Around the time the boys in my class turn eleven, we start asking where the Starter Boys have gone. We start asking why there are grown-up girls, but no kids who grow up to be girls. Why our moms never leave Rexford. And that’s when Civics Class starts.

I’m standing in the auditorium line in front of Matthew. We’re watching the Headmaster whisper something to the boy at the head of the line. Just like the last time, the boy’s face twists, and the Headmaster holds out his tablet for the boy’s fingerprint to Confirm. Every boy so far has Confirmed and gone into the auditorium, but none of them look happy about it, and then Larry — from Mr. Harmon’s class — turns and sprints down the hallway. Or tries, but the Headmaster grabs Larry’s arm like a cobra striking. As if he’s expecting it. Like he’s seen boys try to run away from Civics Class before.

In line we all go silent, watching Larry force himself to Confirm, placing his thumb on the tablet. He’s crying. Behind me, Matthew taps my shoulder. I turn around and his eyes are enormous. I mouth, “What happened?” and Matthew raises his eyebrows and shakes his head.

By the time me and Matthew are at the head of the line, I’ve shoved my hands in my pocket they’re shaking so much. What’s behind that door? All Dad said at breakfast was I’d start Civics Class today. Then he almost ran out the door to go to work. Mom couldn’t help me; she’s never been to school.

The Headmaster leans over and my stomach does a flip from the pipe smoke hanging in the air. He whispers, “Listen. If you ever breathe one word of what you’re about to hear in that auditorium, your mother will die.” He sucks on his pipe stem. “Do you understand?”

Now I get why Larry tried to run. I have to keep a secret from Mom forever? What if I talk in my sleep or something? I ask, “What if I just go home?” or I try to say it but my voice comes out in a wimpy squeak.

“Speak up, you bunny rabbit,” says the Headmaster.

I clear my throat. “Sir… what if I just don’t go into the auditorium? Then I won’t hear — whatever it is.”

The Headmaster laughs. A big, rollicking belly laugh, the kind you want to join in on and the boys behind me in line, they do join in. Even Matthew. Even though they don’t know what’s funny. What’s funny is, I guess, how stupid I am, because the Headmaster says, “Charles. Every single boy attends Civics Class. Do you think you’re unique?”

I can feel bile in my throat. No one wants to be called unique. If you’re unique, you’re not contributing to society. “No Sir,” I mumble.

He holds out the tablet, which says ‘Charles Young’ above a circle with a thumbprint icon. It’s my first time Confirming. Dad does it all the time when packages come or when he’s paying for dinner at a restaurant, but the closest I’ve ever gotten was in year three when we all practiced on the teacher’s tablet. The teacher kept saying, “Confirm with confidence, boys! Confidence!”

No one knows what happens if you Confirm and then go back on your word. One boy says that there are islands people can go to, islands with enough food and no Civic Services, but Matthew throws a pillow at him and he shuts up. There are lots of rumours, like big fines or prison time, but at Wayne’s sleepover last week he swore it was one cigarette and a firing line. I had such a bad dream after that I just didn’t go back to sleep and ended up sitting looking out the window for an hour, waiting for the sun to come up and the other boys to wake.

