The Oregon Experiment (27 page)

At that the decision was made, and they all went inside.

Clay obviously knew some of the women in the living room—no shortage of twenty-year-old moms in Douglas. Preschoolers ran screaming around the tiny bungalow, so far as she could tell just three little rooms with tall windows and dark woodwork and doors. A comfy old couch and loveseat, an oak table piled with papers and a computer. On the wall beside it there was a poster reading
Girls Say Yes to Boys Who Say No
. Then she noticed—what the hell?—a flier headed
The Oregon Experiment
. Naomi could smell the sharp tang of violation releasing from her pores. What had Scanlon
done
?

Royce led her by the elbow into the kitchen. “She’s probably got some nice teas, too.”

And then Naomi saw her standing there on the black and white tiled floor at a wooden table painted robin’s-egg blue, her long back and full hips, her straight blond hair with the tips dipped in brown.

“Hey,” Royce said, and she turned.

What a smile. What a mouth. “Hi, Sequoia,” Naomi said.

“You know each other?” Royce asked, as Sequoia tried to place Naomi.

“Scanlon’s wife,” Naomi prompted.

“Wow! Naomi.” Sequoia hugged her. “Thanks for coming.”

The smell of her was heady, woody overall: cinnamon, sandalwood, baking, lactation, sharp underarms, and the sweet sappy oils in her scalp.

“Is Scanlon here? Did you bring Sammy?”

Naomi was surprised her baby’s name rolled so easily off this woman’s tongue. “Neither,” she said.

“I guess Sammy’s a little young,” Sequoia said as two boys chased each other into the kitchen, under the table, and out the back door. Then she turned to Royce and said, “Her husband’s the director of the movement.”

“No way,” Royce said. “The professor?”

“He’s given us a whole new life,” Sequoia said.

“A godsend,” Naomi added, pretty sure given the moonbeams shining from the two women’s faces that they missed her facetiousness. “Anyway, I can’t really stay. I’ve got to get home to the boys.”

“Coffee,” Royce suddenly remembered. “Naomi needs a quick score.”

“Not a problem,” Sequoia said, and in a flash she was pressing a warm mug into Naomi’s hands, then a warm kiss to her cheek. Although she used inexpensive and simple solid fragrances, her smell was all her own. It was much too rough for a wide market, but maybe its general personality and attitude could be a guide. Sequoia was genuine and confident. She was, without deceit or illusion, mysterious, with a sense that her mystery was surprising and glorious, full of curiosity. She was fresh without being innocent or girlish. Sequoia was new territory, a new landscape.

Applause roared up from the living room. “The guest of honor’s here!” someone shouted. Kids ran in from the backyard and the bedroom, swarming to the front door. Naomi expected a clown or a gorilla, but when she looked back over her shoulder she only saw a mom and, somewhere within the gang of ecstatic kids, her child.

Sequoia pulled two boxes from the freezer and waded into the frenzy of children, calling out, “I’ve got the popsicles.”

Naomi leaned in the kitchen doorway, exchanging a glance across the living room with Clay. He was sitting on a stool in the corner between a guitar and a didjuridu, surrounded by maracas, a tambourine, bells, and oatmeal-box drums. They held the glance for several seconds. He’d laid his life bare. Or he’d begun to. He’d revealed himself, exposed himself. She remembered her labor. The smell of gasoline. His oily boots and tiny red ears. Like Naomi, he had a child who was lost to him. But
he
hadn’t sat in a lawyer’s office on a cool Thursday afternoon—too close to a paralegal with raw onions and Dijon mustard on her breath, grapefruit-scented carpet cleaner rising from the floor—and signed his baby away. Clay was not culpable. As she surveyed the room, she could believe all of these girls were single moms. The horrible truth was that she could’ve managed just fine with Joshua.

She gulped her coffee, right back where she’d started, condemning herself for surrendering her baby and resolving further to devote every shred of herself to Sammy.

The kids were trading popsicles, licking each other’s, a few at a time. Unnecessarily, Naomi thought, the moms and the three conspicuous dads were encouraging it.

A blond girl squatting by Naomi’s feet and sharing a popsicle with her friend said, “I have just one mommy.”

“I
know,
” the friend replied. “But if you had
two
mommies, you’d be adopted and your hair would be black.”

Sequoia backed up next to Naomi saying, “This is our third party. And not a single infection. But this time I’m hopeful—we’ve definitely got a live one.”

