The Fourth Child by Jessica Winter (best classic novels TXT) 📕

hair as Pat hovered over them, so close and so useless, telling her to get control over the situation, Jane, for Christ’s sake, when Sean, not yet two, toddled off down the driveway toward the street, and Pat yelled, “Excuse me, Jane, your child isrunning into the road!” and she bolted to catch Sean, leaving PJ crying and tangled in his straps, and as she lugged her youngestback up to the car, Pat’s face contorted in disbelief at this preposterous woman and her preposterous children. From beginningto end, he hadn’t moved one inch from where he was standing.

The “Excuse me, Jane” was what really made the memory special, the preening fake gentility of it. Jane laughed. Mirela, herhand in Jane’s, laughed, too, and pointed accusingly at Pat.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” Pat said. Age and anger were pulling downward at his face, draining it.

She couldn’t remember where Lauren was in the memory. Jane spaced out, staring at the asphalt, trying to find Lauren.

“What is wrong with you?” she heard Pat asking.

Jane smiled, because she knew the answer.

Pat knew the answer, too. He wanted so badly for her to be wrong, and now, for once, she was. Bringing Mirela here was a badidea. But there were so many times when Pat had wanted Jane to be wrong when she wasn’t. It was a crushing debt he’d rackedup. She couldn’t forgive it, not yet. First he had to pay some of it down.

“Wish us luck today, honey. See you later—we can grab a ride home with a friend,” Jane said, and she let Mirela spin her roundand round.

They swung arms and skipped as they headed back toward the protest. Things might go well for Mirela today, Jane thought, becauseMirela would be surrounded by nothing but new people, engaged in nothing but new situations. The first two days of the Springof Life, the mostly peaceful tedium of it, had convinced Jane of this. Maybe even Jane would seem like a new person to Mirelawhen she was out of the house and playing another role.

They walked past the Pancake Palace. Bakery, knitting supply store, bridal shop. “Baby killers!” was the first refrain that reached them from the crowd as they approached WellWomen.

“Babby koowa!” Mirela cooed. Pat had chosen appropriate dress for her—a lined windbreaker, thermal socks—but had put her jeanson backward.

“Don’t say that, Mirela, it’s not nice,” Jane said. “Wait, what happened here?”

The crowds around the barricades were suddenly much thinner. On the opposite side of Main Street, the pro-life protestersstood behind the curb, facing a line of police. They sang a forlorn hymn that she didn’t recognize.

“What happen!” Mirela cried with excitement, jumping up and down, still holding Jane’s hand. “What happen!”

“Jane, over here!” Betty Andrower among the crowd, hoisting her abortion kills children sign over her head. Jane realized that she must have left hers behind on the roof of the dragon wagon.

“Mirela, let’s cross the street,” Jane said, squeezing her hand.

“It was that Oh-R moron who sucker punched the pro-choicer,” Betty said, maneuvering past a protester and stepping off thecurb as Jane reached her side. Jane let go of Mirela’s hand long enough to clasp arms with Betty. “It was his fault—they pushedus all back after that.” Betty’s hands on Jane felt mysteriously nice, sending out slinky little lines of euphoria that shimmiedthrough her shoulders and met in a puff of surprise at the base of her throat. To investigate the feeling further, she threwher arms around Betty, so small and so full, for a long hug, and she could have cried for how nice it felt, but she had tobreak the hug to grab on to Mirela’s hand again.

“Back behind the curb, people, on the sidewalk, nobody in the street,” the cops said. They sounded as forlorn as the hymn.

“Do you think we can sneak back up?” Jane asked Betty. “That Bridie woman told us this would happen.”

“Oh, let’s just keep as close to the curb as we can,” Betty said. “What do they think we are, criminals?”

“It is absolutely absurd to suggest that our action has brought violence to Buffalo,” tiny red-haired Kitty Stenton from Witness for the Innocents was yelling at a cop who stared past her. “I was born and raised here in Buffalo. Witness for the Innocents is a local, grassroots organization. This is our home—”

“This clinic is open! This clinic is open!” the proborts were shouting.

“Where is Father Steve?” Jane asked Betty. Mirela tugged at Jane’s hand.

Betty shrugged. “God knows,” she said. “No one’s seen him. I bet he knew this would be a bust.”

“We don’t know it’s a bust just yet,” Jane said. She was watching the curb. The protesters were inching forward. A few moreof them were off the curb. The cops creeping backward, arms crossed, exchanging glances, nodding in acknowledgment.

Mirela tugged harder and started to whine.

A sign that read abortion stops a beating heart migrated forward, the length of itself. A cop took a step backward, then another. Mirela tugged and Jane almost came off herfeet.

“Mirela—wait—”

Three more pairs of pro-life feet shuffled off the curb and onto Main Street. One woman was chest to chest with a female cop,a hand patting her uniformed shoulder, her face pleading, appealing to her sense of reason. The female cop looked at her colleaguebeside her, and Jane tried to read their expressions. A glint of indulgence, mischief—an opening. The cops had the air ofthe midday parent: already tired, sure, but plenty of patience left, wanting above all just to keep things on an even keel,there’s a long way to go yet, no reason to risk a meltdown by being too rule-bound about snacks or television time or preciselywhere a pro-life protester could stand on Main Street without being arrested and charged with criminal trespass.

Three more pairs of feet came off the curb. The female cop took two more steps back as Kitty Stenton’s voice rose in volumeand pitch.

Mirela’s hand twisted inside Jane’s and she was gone. Running in her crooked slap-slap to the barricades across