That night, her messenger bag weighed down with the papers that Dr. Grind had left with her after their three-hour conversation, Izzy walked into her room and locked the door, even though no one else was in the house at the moment. She took out the papers, shaggy with Post-it notes attached to where she had to sign her name, and laid them out on her bed, as if they were a code that could be broken. Dr. Grind had suggested that she have a lawyer look over the documents, as if Izzy had access to someone with a law degree, someone who could make sense of what Dr. Grind had already spent hours explaining to her. There was a fifteen-page memo that outlined the ten years of the project, but Izzy simply could not wrap her head around the next few months of her life, much less ten years into the future, as if anything would turn out the way Dr. Grind and his assistants were so confidently predicting. Or maybe they were right, maybe they had lined up the project in such a way that they really could see into the future. Her eyes wandered over the documents so that she caught snippets of the project.
At night, the children are placed in a communal sleeping area, tended by a rotating team of nurses, caregivers, and biological parents (determined by color-coded bands).
She tried to imagine this reality, but she soon realized that the only way she would truly understand any of this would be to throw herself into it and see for herself. It was strange to realize it, but The IFP, in trying to give her a range of options in order to have a more fully realized life, was banking on the simple fact that she had almost no options at the moment, which made it impossible to refuse the project.
At 10:30 P.M., her father returned from the market, carrying two plastic bags filled with the unsold food that had been sitting under the heat lamps for hours, corn dogs and chicken fingers and potato wedges and thick, tasteless wedges of pizza. This was, and had been for years, her father’s primary source of nutrition. Izzy walked into the living room and sat down on the sofa while her father eased himself into his recliner. He barely acknowledged her presence, simply nodded toward all the food on the coffee table, and bit into a corn dog. She searched through the food, already lukewarm from the drive home, and took a chicken finger for herself.
“You want something?” he asked her, when it became clear that she wasn’t going to leave the room. Her father, for as long as she could remember, was a cipher to her. His face was perpetually empty of emotion, as if everything meaningful had been burned out of him. He accepted her existence, made no effort to prevent her from anything she chose to do, but he had never once offered to help her or to support those decisions. Izzy had been his wife’s responsibility and, once she died, it was as if the link between him and his child had become untethered. He never hit her or yelled at her, but she also could not remember him ever saying that he loved her. Actually, if she had ever heard him say it to her, she would have had no idea how to respond. And, yet, she did not begrudge him any of this. His life was awful and she was quite sure that she, with her simple need, had made it more so for him.
“I’m having this baby,” Izzy said.
“I know all about that,” he said.
“Well, I’ve been talking to some people, some doctors, and they want to help me take care of the baby. They’ve offered me money and scholarship opportunities and health insurance and all kinds of things like that.”
“Good for you,” he said, and she felt like he genuinely meant it, even though his voice was flat and dead. “I never understood how in the world you was going to take care of that baby on your own. I sure don’t have any money. I’m near underwater on just about everything.”
“I’d have to go away, not far, but up near Nashville. I wouldn’t be around here anymore, probably not for a long time.”
“You need to do what’s best for you, Izzy,” he told her. “And the kid, I guess, too.” He leaned over the coffee table and then chose a slice of cheese pizza. He popped the top on another beer and they sat again in silence while he watched a war movie with the volume turned way down.
“It’s a hard decision,” she said.
“Okay then,” he told her. “You can’t say I’ve ever stood in the way of anything you wanted to do. I don’t intend to start now. Sounds like a good idea, though. Either way, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you want.”
This was the longest she and her father had talked in years, and she felt the strange sensation of wanting it to go on. He had partly made her, she understood this, but she had yet to figure out where the evidence was within her.
As if the force of Izzy’s own need had temporarily sharpened his focus, had burned away the alcohol in his system, her father leaned forward in his chair and stared at her for a second or two, his eyes unclear and bloodshot but most certainly focused on her.
“I have never been a good father,” he said, waving his hand as if to stop her from disagreeing, though she had remained silent. “I loved your mother, once upon a time, but we had you and she changed. And I blamed you for that. Then your mom died, and so much time had passed that I didn’t feel like it was right to step in and try to be a dad to you. That’s my fault. So, I’m sorry. I’m sorry you’ve had such a rough go of it.”