Izzy felt her skin instantly turn to goose bumps, but she tried to disguise her discomfort by looking as thoughtful as possible, as if she was merely comparing Dr. Grind’s ideas to her own scientific methods for raising children. She felt that perhaps this was more than she could handle, but then she worried that this was part of the test, to judge her ability to accept new ways of thinking. If she wavered, even for a second, the offer would be rescinded, and she would never know what her life could have been. With a primitive instinct, she held on to her emotions until they flattened out, until she felt capable. She looked up at Dr. Grind, whose expression had not changed, with no sign of discomfort. Izzy nodded, slowly, and Dr. Grind nodded in return. A code she could not understand, the gesture nevertheless gave Izzy the confidence to speak, as if talking could make her come to terms with what Dr. Grind was offering her.
“Dr. Grind, I want my kid to have access to everything you’re talking about. I want to be able to provide for him and to be a better parent. But I don’t know if I can do what you’re asking. I’m a lonely person, a solitary person, I guess is a better term. I just don’t know if I can walk into some new space and be surrounded by people who are now supposed to be my new family and be expected to love them and care for them. I’m worried about taking care of one kid. I can’t take care of ten kids.”
“You won’t have to, Izzy. That’s the beauty of this project. You will never, for as long as you live with us, be alone again. You will be surrounded by people who care for you, who will do everything they can to help you become the person you envision. It will be so strange. I can’t deny that. I’m asking you to love other children as if they are your own. I’m asking you to support the other parents as if you are their sister or best friend or partner. I’m asking you to accept a nontraditional family dynamic. Your child, as much as you love him, will no longer be entirely your own. He will be a part of a larger family. But I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I didn’t think that, ultimately, it was going to change your life for the better.”
Dr. Grind was looking at Izzy with an intensity that she never experienced in relation to herself. It was a crazy idea to be included in something so obviously flawed and yet so idealistic and beautiful. She imagined her son, nothing but a blur at this point in her mind, surrounded by other children, every day a chance to be exceptional. She thought, for the millionth time, of her future as it lay before her without the aid of this project, working two jobs to make ends meet, her son in the cheapest day care she could find, so tired at the end of the day that her baby felt like an unbreakable curse, failing each and every day until the bottom fell out of the world.
She knew, without reservation, that her own mother would have chosen this project for Izzy. It had all the markings of something her mother would love, a woman who desired equations and routines to ensure excellence. The buildings themselves looked like an alien planet, something her mother would have drawn on a sheet of paper during a fever dream. Was she using the ghost of her mother to justify a life-changing decision? Maybe. But it wasn’t difficult for Izzy, who had always kept her mother’s ghost right at the edges of her life, to imagine that this felt preordained in some weird way.
She picked up the photos from the table and flipped through them again. It was a fantasy, science fiction, to think that this could be her home.
“Okay then,” she said.
Dr. Grind’s face opened up with shock. “Well, Izzy, you should think about this. I have about fifty pages of contracts and documents that you need to look at, have someone look over with you. I have about four more hours’ worth of information to discuss. I want you to be a part of this project, but I want you to have the facts. This is not for everyone, not for most people, honestly. I want you to feel confident about this. It’s ten years of your life. Ten years of your child’s life.”
“Okay,” Izzy said, her face itching with embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I’ll think about it more.”
Izzy realized now that she had acquiesced too quickly, that she had almost missed out on hours of wooing, the unfamiliar joy of being wanted, of hearing Dr. Grind offer up even more ridiculous promises, even more pseudoscientific reasons for why her son would become a superhero, a kid genius. She would have missed out on listening to someone tell her, over and over, that things were going to be fine. She sat back in her chair, the baby happily swimming in the confines of her own body, and she smiled at Dr. Grind, who smiled back, shrugging his shoulders as if he couldn’t believe this was happening either.