITY ON THE RUN AS NANO-BOTS DEVOUR FAT CELLS

  DOUBLE-SIZE CORN HUSKS YIELD CHEAPER BIOFUEL

  Lance Lowman rode a wave of optimistic speculation into the White House in 2036, his party ushering in what some described as a return to Camelot: no wars, terrorist attacks in decline, and stock markets soaring. Within a few short years, said common wisdom, decades-old deficits would evaporate in the wake of unprecedented economic growth.

  Then the bubble burst. Too few patents delivered on their promises, causing skittish seniors to pull out of stocks to salvage what remained of their dwindling retirement savings. The few genetic advances that turned a profit did so on the backs of taxpayers because they served the federally subsidized senior-care industry. Federal and state entitlement spending mushroomed. The boom brought very little of the new growth that had been projected. A bullish gen-tech stock boom turned bearish overnight, losing nearly half of its value in less than a month.

  The crusading radicals on the far right seemed to gloat. “Demographics control destiny,” they chided, claiming falling fertility had undercut what little growth had come from all those seniors’ investing in their own longevity. “More 80-year-olds performing in bed can’t mask our true impotence,” wrote a particularly obnoxious columnist. “We are paying the price for neglecting to produce a new crop of entrepreneurs and taxpayers.”

  Whatever the reason, optimistic growth projections slammed into the wall of massive spending increases, leaving the president’s fiscal conservatives holding the gun at the very moment people wondered who had killed the economy.

  To his credit, the president took decisive action. He proposed a solution that angered his far-right-wing supporters but that united the far left and moderate elements of both political parties. The Youth Initiative seemed based on a commonsense and compassionate idea: to give seniors and other dependent adults the right to tra
nsition resources to the younger generation rather than hoard it for their own preservation. Rejecting the failed policies of other developed nations with aging populations, the president said, “America should chart a boldly different course that continues our unique legacy of individual autonomy and concern for the common welfare.” In other words, reduce entitlement spending and incentivize wealth transfer from those draining the economy.

  The proposal passed both houses of Congress with a two-thirds majority. If even 5 percent of ailing seniors opted for transition, projected the Congressional Budget Office, the initiative could reduce federal entitlement spending by hundreds of billions per year. It would also improve the economic situation for millions of younger workers while generating a healthy revenue stream that would keep the program in the black. A win-win-win.

  Not surprisingly, however, some religious leaders expressed moral outrage and called the Youth Initiative “a Nazi-like solution that diminishes the dignity of human life.”

  Julia had never understood their objections. She wondered how letting each person choose his or her expiration date takes away dignity. Wasn’t personal autonomy a great American value? Why would anyone want to stop a sickly, aging senior from giving scarce resources to others by transitioning?

  But, unbelievably, many protested. The usual suspects: religious zealots who would rather thump Bibles than solve problems, frumpy moms who would rather pollute the planet than use birth control, and patriarchal men who thought the only good female was a pregnant one. This same backward thinking had come to inform growing opposition to the transition industry.

  Opening a blank document file, Julia proceeded to capture questions that could steer interviewees toward the expectations of one person, Paul Daugherty. It was his view, not theirs, that would dominate the feature. It was his opinion alone that would determine her professional fate. It was his agenda, not the facts, that would dictate success.