Strange but True (18 page)

Let it go, Charlene tells herself, slowly uncurling those fists. It's not like I came here to make small talk anyway.

In the very center of the library, flanked by two new copy machines, is a narrow metal information desk. Behind it sits a man with the kind of jetblack Elvis hair that looks like it comes from a bottle. Charlene knows it is prejudiced of her, but she can never help but feel put off by the male volunteers at the library. There is something unnatural about their presence. She pegs this one as a retiree whose wife went in the ground sooner than expected. Now he's got too much time on his hands, so he spends it dyeing his hair at home or doling out information here.

When she says excuse me, he lifts his gaze from the thick book in his hands and looks at her. Around his neck hangs a black string with four silver keys. Keys Charlene still has copies of on the wooden key rack in her kitchen. As she stares at his placid face, his small white teeth, and his god-awful shoe-polish hair, she waits for him to ask if he can help her. But he doesn't. She supposes that his looking up is meant to be her signal to start speaking, so she asks, “Where is your microfiche room these days?”

“Microfiche?” He repeats the word twice like a question, as though Charlene had approached the desk and inquired about a car part.
Manifold
?
Muffler
? “Microfiche? Well, let's see. That would be—” He pauses and puts an index finger to his chin. “Do you mind if I ask what you need it for?”

Yes, I mind, Charlene thinks, then says, “Do you mind if I ask why you need to ask what I need it for?”

His pasty face goes blank as he deciphers what Charlene just said. “I'm asking because no one ever uses that stuff anymore.”

Charlene doesn't like his condescending tone. She doesn't like it one bit, so she tells him, “Well, I use the stuff. In fact, I can't get enough of it. I'm a microfiche junkie.”

He gives her a wary smile. “You should know that there are far better ways to do research now.”

Charlene has been waiting a long time for a moment like this, to put some jerk in his place. She sets aside any prior nervousness about being back here again, plants both hands on the desk, and leans closer to his face. Close enough that she bets he can smell the Wonder Bread on her breath when she says in the soft librarian voice she used to use on a daily basis, “And you should know, Mr. Presley, that I don't give one rat's ass if there are better ways to do research. If I want to use microfiche, I will use microfiche. And for that matter, if I want to wrap myself up like a mummy in the stuff and do the Hokey Pokey, my tax dollars have certainly paid for that privilege over the years. So tell me where it is. Now.”

When she is finished, Charlene watches his milky blue eyes dart around the library like he might scream for help. She imagines Pilia returning from wherever she is to come to his rescue. Good, she thinks, because I'm warmed up and ready to give it to her now. Instead of calling for reinforcements, though, he changes his tone. In the gentlest possible voice, he says, “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you upset.”

Now that's more like it, Charlene thinks.

“I'll be happy to show you where the microfiche shelves are.”

“Shelves? What, they don't get their own room anymore?”

“Actually, no. Like I said, for most kinds of research these days, it's quicker and easier to use the computer. I know you don't want to hear it, but you'll have far better luck finding whatever it is you need.”

Charlene glances over her shoulder at the cloudy glass window on the door of the old microfiche room. She reads that word again—
INTERNET
. When she turns back to him, she says, “I'd rather not.”

Still using that temperate voice, he asks, “Is that because you've never used the Internet before?”

She lifts her hands from the desk and adjusts the edge of her cloak, which is catching on her thin gold watch. Back in her days here, the library had a handful of computers to access the Web. Charlene was always so busy with her other responsibilities that she never took the time to learn how. “No,” she admits, keeping her eyes on her watch. It is two-fifteen. “I have not.”

“Well, I'd be happy to show you.”

He rises from his chair, and Charlene sees that he is much taller than she thought when he was sitting down, as tall as Philip, in fact, and just as skinny. Looking at him, she thinks of Philip back at home. When she left a short while before, he was still lying on the sofa bed, reading that dreadful Anne Sexton biography while the movie
Fargo
blasted on some godforsaken cable channel in the background. Charlene wishes he'd just finish the damn book already and be done with it.

“So can I show you?” the man behind the desk asks.

She reconsiders and decides that maybe he is right, maybe she will have better luck finding the information she needs on the computer. “Fine,” Charlene says. “Show me.”

Inside the Internet room, the study carrels, bookshelves, metal drawers, and viewing machines have been replaced with one long table that has at least a dozen computers on it. The man from the information desk, who introduces himself as Edward on the way over, leads Charlene past all the people clicking away on their keyboards. When they reach an available computer, he pulls out a chair and tells Charlene to have a seat. It has been so long since anyone has fussed over her that she takes her time peeling off her cloak and draping it over the chair along with her purse, relishing the attention. Before sitting down, Charlene glances around for Pilia again. She is still nowhere in sight. Once she's seated, Edward's pale, nimble fingers type something into the keyboard. He hits the Enter key and a bright white screen appears with the word
GOOGLE
splashed across the top in blue, red, gold, and green.

“Now don't be afraid,” Edward says.

“I didn't say I was afraid,” Charlene tells him. “I said I've never used it before.”

“Sorry. I just meant that most people find the Internet scary the first time they use it.”

“Well, I'm not most people.”

Edward smiles that wary smile again. “So I've gathered.”

Charlene is about to ask him what the hell that's supposed to mean, but he takes a breath and launches into a five-minute computer and Internet lesson. In the middle of it all, he mentions something that appalls her: if any old Joe Blow were to type in her telephone number, he would be given a map leading straight to her house.

“Stop right there,” she says. “Hasn't this Mr. Google person ever heard of something called privacy? I mean, how would he like it if I stood on a street corner handing out maps to his house? What if I had a stalker I was trying to hide from?”

Elvis—or rather, Edward—just laughs.

“Well, I'm glad one of us is amused,” Charlene says.