I look at the Headmaster’s tablet. I pretend it’s just paying for dinner and I touch my thumb to the screen. Like I’ve done it a thousand times already.

~~~

Seventeen years later I’m taking my thumb off a different tablet. The young man with long legs and a sharp nose holding the tablet beams at us. “Confirmed,” he says. “Welcome to the Starter Baby Store, Mr. and Mrs. Young. I’ll be your Stork today, if you’ll just follow me.”

Judy squeezes my hand and I squeeze back. We walk behind the Stork through a doorway shaped like a giant baby rattle. Judy picked out our clothes this morning. I’m in my double-breasted wool suit, holding my hat. Judy’s wearing the dress I like her best in, the one with the polka dots. I even shined my shoes yesterday. I pull one of Judy’s curls so it springs back against her head and her eyes dance.

We’ve followed the Stork into a room with video screens everywhere and a huge baby head on every one. There are couples and Storks everywhere, all of them in their Sunday best just like us. The din is incredible, all of it coming from the video screens. Babies laughing, eating, cooing, saying “Dadadadada”, but the couples are silent and watchful. No one wants to break some unspoken rule. We only get to visit the Starter Baby Store once.

Judy whispers, “Was it like this, at the Starter Wife Store?”

Twenty-eight-year-old me nods my head and she smiles. Eleven-year-old me wants to scream. It’s been this way since I left the first Civics Class. Half of me trying, wanting to be a good citizen. To be like my dad. To think the way the world works makes perfect sense. Half of me is still thinking I can run away from the auditorium, the Headmaster, the school. To ever know any of it. And — aside from the fact that telling Judy would guarantee her death — I never, ever want her to know what it was really like at the Starter Wife Store.

Our Stork leads us to the escalator, a steep hill that rises through a bright pink tunnel. I catch Judy’s eye and we both start giggling. The bedlam of the video wall babies fades as the escalator brings us higher and now our ears are soothed by delta waves. And I feel that endless tug again. Half-filled with the joy of choosing a baby with Judy, half-numb with the knowledge that this can’t last. It’s a Starter Family, after all.

At the top of the escalator is an unassuming door with a wooden sign on it that reads, “Georgie’s Room” and Judy turns to the Stork and asks, “How did you know?”

“We have our ways,” says the Stork, and he winks at me.

I flash to Judy, standing naked in a box labelled “Judy Young”, the smell of musky perfume everywhere, the Matchmaker rubbing his hands. I feel sick.

The Stork puts his hand on the doorknob and asks, “Are we ready, Mommy and Daddy?”

Judy nudges me in a way that says she finds this as gross as I do. I grin and nudge her back as we follow him through the door. There are two rows of bassinets with a baby boy in each one. Double chins, deep brown eyes, bald and hirsute and so pudgy I want to hug them all. I didn’t expect to feel like this. I’ve heard men at work get more excited about going to the steakhouse for lunch than their trip to the Starter Baby Store.

“Who do we like?” asks the stork, and I look down at Judy, our hands finding each other. We’ve talked about this moment for months. Judy stood in the kitchen with her nose in the air and pronounced, “We must have a strong jaw! Artistic fingers! He must be able to focus his eyes, though he is a newborn! We must have the best!” and I laughed so hard I got hiccups. We thought we’d just know when we saw him.

As we look around the room I can see there’s not much to choose between the babies. Sure, some have chipmunk cheeks and some have outie bellybuttons, but that’s no way to decide. In five years when Georgie asks how we chose him, what are we going to say? Your bassinet was closest to the door…

The stork adjusts his bow tie and says, “There’s no rush. Take as long as you’d like. It’s overwhelming! It’s babies!” He laughs. “You’ll see, they all have their own —”

One of the babies begins to sob. Sob like the world is about to end. And the part of me that can’t forget the Starter Wife store knows that kind of heart-wrenching sobs.

It was when I was waiting in line with all the other men there to buy Wives. And you don’t want to screw it up. They never let you back in and you end up a lifelong bachelor. No Starter family, no Forever Family, nothing. Sure, Law 626 says all men must be treated the same, but my Uncle Dennis was a bachelor, and he couldn’t find a job better than a janitor. He could do calculus in his head–it didn’t matter. He never even owned his own house; he lived with a roommate in a rented apartment. Dad used to buy clothes and food on his own tablet and then give them to Dennis so the gifts couldn’t be tracked. When Dennis died, no one even came to his funeral. It was just us and his roommate, who was the only one crying.

Anyway. In the lobby of the Starter Wife Store, three guards with billy clubs were walking behind a sobbing girl, who fluttered around the room like a trapped bird. Everyone in line was staring straight ahead. Her face was covered in tears and she kept going up to the men in line and asking, “Have you seen my husband? His name is William Harville.” When one man ignored her, she went onto the next one. “He’s tall, has black hair. Slicked back, you know?” She pulled her own long hair back to demonstrate. Behind her the guards were closing in.

