“I’ve been married almost six years,” I said, and then, because I knew what he was going to ask next, I added, “We’re sterile.”
“I’m sorry, Charlie,” he said. His voice was gentle, but it wasn’t pitying, and, unlike some people, he didn’t turn away from me, as if my sterility were something contagious. “Was it an illness?” he asked.
This too was very forward, but I was getting used to him, and I wasn’t as shocked as I would have been had someone else asked me. “Yes, of ’70,” I said.
“And your husband—the same reason?”
“Yes,” I said, though that wasn’t true. And then I was truly done with the topic, which was really not something to be discussed with strangers, or casual acquaintances, or with anyone, really. The state had worked hard to decrease the stigmatization of sterility. It was now illegal to refuse to rent to a sterile couple, but most of us clustered together anyway, because it was just easier that way: No one looked at you oddly, and moreover, you didn’t have to be confronted by other people’s babies and children, daily reminders of your own inadequacy. Our building, for example, was almost wholly occupied by sterile couples. The previous year, the state made it legal for a sterile person of either sex to marry a fertile person, but as far as I knew, no one actually had, because if you were fertile there was no point in ruining your life like that.
I must have looked strange then, because David touched my shoulder, and I flinched and moved away, but he didn’t seem offended. “I’ve upset you, Charlie,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.” He sighed. “It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, though.”
And then, before I could think of how to respond, he turned and left, giving me another of his salutes. “I’ll see you next week,” he said.
“Okay,” I said, and I stood and watched him walk west until he had disappeared from sight completely.
* * *
I saw David every Saturday after that, and soon it was April and becoming even warmer, so warm that we’d no longer be able to take our walks, and I was trying not to think about what would happen then.
One evening, about a month after I started meeting with David, my husband looked at me at dinner and said, “You seem different.”
“Do I?” I asked. Earlier, David had been telling me stories about growing up in Prefecture Five, and how he and his friends used to climb pecan trees and eat so many nuts they’d get sick. I asked him if he wasn’t scared to pick the nuts, because, legally, all fruiting trees belonged to the state, but he said the state was more relaxed in Prefecture Five. “They really only care about Prefecture Two, because that’s where all the money and power is,” he said. He announced these things comfortably, for anyone to hear, but when I asked him to lower his voice, he looked confused. “Why?” he asked. “I’m not saying anything treasonous,” and I had had to think about it. He wasn’t, it was true, but something about the way he said it made me feel like he was. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“No,” my husband said. “It’s nothing to apologize for. You just look”—and here he studied me, closely, looking at me for much longer than he maybe ever had, so long that I began to feel anxious—“healthy. Content. I’m glad to see it.”
“Thank you,” I finally said, and my husband, whose head was once again bent over his tofu patty, nodded.
That night, as I lay in bed, I realized that it had been weeks now since I had wondered how my husband was spending his free nights. I hadn’t even thought to look in the box for more notes. As I was thinking this, I suddenly saw the house on Bethune Street, and my husband slipping past the half-open door, the man’s voice saying, “You’re late tonight,” as he did, and to distract myself, I thought instead about David, how he had smiled and said I was funny.
Later that night, I woke from a dream. I rarely dreamed, but this one had been so vivid that I was momentarily disoriented when I opened my eyes. I had been walking through the Square with David, and we were standing at the northern entrance, where the Square met Fifth Avenue, when he had put his hands on my shoulders and kissed me. Frustratingly, I couldn’t remember the actual sensation of it, but I knew it had felt good, and that I had enjoyed it. Then I had woken up.
Over the next nights, I dreamed of David kissing me again and again. I felt different things in the dreams: I was scared, but mostly I was excited, and I was also relieved—I had never been kissed before, and I had learned to accept that I never would be. But now here I was, being kissed after all.
Two Saturdays after the kissing dream began, I was once again in the Square with David. It was now the third week of April and therefore unbearably hot, and even David had begun wearing his cooling suit. Cooling suits were effective, but because they were so puffy, they made you walk strangely, and we had to move slowly, both because the suits were bulky and because you didn’t want to overexert yourself.
We were making our second lap around the Square, David telling me more stories about growing up in Prefecture Five, when, all of a sudden, I saw my husband moving in our direction.
I stopped walking. “Charlie?” asked David, looking at me. But I didn’t answer.
By that point, my husband had seen me, and he came toward us. He was alone, and also wearing his cooling suit, and he raised his hand in greeting as he approached us.
“Hello,” he said, as he drew near.
“Hello,” David said.
I introduced them to each other, and they both bowed. They exchanged a few sentences about the weather—effortlessly, as so many people seemed to be able to do. And then my husband continued on his way, heading north, and David and I, west.
“Your husband seems nice,” said David, finally, because I wasn’t saying anything.
“Yes,” I said. “He is nice.”
“Was it an arranged marriage?”
“Yes; my grandfather arranged it,” I said.
I remembered when Grandfather first spoke to me about marriage. I was twenty-one; the previous year, I had been asked to leave my college because my father had been declared an enemy of the state, even though he was long dead. It was a strange period: Depending on the week, there were rumors that the insurgents were gaining ground, followed by reports that the state had beaten them back. The official news promised that the state would prevail, and Grandfather had assured me that that would be true. But he had also said that he wanted to make sure I was safe, that I would have someone to take care of me. “But I have you,” I had said, and he had smiled. “Yes,” he said, “you have my whole heart, little cat. But I won’t live forever, and I want to make sure that you’ll always have someone to protect you, even long after I’m gone.”
I hadn’t said anything to that, because I didn’t like it when Grandfather spoke of dying, but the next week, Grandfather and I had gone to a marriage broker. This was when Grandfather still had a little bit of influence, and the marriage broker he had chosen was one of the most elite in the prefecture; he usually only arranged marriages for residents of Zone Fourteen, but he had agreed to see Grandfather as a favor.