And then Naomi realized the passing of popsicles was actually methodical. One particular child sucked on all the popsicles in turn, then passed them on to the others. And as the crowd of preschoolers spread out, she saw that the lucky child’s face—a little girl with pigtails—was completely covered in chicken pox.

“Holy shit,” she said aloud, dropping her coffee on the counter and holding her breath until she’d escaped onto the back deck.

Sequoia was right behind her. “Are you okay?”

She wanted to wash her hands. And her face. She wanted a shower. “I
just didn’t …” She stepped out of the rain, under the canopy of a giant redwood tree.

“You didn’t have chicken pox as a kid?”

“I don’t know. Probably.”

“That’s the way to do it.” Sequoia shook her head. “Now all these parents are letting their kids get shot up with vaccine—it’s barbaric.”

The deck was fitted around the two-foot trunk of the redwood. A bench led to a hot tub, and a few stairs dropped down to the fenced-in garden, which Naomi scanned for a gate, an exit.

“That one’s Trinity’s tree,” Sequoia said. “A weeping pussy willow. Planted the day she was born.”

“Heavy work after giving birth,” Naomi joked.

“My friends were here. And the midwife. But I got down on my knees and laid in Trinity’s placenta.”

The kitchen door opened, and Clay stepped out on the deck. He and Sequoia stared at each other for a long moment until he finally said, “From the park. You got hit in the mouth with the swing.”

“Right,” she said. That smile.

Clay touched his upper lip. “You got a scar.”

She shook her head. “I had that already.”

Naomi jumped in and introduced them.

“Anyway, I should motor,” Clay said.

Sequoia hugged him. “I’m glad to have you in my home.”

When she released him, he and Naomi looked at each other awkwardly, then she stepped toward him with her arms outspread.

“That was fun, Clay,” she said, her breasts tender as they hugged, her nose at his ear. They separated, and he looked down at his boots, then abruptly turned and left through the house.

Sequoia had stepped down into the garden, where she was pulling baby carrots from a raised bed under a canopy of milky clear plastic, then swishing them in a bucket of water.

They came out so orange Naomi thought she could smell them. “Winter carrots?” she asked.

“Year-round. I stagger them. Lettuce, too.” She pointed to more covered beds. “Broccoli, kale, radishes. If you’re serious about being a locavore.…”

As she spoke, Naomi examined the three clawfoot bathtubs situated at different levels beside the deck, connected by pipes. They made her think
of a stagecoach stop in the Old West, run by a single woman with baby carrots hammocked in her apron, where a man might get a room and his back scrubbed in the bath and maybe something more.

“That’s my gray water system,” Sequoia said. “The sinks and shower drain through the pebbles and charcoal in the tubs, and I can use it to water the garden all summer.”

Naomi looked back to the hot tub. She walked over to it, squatted down, and sniffed with a start. That was what she’d smelled on Scanlon last week. He and Sequoia had been hot tubbing.

She stood by the kitchen door, looking through the glass at the kids chasing and rolling around with each other like a litter of puppies, their young mothers hopeful they’d catch these good chicken pox.

She glanced at the wall clock. God, it was nearly five. She had to get home. She missed Sammy with an ache in her breasts, as if she hadn’t seen him in days. “I should go too,” she said.

“How’s the nose, if you don’t mind my asking? And your infections?”

“Nose is great,” she said. “Thanks for all the referrals. Nursing’s still a pain, though.”

She let herself be guided onto a bench beside the hot tub, where Sequoia squatted down in front of her, took off her shoes, and squeezed her feet. Pure pleasure. Slowly, on her left foot Sequoia worked her thumbs harder and deeper into a soft spot between two pearl-sized bones, until she was pressing so hard Naomi began to cry, releasing a wave of relief, like the soft brushing of ferns from her pelvis to breasts. Sequoia did the same to her other foot, then kissed them both.

“Oh my God,” Naomi said. “I’ve been ravished.”

Sequoia slipped Naomi’s feet back in her shoes. “You deserve a good ravishing. It’s hard to have a baby in a new environment.”

“At least I’m not alone. I mean, were you alone?”

“I was,” Sequoia said, gently tying Naomi’s laces. “If you mean Trinity’s father. But I was much more alone
before
she was born. Having a baby, having girlfriends around, my garden, the café—my passions—I didn’t feel alone at all. I felt I’d finally found my place in the world.”