I kept Uncle Dennis’ image in my head. His threadbare coat. His wasted brilliance.

“Is he here? I can’t find him. He said he was dropping me off at the beauty parlour and he’d park the car but he never came back. I think he was kidnapped!”

On the video walls, there were girls everywhere. Baking, cleaning, laying out picnics, standing under parasols with pursed lips and their toes turned in. But most of the girls were sprawled on beds, naked. The sobbing girl stood in the middle of the lobby, looking at the video walls. “Please, please help me find my husband. I’m so worried for him.”

The man ahead of me yawned and the guards lunged. One plunged a syringe in her arm and she went limp in another guard’s arms. I looked at the floor. I told myself to ignore it. That she’d been dropped off at the wrong door for Reclaiming and it wasn’t my business. That I didn’t want to end up like Uncle Dennis.

A well-preserved man in a tweed suit came rushing out a side door. “Gentlemen!” he said, breathing hard. “Goodness, my apologies. I’m so sorry about this kerfuffle.” More guards surrounded the girl, and the group moved together out of the room. I did nothing. I did nothing. “Friends,” said the man, “Fruition Corp is offering all of you thirty-five percent off your purchase today. We know you can buy your Starter Wife elsewhere and we want to show how grateful we are that you chose us.”

On the video wall, a towering girl writhed in a red negligee.

Eleven-year-old me was screaming that Mr. William Harville had dropped his Starter Wife off like a dog he didn’t want any more. Eleven-year-old me kept asking if Mr. Harville was my future.

But I took my voucher when it was handed to me. It was printed on shiny paper. I put it in my shirt pocket, careful not to crease it. That thirty-five percent off was nothing to sneeze at.

In the bassinet room, Judy looks up at me with the little frown between her eyebrows that I love to kiss. I ask the Stork, “Um, should we… pick him up?” I gesture to the bassinet.

The Stork grins and scoops the baby into his arms. “Well Daddy, not unless you’re ready to take this little man home.” He bounces the baby with surprising skill and the sobs fade into hiccups. “Mommies and Daddies only get to pick up their own Starter Babies! That’s when they’re bonded, you know.”

I flash to Judy coming alive in my arms as I stepped onto the linoleum in our tiny apartment foyer. She threw her arms around my neck. “Oh, Charles!” she said,” My very own Charles!” and her memories of us start there. And I want mine to start there too. But I can’t forget her in that box, naked, vacant.

As the Stork comforts the baby, we peruse the second row of bassinets. I nudge Judy and point to the first baby who is frowning at us under luxurious auburn eyebrows. “He looks like my Grandpa,” I whisper, and Judy giggles with her hand over her mouth.

We pass Grandpa Baby and the one next to him who’s punching the air with fists the size of my thumb.

“I wonder what a girl baby would look like,” says Judy, half to herself.

Eleven-year-old me wants to tell her that no one knows because they don’t exist, and I rub my mouth. I point to the next bassinet which contains two babies so intertwined it’s hard to tell which limbs belong to which baby. “How about those two?”

Judy leans in. “Oh, look at their little noses,” she says. “But can you imagine?”

“We’ll call them Bill and Phil and buy them matching clothes,” I say, not meaning it.

She grins up at me. “Never. Mrs. Danforth down the street, she has twins. They are a holy menace. Even she can’t tell them apart and when one of them is naughty how can she punish them both?” She looks down again at the twins and one touches the other’s cheek. “Look how they adore each other, though.”

We move on to the next bassinet. The baby inside doesn’t look at us. He has a surprising crop of dark hair already and a frown that reminds me of Judy. He’s examining his big toe with great concentration. I lean over and I swear he smells like cookies right out of the oven. Judy puts her head on my shoulder.

His pink tongue peeks out of his mouth as he pulls his foot as close to his face as he can. He looks like he’s discovered the existence of a heretofore unsuspected God.

“What a smart boy,” I say in a soft voice I’ve never used before and didn’t mean to use now. “What a smart boy to see his toes.”

He coos to his toes and Judy looks up at me, her eyes shining. “Charles…” she says.

I shush the part of me that wishes she would just say what she means instead of dancing around it. Eleven-year-old me asks if I’d act any different, as a girl, in this room. “He sure does look like a George, don’t you think so?”

She turns and hugs me tight. “Oh, yes!”

The Stork comes over with his tablet, the formerly-crying baby now snoozing on his shoulder. “I was so hoping you’d pick little Georgie,” he says, and even though I’m sure he must say this to every couple, I feel warmed by his approval. He holds out his tablet and I Confirm, then he asks Judy to turn around so he can scan the back of her neck. He turns the baby with gentle hands and scans the back of his neck too.

Georgie. His name is Georgie.

Judy looks to the Stork for permission, then reaches in and gathers Georgie up. They look at each other for a long time, solemn but content. “Hi,” says Judy.