Thankfully, he tells her that she can remove her information from the system. After he helps her to do that, he winds up the minitutorial by repeating a few of the basics. “So like I said, it's really quite simple. All you have to do is type in the key words of your search and press Enter. Google will look up any sites on the Web where those words appear together.” As an afterthought, he adds that if she wants to search newspapers and magazines that aren't on the Web, there is a computer on the other side of the table with something called Nexis. For that, she'll have to pay a small amount at the front desk to get a thirty-minute pass.

Charlene doesn't want to have to deal with the chance that the bright light of recognition might finally permeate Adele's thick skull, so she tells Edward no thanks. “Google is good for me,” she says. The words feel so ridiculous rolling off her tongue that she can't help but wonder whatever happened to the simple things in life, like the
Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature
.

“Well, good luck then. Let me know if you need more help.”

As Charlene watches his tall, thin frame slip out the door, she thinks of Philip again. His words from their conversation this morning echo in her mind:
There's a small, very small, possibility that what she said is true…
With that, she turns back toward the computer, holds her fingers over the keyboard, and types four words: sperm, birth, after death. When she presses Enter, a cluttered list appears before her.

Ethical and Legal Aspects of
Sperm
Retrieval
After Death
or…

… and Legal Aspects of
Sperm
Retrieval
After Death
or Persistent … the first report of pregnancy and
birth
following postmortem
sperm
retrieval appeared…
www.aslme.org/pub_jlme/27.4h.php
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Commentary: Posthumous Harvesting of Gametes—A Physician's…

… conception but before the resulting birth of a … the posthumous disposition of the
sperm
or embryos … for disposition of these reproductive tissues
after death
…

www.aslme.org/pub_jlme/27.4g.php
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Life before
birth
and
after death

…I repeated the question, expecting he would disclose his place of
birth
or his residence prior to the… Was he not a drop of
sperm
emitted (in lowly form)?…

www.mostmerciful.com/life-before-and-after-death.htm
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Charlene scans the page, wondering what to make of such mumbo jumbo, since Edward neglected to warn her about anything of the sort. Finally, she gets the idea to move the mouse around and click on a random cluster of words. This is what pops up next:

JOURNEY OF OUR SOULS

BEFORE BIRTH AND AFTER DEATH:

WILL YOU
BURN
IN SATAN'S FIRE

WITH OTHER SINNERS

OR

BE ALLOWED TO ENTER THE KINGDOM?

In the Bible, the Lord said, we shall reap what we sow. (In other words, we get what we deserve, good and bad!!!) In my Monday morning Bible studies at the Allegheny Baptist Church, I speak about this and that it means that we people (humans) get back from the world what we give. And depending on the extent of our tragedies (very bad stuff) and our hardships, there is no blessing (the good) that HE, CHRIST ALMIGHTY, will not give. So you must ask yourself, where you will go when that bolt of thunder flashes in the sky and Christ comes down on the giant escalator from the clouds. Will you burn in the pit of hell with the other sinners? Or will…

Charlene feels as though she has just been accosted by one of those crazy people on the streets of Philadelphia. Exhausted by this whole lousy business of the Internet already, she considers giving up and going to find the microfiche, as she originally intended. Another part of her considers giving up her search altogether and simply leaving the library. But then she thinks of Melissa's words last night:
This baby inside me belongs to him
… Of Philip telling her,
I'm just saying that it's a remote possibility
… Of Richard shouting into the phone from Palm Beach,
Well, then, it's yes, Charlene. Yes. It is possible. Are you happy?

These bits of conversation come together in her mind and stoke that small, persistent flicker of hope that burns inside of Charlene. More than anything now, she wants to believe that what the girl said is true. So she stays right where she is and continues searching, clicking on site after site, until at long last she finds an article that interests her:

FIANCÉE RENEWS BABY HOPE

A Brisbane woman may have hope of having her dead fiancé's baby. Marvin Tilt studied at the University of New Castle, and may have donated sperm there 10 years ago, according to grieving fiancée Patricia Ducret. “They had a campaign where you could donate sperm and get money for it,” Ms. Ducret said. She checked with the university after a friend mentioned that her fiancé may have been a sperm donor. Mr. Tilt, 29, slipped and fell to his death while visiting a waterfall in a national park in far north Queensland.

After still more clicking, Charlene finds yet another article:

CONCEIVING A BABY AFTER HUSBAND'S DEATH

In America a dead man's sperm has been used to fertilize an egg for the first time. Albert Barish died in Chicago following a lethal reaction to prescription drugs. Although his wife stated that they had been planning a family, he had not given permission for his sperm to be used. The man had been dead for 24 hours when his sperm was removed and used to fertilize an egg. Dr. Myron Waite, a Chicago urologist who pioneered postmortem sperm extraction, says that extraction takes around 15 minutes and that sperm can be taken from men who have been dead for up to 38 hours. In the U.S., extracting sperm from corpses is increasingly common. A survey of 250 American fertility clinics by Dr. Gerald Casale, a urology specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, found that 18 admitted to taking sperm from a man postmortem…

And after still more clicking, Charlene finds a total of fifteen articles on the subject. By the time she is finished reading all of them, she looks at her watch and sees that it's three-thirty. Bleary-eyed from so much time spent staring at the screen, she glances around at the other people in the room, who are just as mesmerized by the computer in front of them as she has been for the last hour. Reading these articles has sent a kind of numbness through Charlene. She would have thought that finding such an abundance of stories about women getting pregnant this way would sway her toward believing the girl. But there is still so much doubt lingering inside of her. Mainly, Charlene realizes, because if she gives herself over to this idea of having a part of her son back again, of having a grandchild after she'd long since given up on the notion, she doesn't think she will be able to survive the heartbreak and disappointment if it turns out not to be true.