Tragedeigh

Tragedeigh

Joe M McDermott

It was too soon since my dog’s death. I couldn’t stand hearing my family yell at each other about a hypothetical baby. This baby did not exist. Maybe it would; maybe it wouldn’t. My daughter and my wife were each dug into a position and refused to budge and it was really ruining our Sunday dinner, which was supposed to be cooked and eaten at least an hour ago. I didn’t want any part of it, and left them in the kitchen to figure out how not to shout at each other. 

Spooky was gone, now, about a week. Eight days and I had no one to walk in the mornings, or to care for, to sit with and listen to the birds with me. I had wasted a bunch of money trying to get one of the ghost dogs to commemorate her, and no one knew I had done this, not even my wife. Spooky was a black lab I had known since she was a puppy. She was born behind a dumpster at my golf friend’s art studio. She was the only one in her litter that survived Parvo, and she had followed for thirteen years in my shadow and lap before the cancer was found around her spine. There was nothing we could do to keep her alive longer that wouldn’t be worse than the disease, so we let her wind down gently. And it hurt like losing a child. I had never had a dog before and I will want no other, just Spooky and Spooky and Spooky forever. So, I didn’t tell my wife what I did. I said I was taking her to the vet to say goodbye before it got any worse for her. I didn’t want her to suffer. Dogs suffer, but they don’t understand it. They don’t tell you when it’s becoming too much to bear. So we have to decide for them, and I did. I didn’t take her to the vet. I took her to one of the bot shops two towns over, and they scanned her brain and uploaded my videos and pictures into their module. Before she died, she had to go into the terrifying MRI machine and listen to the whirls and machine parts alone, afraid. What awful nightmare had I given her when she was suffering enough? They took blood samples, and died alone and terrified in one of their machines. They said they got what they needed to upload the ghost dog. I paid, and they told me they could arrange for her ashes to be delivered. They haven’t been delivered.

The ghost dog is scheduled this week, and my wife doesn’t know. She’s so caught up in an argument with my daughter that I don’t even understand about a child that does not currently exist. I’m sitting in the music room, listening to records, alone. They’re still arguing. Should they mess with the kid’s DNA or shouldn’t they? How is this even on the table, now, among all the burdens to put on young parents who are never able to be enough, never do enough, and now this? Did you pick the right DNA for your child? Is it your fault they had the wrong DNA? It’s all just too much. I don’t understand it. I just wish Spooky was here to help me forget it.

My name is Jack. My wife is Sophia. We have three kids, a lot for our generation, who mostly didn’t have any, but we were old money on both sides, with oil fortunes and tech fortunes and my grandmother was a pop star, even, back when that could make you rich. The records I listen to in the guest house are older than my grandparents and worth more than people’s houses, and it’s hard for me to take any debate seriously when we are already so blessed. They’re discussing degrees of blessing like it’s life or death: a hypothetical child, that does not exist, and may have custom DNA implanted or may not.

Billy, my son-in-law, who had endured so much shouting and had tried to keep the peace, found me with a cup of coffee. Bringing me coffee must have been his excuse to escape. I took the coffee, but I didn’t want it. I placed it in the sink by the wet bar.

“Mind if I hang out in here with you?” he asked. He was such a big fellow, and the kind of good looks that used to cost an arm and a leg, but he came by them naturally. His parents weren’t rich, like us. They worked in systems maintenance and irrigation. They had callouses and muscles from their work, and this giant son-in-law was their great life’s work. I liked him, fine. He was polite, and appeared hardworking. He wasn’t getting involved, either, and that was smart of him.

I said. “They’re still arguing, huh?”

He sat down in a sofa that seemed small when he was in it, but I had slept on it many nights. Does my daughter want to make the kid smaller than this guy or bigger? What does she even want that his DNA won’t provide?

“They’re arguing quietly, at least, at this point,” he said. “It’s disturbingly silent. Tense.”

“Well, when you catch your breath, I have some really nice gin hidden in a desk somewhere back here, and you can bring it as a peace offering and see if things don’t calm down when they’re drinking.”

“That calms them down?”

“Usually. Sophia is a real mellow drinker and the gin is spiked with a little magic mushroom. Grandma loved those. We kept a bunch for her, and don’t really do anything with it except once in a blue moon. Don’t tell the government.”

“Oh, god, if our obstetrician could hear you…”

“I’m sure she won’t mind if it helps them both relax. Carrie’s not pregnant, yet. You know, alcohol and drugs are responsible for a lot of babies in this world. It might save us a fortune on all that finicky medicine.”

“Not with the IUD. Nothing will work until that’s out.”

“What are they even doing in such a bitter calm? Have they even started dinner? It’s almost nine pm and I’m starving.”

“Supposedly making dinner, now,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m hungry or not, to be honest. That was a lot back there.”

“Huh, well, I’m hungry,” I said. “Want to order wings out from the guest house?”

