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FOR Meg

I think the rules were unlike there. Information technology was all about science, but the science was magical. Information technology didn't care about whether something could be done. Information technology was near whether it should exist washed, and the answer was e'er, always yes.

—JACK WOLCOTT

Function I

JACK AND JILL LIVE Upward THE Loma

1

THE Dangerous Allure OF OTHER PEOPLE'Due south CHILDREN

PEOPLE WHO KNEW Chester and Serena Wolcott socially would accept placed money on the thought that the couple would never choose to have children. They were not the parenting kind, by any reasonable estimation. Chester enjoyed silence and solitude when he was working in his home office, and viewed the slightest departure from routine as an enormous, unforgiveable disruption. Children would be more a slight departure from routine. Children would exist the nuclear option where routine was concerned. Serena enjoyed gardening and sitting on the lath of diverse tidy, elegant nonprofits, and paying other people to maintain her home in a spotless state. Children were messes walking. They were trampled petunias and baseballs through picture windows, and they had no place in the carefully ordered world the Wolcotts inhabited.

What those people didn't see was the way the partners at Chester'due south law firm brought their sons to work, handsome little clones of their fathers in age-advisable menswear, future kings of the earth in their perfectly shined shoes, with their perfectly modulated voices. He watched, increasingly envious, every bit junior partners brought in pictures of their ain sleeping sons and were lauded, and for what? Reproducing! Something and so elementary that any animate being in the field could do it.

At night, he started dreaming of perfectly polite fiddling boys with his hair and Serena's optics, their blazers buttoned merely so, the partners effulgent beneficently at this proof of what a family human being he was.

What those people didn't see was the way some of the women on Serena'south boards would occasionally bring their daughters with them, making apologies about incompetent nannies or unwell babysitters, all while secretly gloating as everyone rushed to ooh and ahh over their beautiful infant girls. They were a garden in their own right, those privileged daughters in their gowns of lace and taffeta, and they would spend meetings and tea parties playing peacefully on the edge of the rug, cuddling their stuffed toys and feeding imaginary cookies to their dollies. Everyone she knew was quick to compliment those women for their sacrifices, and for what? Having a infant! Something so easy that people had been doing information technology since time began.

At night, she started dreaming of beautifully composed little girls with her oral fissure and Chester's nose, their dresses explosions of fripperies and frills, the ladies falling over themselves to exist the start to tell her how wonderful her daughter was.

This, you run into, is the true danger of children: they are ambushes, each and every ane of them. A person may expect at someone else's child and see but the surface, the shiny shoes or the perfect curls. They practice non run across the tears and the tantrums, the late nights, the sleepless hours, the worry. They do not fifty-fifty see the love, not really. It can be easy, when looking at children from the outside, to believe that they are things, dolls designed and programmed by their parents to behave in i manner, post-obit one ready of rules. It tin can exist easy, when continuing on the lofty shores of adulthood, non to remember that every adult was in one case a child, with ideas and ambitions of their own.

It can be piece of cake, in the end, to forget that children are people, and that people will do what people will practise, the consequences be damned.

It was correct after Christmas—round after round of interminable part parties and charity events—when Chester turned to Serena and said, "I take something I would like to discuss with you."

"I want to have a babe," she replied.

Chester paused. He was an orderly man with an orderly married woman, living in an ordinary, orderly life. He wasn't used to her being quite so open with her desires or, indeed, having desires at all. It was dismaying … and a trifle heady, if he were existence honest.

Finally, he smiled, and said, "That was what I wanted to talk to you virtually."

At that place are people in this world—proficient, honest, hard-working people—who want nothing more to have a baby, and who try for years to conceive one without the slightest success. In that location are people who must run across doctors in small, sterile rooms, hearing terrifying proclamations about how much it will cost to even begin hoping. At that place are people who must continue quests, chasing down the north wind to enquire for directions to the House of the Moon, where wishes can be granted, if the 60 minutes is correct and the demand is great enough. There are people who will try, and try, and try, and receive nothing for their efforts simply a broken center.

Chester and Serena went upstairs to their room, to the bed they shared, and Chester did non put on a condom, and Serena did not remind him, and that was that. The next morning, she stopped taking her birth command pills. Three weeks later, she missed her catamenia, which had been equally orderly and on-fourth dimension equally the residue of her life since she was twelve years old. Two weeks afterwards that, she sat in a pocket-size white room while a kindly human in a long white coat told her that she was going to be a mother.

"How long earlier we can get a picture of the baby?" asked Chester, already imagining himself showing it to the men at the function, jaw strong, gaze afar, like he was lost in dreams of playing catch with his sonhoped-for.

"Yes, how long?" asked Serena. The women she worked with always shrieked and fawned when someone arrived with a new sonogram to pass effectually the group. How nice it would exist, to finally be the center of attention!