Eleven-year-old me is screaming the word run. The way I couldn’t when I was in school. To take the long pink escalator the wrong way, shoving other hopeful couples aside. To take a taxi to the little bungalow Judy and I share and pack my clothes and go into the woods and shed Charles Young. Because I know how this story ends. All men do.

But the baby’s steady gaze turns to me and I’m sunk. I take Georgie, my hands shaking, and he relaxes against me with utter trust. The kind of trust you shouldn’t give anyone, but especially a man. Not here. Not now.

Outside, the taxi driver at the front of the long line of cabs waves us into the back seat of his cab. I settle Judy in and hand her Georgie, then I sit next to them and give the cabbie our address. As the taxi leaves the parking lot, Judy gives a delighted laugh. “Can you believe they let us go home with a baby?”

I put my arm around Judy’s shoulder and squeeze and Georgie gives a small squawk at being squeezed too. My Starter Family is breathtaking.

Judy whispers to Georgie, “I get to spend the whole rest of my life with you. I am so lucky.”

I retch and turn it into a cough. I look out the window as we pass the drive-in movie theatre and Johnson And Sons Shoe Repair and Judy sings a made-up song about seagulls to Georgie.

The first month is hard, just like everyone said it would be. We can’t take the baby to meet my mother, because Dad had her Reclaimed when her face folded into a fan of laugh lines. When her voice was scratchy and thin, when her hands were soft and lined. He told me after. I told myself I would have tried to save her. I told myself she’d have wanted it that way. I told myself a lot of things.

When I call Dad up and say we were thinking of taking the four-hour train trip north to introduce him to Georgie, he says, “There’s no point, Charles. Bring the real one. Later.”

It’s still a shock to hear Dad talk like this. He never did when Mom was alive, not once, which makes me miss who I thought he was almost as much as I miss Mom.

It’s not just the lack of sleep, or the endless striving to communicate with a creature who thinks the word “Wah” means “I’m hungry” and “My diaper needs changing” and “I’m lonely “and “I’m bored” and “I’m having existential dread” and “Wait, give that back, I was looking at it”. It’s hard going from Mr. and Mrs. Charles Young to the Young family.

I thought Judy would just… know what to do. But she’s as lost as I am. The first time she goes to change Georgie’s diaper, she just stands there, paralyzed, while Georgie flails his plump legs and rages.

I’m not supposed to help. We learned that in Civics Class. Our Headmaster thumping the podium at the front of the room, booming, “Our society needs MEN, not BUNNY RABBITS.” I look at Georgie. His eyes are scrunched tight and his voice is starting to fray. I touch Judy’s shoulder and she jumps a little. When she looks up at me, her eyes are frantic. “I’m sorry,” she raises her voice above Georgie’s. “We learned in Finishing School with dolls, but how do you do this with a real baby?”

I’m not supposed to pick up the baby when he’s crying, but I can’t just watch him like this. I gather him up and he makes a surprised woo and settles into my shoulder, still whimpering a little. I wrinkle my nose. It’s not just pee in his diaper. “Maybe it’s in your Handbook?” I ask. “We could try it together.”

She wipes her cheeks but doesn’t move. “But are you…” She looks down. “Are you supposed to?”

Eleven-year-old me doesn’t understand how other men do this. Live in two different worlds.

For the thousandth time I remind myself that I must be a good citizen. Walk in time with the other men. Not be unique. Never unique. But I don’t put Georgie down. I lean over and whisper in her ear, “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

She runs downstairs to find her Handbook and I put Georgie down on the changing table. I say, “Whoops,” when he kicks the pile of clean diapers off the table and Georgie squeaks. “Whoops?” I say again, “Is that the word you liked?” and he starfishes his hands in the air, like he’s trying to grab the word. I take the plastic diaper cover off. There’s a safety pin on either side, so I unpin them, making sure the sharp bit is away from Georgie’s skin. From downstairs, Judy calls, “Still looking for it!”

Georgie is watching me with that little frown line between his eyebrows. His sobs have abated.

“Hey. You worried I don’t know what I’m doing?” I say. “You are spot on. I have no idea.” I smile. After a moment he smiles back, displaying his gums. “How’d you get to be so great?” I ask, and my voice breaks a little. By the time Judy comes in with the Handbook, he’s solemn again. We clean him up together. I don’t tell Judy about it. I want her to think when she sees him smile that it’s his first time.

At first when Georgie wakes up in the night, I nudge Judy awake and try to fall back asleep. I always seem to wind up staring at the ceiling, though. Listening to my Starter Family, Judy saying things like, “Were you dreaming? I was. I was dreaming I was on a boat in an ocean. Isn’t that silly? I’ve never even seen the ocean…” and Georgie’s hums in the spaces between her sentences, almost like a conversation.