Sequoia helped her stand, and Naomi decided she’d call Blaine Maxwell tonight. After eight years without her nose, she’d been denying herself the full celebration of its return in the name of maternal devotion. She couldn’t wait to get a whiff of the Pacific leaping frog. She couldn’t wait to get back to work.

As they hugged, Sequoia’s blond hair draped over Naomi’s face: the wonderful, woody, erotic, dirty scent of Sequoia. How could any man resist her?

With one eye, through the veil of Sequoia’s hair, Naomi saw the girl with chicken pox come into the kitchen from the living room, and right behind her—long legs and chinos—was Scanlon. With Sammy on his shoulder!

She shot through the door, knocking Sequoia through with her. “Out!” she shouted. “Out!”

“Hey, Scanlon,” Sequoia said.
“Namaste.”

“Don’t touch anything,” Naomi told him, then turned to Sequoia. “The baby hasn’t been vaccinated!”

“Good for you,” Sequoia said.

“
Yet!
Not
yet
!”

The infected kid stood at the fridge drinking apple juice from the jug.

“Scanlon! Turn around,” she ordered. “Walk to the door and don’t even brush up against anything. Your shoes touch the floor. That’s it!”

A
week later, Scanlon was laughing in his office with two undergrads when the phone rang. Strong, inspired students, they were preparing an oral report on the importance of music to the civil rights movement—“the most successful mass movement in American history, and it’s got a soundtrack!” Scanlon had said—so he considered letting voicemail pick up, but then, thinking it might be Naomi, he grabbed the phone. Instead, it was a Portland TV station looking for a quote about the Panama Harris sentencing, which was news to Scanlon. “When?” he asked.

“This morning. Twenty-three years. No possibility of parole.”

Scanlon sat back in his chair. “Jesus,” he said, half to himself. “The kid’s a political prisoner.”

“Can you hold a second?” the reporter asked, then cupped a hand over the mouthpiece.

The trial had been a joke. Clearly the court intended to make an example of him, but twenty-three years was shocking.

“We’d like to get your comments on tape,” the reporter said. “Can I send a crew to your office?”

“I have some students with—”

“They could be there in ten minutes, Professor Pratt. They’re at the courthouse. This is a breaking story. The public needs your insights.”

He knew flattery when he heard it but still said, “Come right over.” He
was
flattered. The public
did
need his insights. This wasn’t county court, with locally elected judges, but federal court whose judges were sent by Washington to carry out Washington’s agenda. The prosecutor would keep stirring up fears of terrorism. The public defender would continue to underwhelm. Scanlon could put it all in context.

The initial charge was Criminal Mischief, but by the time the trial began that had multiplied to thirteen felonies including three counts of Arson One. Harris faced a hundred-years-plus sentence for torching three SUVs that, his supporters pointed out, had been repaired and sold by Timber Ford.

Scanlon apologized to his students, and they were shuffling out with a list of songs for their presentation when none other than America Sanchez came rushing down the hall. Her face, in breathless reports from rising rivers and burning forests, always reminded Scanlon of photos of infants under water—an ecstatic zest for the moment.

“Professor Pratt,” she said, extending her slender hand. “It’s so great to meet you.” As they shook, she was already looking at the wall behind Scanlon’s desk, thinking, he was sure, about the camera angles and leading questions that would put her stamp on the interview. “We’ll tape it here in the office,” she said. “In your chair.” Then she gave him an extra squeeze before drawing her hand away. Shameless.

As a soundman pinned a mic to Scanlon’s shirt and lights popped on, glaring in his eyes, he regretted agreeing to this, since anything he said would be reduced to a sound bite. But then he saw his students lingering in the hall, and Ron Dexter hitting on America Sanchez, who was ignoring him, texting, looking altogether unzestful at the moment. Fenton came up behind them with two more department colleagues, Gloria Bishop and Kim Phan. The soundman held up his hands—“Stand back!”—and they obeyed, whispering, watching, and Scanlon suddenly felt two sizes larger. The chair’s tidy little arms were folded over his compact chest, his head tipped sideways as he whispered to Gloria. For eight years, ever since receiving his doctorate, Scanlon had bounced around in jobs that never made him feel he’d achieved anything. And even here, finally on tenure track, he’d entered under the cloud of the
Domestic Policy
embarrassment and now suffered Fenton’s threats.