The doctor, who had dealt with his share of eager parents, smiled. "You're about five weeks along," he said. "I don't recommend an ultrasound before twelve weeks, nether normal circumstances. Now, this is your first pregnancy. Y'all may desire to wait before telling anyone that y'all're pregnant. Everything seems normal now, but it's early days yet, and it will be easier if you don't have to take back an announcement."

Serena looked bemused. Chester fumed. To fifty-fifty advise that his wife might exist so bad at being pregnant—something so simple that any fool off the street could do it—was offensive in ways he didn't even have words for. But Dr. Tozer had been recommended by one of the partners at his firm, with a knowing twinkle in his eye, and Chester simply couldn't meet a manner to alter doctors without offending someone too important to offend.

"Twelve weeks, and then," said Chester. "What do we do until and so?"

Dr. Tozer told them. Vitamins and nutrition and reading, then much reading. Information technology was similar the human being expected their baby to be the near difficult in the history of the world, with all the reading that he assigned. But they

did it, dutifully, like they were post-obit the steps of a magical spell that would summon the perfect child straight into their artillery. They never discussed whether they were hoping for a male child or a daughter; both of them knew, and so completely, what they were going to have that it seemed unnecessary. So Chester went to bed each night dreaming of his son, while Serena dreamt of her girl, and for a time, they both believed that parenthood was perfect.

They didn't mind to Dr. Tozer's advice virtually keeping the pregnancy a secret, of course. When something was this adept, it needed to be shared. Their friends, who had never seen them as the parenting type, were confused simply supportive. Their colleagues, who didn't know them well enough to empathise what a bad idea this was, were enthusiastic. Chester and Serena shook their heads and fabricated lofty comments nearly learning who their "existent" friends were.

Serena went to her board meetings and smiled contently as the other women told her that she was beautiful, that she was glowing, that motherhood "suited her."

Chester went to his function and found that several of the partners were dropping by "just to chat" about his impending fatherhood, offering communication, offering esprit.

Everything was perfect.

They went to their first ultrasound appointment together, and Serena held Chester's hand as the technician rubbed blueish slime over her abdomen and rolled the wand across it. The moving-picture show began developing. For the beginning fourth dimension, Serena felt a pang of business organization. What if there was something wrong with the baby? What if Dr. Tozer had been right, and the pregnancy should have remained a hush-hush, at least for a little while?

"Well?" asked Chester.

"You wanted to know the baby'south gender, yes?" asked the technician.

He nodded.

"Y'all take a perfect baby girl," said the technician.

Serena laughed in vindicated delight, the sound dying when she saw the scowl on Chester'due south face. All of a sudden, the things they hadn't discussed seemed large enough to fill the room.

The technician gasped. "I have a 2nd heartbeat," she said.

They both turned to expect at her.

"Twins," she said.

"Is the second baby a male child or a girl?" asked Chester.

The technician hesitated. "The first baby is blocking our view," she hedged. "It's difficult to say for certain—"

"Guess," said Chester.

"I'thousand agape it would non be ethical for me to guess at this stage," said the technician. "I'll make you some other appointment, for two weeks from at present. Babies move around in the womb. We should be able to get a ameliorate view so."

They did not get a ameliorate view. The first infant remained stubbornly in forepart, and the 2d infant remained stubbornly in back, and the Wolcotts fabricated it all the fashion to the commitment room—for a scheduled induction, of class, the date chosen past common agreement and circled in their day planners—hoping quietly that they were well-nigh to become the proud parents of both son and daughter, completing their nuclear family on the kickoff try. Both of them were slightly smug well-nigh the thought. It smacked of efficiency, of tailoring the perfect solution right out the gate.

(The idea that babies would get children, and children would go people, never occurred to them. The concept that mayhap biology was not destiny, and that not all footling girls would be pretty princesses, and non all little boys would exist brave soldiers, likewise never occurred to them. Things might have been easier if those ideas had ever slithered into their heads, unwanted simply undeniably important. Alas, their minds were made up, and left no room for such revolutionary opinions.)

The labor took longer than planned. Serena did not want a C-department if she could help it, did not want the scarring and the mess, and so she pushed when she was told to push, and rested when she was told to residue, and gave nascence to her start child at v minutes to midnight on September fifteenth. The doctor passed the baby to a waiting nurse, announced, "Information technology's a daughter," and bent back over his patient.

Chester, who had been belongings out hope that the reticent boy-child would push his way forward and claim the vaunted position of firstborn, said nothing as he held his wife's hand and listened to her straining to miscarry their second child. Her face was scarlet, and the sounds she was making were zero short of animate being. It was horrifying. He couldn't imagine a circumstance under which he would bear upon her ever once more. No; it was good that they were having both their children at once. This mode, it would be over and done with.