“You can do that?”

“Heck, yes. How do you think I survived three teenagers? Come on.”

I pulled up the app for the delivery service, and we made our choices. I had preset the location in the guest house years ago and never bothered to change it because my wife could pretend she didn’t know I ordered junk behind her back. And it was a nice walk past the pool and garden to the guest house, which had a pool table, now, instead of a bed. We could rack while we waited and get a few rounds in.

He wasn’t one to read the room, my son-in-law. He went right into it. “Did you and Mrs. Derringer fight this much over having kids?” 

I let him break, and nothing went in. I walked around the table, to find the best angle. I guess I should say something wise. “There were fewer options. It was more binary choices, then. Deal or no deal. Natural kid or adopted kid. Fertility treatments or no treatments. There are too many choices. It makes things harder.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

I took my shot, and whiffed it. I played so much pool and I was still so bad at it.

“You don’t know anything about people. It’s never easy. We have to make it hard or we don’t feel like we took the decision seriously.” Billy sunk two balls on his first shot. He was an electrical engineer for the government before he started his own firm, which wasn’t making very much money, yet, but maybe it would. He had promised to pay me back the startup loan, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

“I feel like I’m in one of those restaurants,” he said. “Like staring at those menus with a million choices and you get so you can’t even decide and just get the same thing you always get and like it. Have you seen the menu at those clinics? What they can offer you?”

“Carrie’s not undecided, and neither is Sophia. What do you always get? What’s your order? Where do you land on the menu when there’s too many choices?”

“Eh. I usually get a pasta thing. I like noodles. With the kid conversation, not my body; not my choice.”

I snorted. I felt like taking a shot. Instead, I doubled our food order. “Kind of a cop out, though. I’m getting you wings. And a separate pizza. Pizza is like handheld noodles. Carbs and sauce.”

“Great. I guess I could almost go for a drink, too, if you got that gin around,” he said. “My opinion stopped mattering about six hours ago. Might as well go on a trip.”

“Me, too.” I had a hidden stash of nice Belgian ales in a secret fridge hidden in the wall behind a picture of dogs playing video games. I offered him a glass. He declined. 

“I was trying to tell a joke. Sorry. I need a clear head when it’s like this. I don’t like those kinds anyway. Too rich. Give me a light beer, and let me keep my head clear.” 

I shrugged and went to pop the cap. “I used to keep sodas in here for the kids. There might still be something in a closet but it won’t be cold.”

“I’m good,” he said. “The doctor wants me sugar free and alcohol free for at least two weeks to maximize our chances. Junk food’s enough of a breach in protocol.”

“Well, here’s to chances,” I said, raising a little glass of an old, resinous dubbel that reminded me of a moonlit night in Vienna. The thing that gets you about money is how nothing is forbidden. Everything can be bought, except good taste. The creature comforts slowly drain away the family’s money until the next generation of children are raised in a shadow world they can never attain, and feel the echo of comfort like deposed kings and queens. I already felt the weight of it, looking at my kids and their choices. Everything costs money. We want to give them the world. I loaned Billy so much for his company, and it is only just solvent. Now, the babies will come, at a price, and their life will be ours to purchase, too, because my daughter will stay at home with the baby and my son-in-law’s firm is only just solvent. Maybe he can make a fortune with it, and maybe the glory days of our line fade away as comforts and time drain us a little bit at a time, slowly. I lost the match quickly, and didn’t feel like playing again. Fortunately, our food arrived before I had to say anything about it. The drone delivered our trash food and we ate and watched the news quietly on an old projector TV.

I didn’t say anything about my introspective visions to my son-in-law. We just ate and waited for something to happen. He won the next round of pool.  He found some room temperature sparkling water in a cupboard, and I drank another beer. Eventually, we both got texts from our wives asking where we were.

“Should we tell them?”

“No,” I said. “Give them a minute to stew while we finish eating.”

“If you could do a designer dog would you? Like, Spooky was the best dog, ever, and you just found her. But would you try to design another dog to be just like her? You still have her DNA around? Her hair? Her toys? Her records at the Vet?”

I didn’t want to tell him what I had done. It would influence a decision that should not be mine to make. At least, I hadn’t done the designer dog thing. I’ve heard too many stories of cancers, behavioral issues. It’s never really the same dog if it doesn’t come from the dumpster behind Terry’s studio on that day on that hour, shivering in the damp cold of early spring storms. Spooky, I will never forget that, and I am so glad I have no picture of that moment of you, sick and afraid and confused and alone. You never felt that way ever again, I hope. Oh, but you did, in the end. Maybe not cold, but probably. Machines are so cold.

“Dogs and kids aren’t the same thing,” I said, trying not to cry, and trying to hide it.

“But would you?” 

“To what end? Purple hair? Purple eyes? What? They purr like a cat?”

“Anything like that.”

“There’s nothing wrong with dogs. Why fix it if it isn’t broken?”

