Can it be that Heaven is as real as Kansas City to those who believe in Heaven? This would fit, it seems to me, the World-as-Myth cosmology. I must ask Jubal about this, when I get out of this jail and back to Boondock.
In gourmet restaurants in Boondock ‘Potatoes a la Della' are highly esteemed, as are some others of her recipes. Della taught me a great deal. I don't think that I was able to teach her anything, as she was far more sophisticated and knowledgeable than I in the subjects we had in common.
These were my first five ‘cash register' babies:
Nancy Irene, 1 December 1899 or 5 January 1900
Carol (Santa Carolita, named for my Aunt Carole), 1 January 1902
Brian junior, 12 March 1905
George Edward, 14 February 1907
Marie Agnes, 5 April 1909
After Marie, I did not catch again until the spring of 1912. That one was my spoiled brat and favourite child, Woodrow Wilson... who was later my lover, Theodore Bronson... and much later, my husband, Lazarus Long. I don't know why I didn't catch sooner, but it was not from lack of trying; Briney and I tried to ring the cash register at every opportunity. We did not care whether it caught or not; we did it for fun... and if we missed, that simply postponed those several weeks when we would have to refrain before and after each birth. Oh, not refrain from everything; I became quite skilled with hands and mouth and so did Briney. But for solid day-in and day-out happy fun, we both preferred the old-fashioned sport, whether it was missionary style or eighteen other ways.
Perhaps I could account for all the times I failed to catch if I had a calendar of the Mauve Decade, with a record of my menstrual periods. The calendar would be no problem, but a record of my menses, while I did keep one at that time, is long gone and irretrievable - or nearly so; it would take a Time Corps operation to retrieve it. But here is my theory: Briney was often away on business; he was ‘ringing the cash register' his own way, as an analyst and planner for corporate mining ventures, one whose exceptional talents were increasingly in demand.
Neither of us had heard of the simple fourteen-day role for ovulation, or the thermometer check, much less the more subtle and more reliable techniques developed in the latter half of the twentieth century. Dr Rumsey was as good a family doctor as you could find at that time and he was not constrained by the taboos of the time - he had been sent to us by the Howard Foundation - but Dr Rumsey knew no more about this than we did.
If it were possible to prepare a calendar showing my menses 1900-1912, then mark on it by the fourteen-day role my probable dates of ovulation, then mark the dates that Briney was away from Kansas City, it is long odds that such a chart would show that those little wigglers never had a target to shoot at on those occasions that I failed to catch. This seems certain, as Briney was a prize stallion and I was Myrtle the Fertile Turtle.
But I am glad that I did not know the roles of ovulation at that time, because there is nothing that beats the tingling excitement of laying back, legs open and eyes closed and bare to the possibility of impregnation. And I know that this is not just one of Maureen's many eccentricities; I have checked this with endless other women: the knowledge that it can happen adds to the zest.
I am not running down contraception; it's the greatest boon to women in all history, as efficient contraception frees women from that automatic enslavement to men that has been the norm through all histories. But the ancient structure of our female nervous systems is not tuned to contraception; it is tuned to getting pregnant.
So it was grand for Maureen that, once I ceased being a bawdy school girl, I almost never needed to use contraception.
One balmy March day in 1912 Briney nailed me to the ground on a bank of the Blue River, almost exactly duplicating an earlier occasion, 4 March 1899, on a bank of the Marais des Cygnes. We both delighted in making love outdoors, especially with a spice of danger. On the occasion of that 1912 prank I was wearing opera-length silk hose and green round garters, and my husband photographed me so, standing, naked in the sunlight, facing the camera and smiling - and that picture played a major part in my life six years later, and seventy years later, and over two thousand years later.
That picture, I am told, changed the entire history of the human race in several time tines.
Maybe so, maybe not. I'm not fully sold on World-as-Myth even though I am a Time Corps field agent, even though the smartest people I know tell me it's the real McCoy. Father always required me to think for myself, and Mr Clemens urged me to, also. I was taught that the one Unforgivable Sin, the offence against one's own integrity, was to accept anything at all simply on authority.
Nancy has two birthdays: the day I bore her, which was registered with the Foundation, and the date we handed out to the world, the day that matched more properly the date of my marriage to Brian Smith. That was easy to do at the end of the-nineteenth century, as in Missouri vital statistics were just beginning to be taken. Most records were still of the family-Bible sort. The County Clerk of Jackson County recorded births and deaths and marriages if offered to him, but nothing happened if such milestones were not reported.
Nancy's birth was reported correctly to the Foundation, a report signed by me and Brian, and certified by Dr Rumsey. Then a month later Dr Rumsey filed a birth certificate with the county clerk, with the false date.
Easy to do - Nancy was born at home; all my babies were born at home until the middle thirties. So there were no hospital records to confuse the issue. On 8 January I wrote the happy news (false date) to several people in Thebes and sent an announcement to the Lyle County Leader.
Why such a silly hooraw to fuzz the date of birth of a baby? Because the customs of those times were cruel, cruel, harshly cruel. Mrs Grundy would have counted on her fingers and whispered that we had to get married to give our sinful bastard a name she shouldn't bear. Yes. It was all part of the nastiness of the grim age of Bowdler, Comstock, and Grundy, the vultures that corrupted what could have been a civilisation.
Near the end of that century single women openly gave birth to babies whose fathers might or might not be around. But this was not the behaviour of a truly free culture; it was the other swing of the pendulum and not easy for mother or child. The old rules were being broken but no workable new code had as yet evolved.
Our expedient kept everyone in Thebes County from knowing that sweet little Nancy was a ‘bastard'. Of course Mother knew the date was false... but Mother was not in Thebes; she was in St Louis with Grandpa and Grandma Pfeiffer. And Father had gone back into the Army.
I still don't know how to look at this. A girl should not pass judgement on her parents... and I shan't.
The Spanish-American War had brought me closer to Mother. Her worry and grief made me decide that she really did love Father; they just kept it private from the children.
Then, on the day of my wedding, while Mother was dressing me, she gave me that motherly advice that traditionally the brides mother gives the bride to ensure matrimonial tranquillity.
Can you guess what she told me? Better sit down to hear this.
She told me that I must be prepared to endure without resentment submission to my husband for ‘family duties'. It was the Lord's plan, explained in Genesis, and was the price that women must pay for the privilege of having children... and if I would just look at it that way, I could submit cheerfully. But I must realise also that men have needs different from ours; you must expect to meet his needs. Don't think of it as animal, or ugly - just remember your dear children.
I said, ‘Yes, Mother. I will remember.'