A slap; a wail; and the doc'southward vocalization proudly proclaiming, "Information technology's another good for you babe daughter!"

Serena fainted.

Chester envied her.

* * *

LATER, WHEN SERENA WAS tucked safe in her private room with Chester beside her and the nurses asked if they wanted to encounter their daughters, they said yes, of grade. How could they have said anything unlike? They were parents now, and parenthood came with expectations. Parenthood came with rules. If they failed to meet those expectations, they would be labeled unfit in the optics of everyone they knew, and the consequences of that, well …

They were unthinkable.

The nurses returned with two pink-faced, hairless things that looked more like grubs or goblins than anything man. "One for each of y'all," twinkled a nurse, and handed Chester a tight-swaddled baby like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.

"Have you lot idea almost names?" asked another, handing Serena the 2nd infant.

"My mother'due south name was Jacqueline," said Serena cautiously, glancing at Chester. They had discussed names, naturally, i for a girl, one for a male child. They had never considered the need to name ii girls.

"Our caput partner'south married woman is named Jillian," said Chester. He could claim it was his mother'southward name if he needed to. No one would know. No one would always know.

"Jack and Jill," said the start nurse, with a smile. "Beautiful."

"Jacqueline and Jillian," corrected Chester frostily. "No daughter of mine will go by something as base and undignified as a nickname."

The nurse'southward smile faded. "Of form not," she said, when what she really meant was "of course they will," and "you lot'll see shortly enough."

Serena and Chester Wolcott had fallen casualty to the dangerous allure of other people's children. They would larn the error of their ways soon enough. People like them ever did.

2

PRACTICALLY PERFECT IN VIRTUALLY NO Means

THE WOLCOTTS LIVED in a firm at the top of a loma in the middle of a fashionable neighborhood where every house looked alike. The homeowner's association allowed for three colors of exterior pigment (two colors too many, in the minds of many of the residents), a strict variety of contend and hedge styles around the front lawn, and small, relatively quiet dogs from a very curt list of breeds. Nigh residents elected not to have dogs, rather than deal with the complicated process of filling out the permits and applications required to own one.

All of this conformity was designed not to strangle merely to comfort, allowing the people who lived at that place to relax into a perfectly ordered world. At dark, the air was serenity. Safety. Secure.

Salvage, of course, for the Wolcott home, where the silence was separate by healthy wails from two sets of developing lungs. Serena sabbatum in the dining room, staring blankly at the two screaming babies.

"You lot've had a bottle," she informed them. "You lot've been inverse. Yous've been walked around the firm while I bounced you and sang that dreadful song most the spider. Why are you yet crying?"

Jacqueline and Jillian, who were crying for some of the many reasons that babies cry—they were cold, they were distressed, they were offended by the existence of gravity—continued to wail. Serena stared at them in dismay. No one had told her that babies would weep all the time. Oh, there had been comments about it in the books she'd read, simply she had assumed that they were but referring to bad parents who failed to accept a properly firm hand with their offspring.

"Can't you shut them up?" demanded Chester from b

ehind her. She didn't have to turn to know that he was standing in the doorway in his dressing gown, scowling at all three of them—every bit if it were somehow her mistake that babies seemed designed to scream without cease! He had been complicit in the cosmos of their daughters, but now that they were here, he wanted virtually nada to do with them.

"I've been trying," she said. "I don't know what they desire, and they tin't tell me. I don't … I don't know what to do."

Chester had non slept properly in three days. He was starting to fearfulness the moment when it would impact his work and catch the attention of the partners, painting him and his parenting abilities in a poor lite. Perhaps it was desperation, or perhaps information technology was a moment of rare and incommunicable clarity.

"I'm calling my female parent," he said.

Chester Wolcott was the youngest of three children: past the fourth dimension he had come forth, the mistakes had been made, the lessons had been learned, and his parents had been comfortable with the process of parenting. His mother was an unforgivably soppy, impractical woman, but she knew how to burp a baby, and mayhap by inviting her at present, while Jacqueline and Jillian were too young to be influenced by her ideas about the globe, they could avert inviting her later, when she might actually practice some impairment.

Serena would normally have objected to the thought of her mother in law invading her home, setting everything out of gild. With the babies screaming and the house already in disarray, all she could do was nod.

Chester made the call first thing in the morning.

Louise Wolcott arrived on the train eight hours later.

By the standards of anyone relieve for her ruthlessly regimented son, Louise was a disciplined, orderly adult female. She liked the globe to make sense and follow the rules. By the standards of her son, she was a hopeless dreamer. She thought the world was capable of kindness; she idea people were essentially adept and only waiting for an opportunity to show it.

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