“People do.”

“There’s a big difference between dogs and kids. They’re not the same thing.”

“Why not? People treat dogs like kids?”

“Yeah, but they don’t want grandpuppies that never grow up. They want celibate love lumps that devote their lives to one human. Kids, you want the offspring to spring off, and do their own thing. And don’t put this choice on me, either. We don’t need to talk about it.”

My own words made me ashamed of what I had done to Spooky. I took a long drink and remembered how scared she was at the MRI machine, alone. I closed my eyes and tried to hold it all in. I couldn’t let my own life be the thing that turns the tide in theirs. Not on something where the choices are so monumental. It cannot be a grandparents’ choice when it comes to the children. It could destroy us if we get it wrong.

“Sorry, I’m just confused by the discussion. I don’t think it’s such a big deal, either way, but she and I can’t cover it without help, and she seems so committed to the idea.”

“Huh. Just wait until it comes time to pick a name. You’ll end up with a ‘Tragedeigh’.”

“A what? Why is their name going to be a tragedy?”

“No, like picking a word that isn’t a name and spelling it creatively to be original. The joke nickname for all those Aquorns and Harvists when we made fun of the kind of names people do, now, when we were having kids. People picking weird words and misspelling them to be ‘unique’ for their kids, to make them special. Makes their life difficult and easy to make fun of. Celebrity baby names. Trah-ju-deez.”

“Bullying isn’t tolerated anymore. That’s a thing of the past.”

“Well, it has a place, in moderation. Predators keep a herd healthy. Life is a long game. It’s supposed to last for an endless progression of generations upon generations, and a little predation will protect us from ourselves. Just a little. You want the last chicken wing?”

“No. I think we have to go pretend to eat dinner, soon.”

“Ugh. It is the sacred right of every new parent to mess their kids up their own way. I just want to see grandkids before I upload to the god cloud, whatever that is. You two will figure it out, okay? Whatever is going on in the kitchen, right now, I want no part of it.” I’m afraid to make a decision, too, just like he is. I don’t want this responsibility. I liked having kids the way we did it, and I guess it’s different now, and I will no more recognize the future than my hypothetical grandchild will recognize the past.

My daughter wants to pick genetic variances, custom genes, and give her kids advantages that way, and it’s expensive, and my wife thinks it’s a waste of money unless your kid might have some debilitating disease. Even then. Nature demands all expressions, all options, and the more there are the stronger we are, even if sometimes it hurts more than anything we have ever felt, and the suffering to a child is unimaginable. Maybe those recessive genes are needed for something later? How can we ever know what the downstream impact of narrowing our code to smarter, prettier, stronger, older… 

The inbred nobles of Europe could bleed to death upon a pinprick, and became dumb as brutes. The perfect form of all politicians: fragile, stupid, mean. We think we know better, now? 

Maybe we do.

Maybe.

I finished my beer, and needed help standing up. I made a decision regarding the situation. It was my money and Sophia’s money, and I could decide something different from her if I wanted to, and my poor son-in-law has to live with it, longer than we ever do, and it is a failure as a father not to weigh in. It should be partly his choice, too. I took his arm. “Listen, man-to-man. Listen. Sophie has her money, and I have mine. We both have money. Be the tie breaker, right now. Choose.”

He took a deep breath. He looked down.

I said to him, “I will go in there and make whatever you want happen. She doesn’t have to know. Neither of them do.”

He looked at his hands. He spoke like he had shrunk three sizes in my gaze. This is the power of money and age. I have reduced this boy. He is diminished. His words were soft and weak. “My kid will be born into a world of kids who are smarter and faster and stronger because the tech is there,” he said. “How can our kids compete? We can try to keep it kind of in the family like expressing the genes that are there, already, and evaluating close family genes for things we could enhance a little. We don’t have to give the kid purple eyes and pointy elf ears.”

“Okay,” I said. “A middle road. A very expensive middle road. Okay. Let’s go make it happen. Let me handle it. You can pretend to be neutral. Take your wife’s side no matter what. Whatever side that is. I’ll take the heat from both the women and from you even if I live in the guest house on takeout for the rest of my life.”

I patted his shoulder. 

I thought about Spooky, again, and she would come back to me in metal and plastic and faux fur that would be almost indistinguishable from a real dog. She would sit with me in the guest house and watch me and bark and push her head into my hands for attention. She would catch frisbees from the air and pretend to keep it away from me before dropping it for another throw. She would remind me every single day of what I was willing to do because I was too chickenshit to say goodbye. And when I was ready, I could turn her off.

We storm like lions, we rich and proud and lazy and brilliant men and women, and we are such cowards.

We are all such cowards.

I patted Billy’s shoulder again. I knew his company would never take off, and I’d never see a dime, and this dream palace of generational money built by so many lions was going to fade away into the crowds of men and women, and nothing of their great lives of leisure was worth what it cost.