I start lingering over my toast and eggs in the morning, later and later, until my supervisor takes me aside and reminds me that good citizens arrive at exactly eight AM and no later. But sitting at the kitchen table, sharing my scrambled eggs with Georgie, his fists flailing the air with joy, I have to force myself out the door. Every morning. During the day I sit at my desk, the blueprints I used to find fascinating in dusty piles as I gaze out the window at the perfect lawn of our campus. Wondering what my family is doing in that very moment. Wondering what smiles I’m missing.

One night I’m woken by Georgie’s cries. I nudge Judy but she doesn’t even stir. I tell myself I’ll go pee and then wake her up. I’m not a bunny rabbit, I’m a man. I make the money! I know the secrets! I come home at the end of a hard day and Judy’s in her pearls and Georgie’s in his romper, and I’m a good citizen.

I walk by Georgie’s room and his cries grow louder, then falter. I’m not sure why, but then as I pee, I understand. He saw me pass by, but he isn’t sure I’ll come to him. And that’s what decides it. How he isn’t sure. I go into the nursery and reach into his crib and pick him up. He’s wide-eyed and silent. I hold his warm body against mine. I take him downstairs and get his formula ready. I don’t go back to bed. We sit on the couch, and he sleeps sometimes and sometimes he is watching my face like it’s something he needs to memorize. Eventually the sky lightens.

After that, I wake up with him about half the time. Judy says that she told Mrs. Danforth down the street that I’ve been helping. She says with a proud smile that Mrs. Danforth flat out didn’t believe her. She puts on Mrs. Danforth’s low drawl and says, “Honey, no man helps like that.”

To quell the fear I feel, I pick her up and twirl her around. “Guess you’ve got a special man then, hmm?”

But later, after Georgie’s asleep and Judy’s doing the dishes and I’m trying to read the paper, but I can’t seem to get past the first paragraph. What if Mrs. Danforth tells her husband? What if he goes to the Civic Services? My Headmaster said that changing diapers, feeding the baby, those things make men into rabbits. I can see him now, long stern face above the podium. “There is no place for rabbits in our Society! No place!” He didn’t explain what he meant by no place, but it must be bad. I’ve never met a rabbit. Only men. Not for the first time I wonder if Uncle Dennis messed up his Starter Wife Store visit on purpose.

One morning on the subway the man next to me lights a cigarette. I look up to find a nonsmoker to sit next to and everyone, everyone is a man. I knew Starter Wives weren’t allowed to leave their neighbourhoods alone, but is that also true of Forever Wives? I try to picture my own mother outside of our house in Rexford and I can’t. Even when Dad and I went to the marina and took out the boat out with Uncle Dennis, Mom stayed home. The first time we went, she was waiting by the door for us in a sailor shirt and captain’s hat. Dad took one look at her and said surely there was some housework that needed doing. After a moment, she nodded and took off the hat. When we got home, she was in bed with a migraine.

I think of Judy in the taxi on the way home from the Starter Child Store. How she ran her fingers over the door. How she looked out the window with such attention.

The man next to me exhales and I repress a cough. I try to remember Judy leaving our neighbourhood. But where would she go? She walks Georgie in the baby carriage to the Piggly-Wiggly. The park is just four blocks in the other direction. The beauty parlour, the shoe store — even that little Italian place where we celebrated our Starter Child papers coming through was within walking distance.

The PA crackles Sunnyvale Station, next stop. Sunnyvale Station. The subway pulls into the station and the smoking man tips his hat to me and walks onto the platform.

That night, I open the door and hang my hat on the coat rack. Georgie, hopping in his Johnny-Jump-Up, squawks and bounces when he sees me. I take off my overcoat and call Judy’s name. When she starts down the stairs in pearls and a flowered green dress, she’s wearing high heels, taking each step like she’s stepping off a cliff. “Good lord, why not take off your shoes?” I ask.

She stops and tilts her head. “Take them off?”

“Sure.”

Judy doesn’t move. She looks down at her feet. “I’m not supposed to.”

“What? Who says!” Eleven-year-old me knows, but I run up the stairs to her anyway, stopping one stair lower than her so we’re eye to eye. “Can you sit down for a second?”

She shakes her head. “No, Charles, I’m not supposed to.”

I look at her. “Just for a second?”

After a moment, she sits on the stair tread and I sit too. I take one heel off, and then the other. Her feet are red and there’s a blister on one of her big toes.

Judy, blushing, calls down to Georgie. “Daddy is being very silly.” He hums in agreement.

I drop the heels off the side of the banister. “See?” I say “No alarms, no sirens.” I take her hand and we go down the stairs together. Georgie kicks his feet, which are encased in Buster Browns. “You want yours off too, kiddo?” I kneel in front of him and take hold of his shoelace and pull it until the bow is untied. Georgie peers down at his feet, watching. I untie his other shoe and take them both off, then his socks. I start to stand up, but Georgie points to me and squawks again.

“You too,” whispers Judy. “We’ll all be barefoot.” She glances at the living room window and pulls the white net curtains tight. When my feet are bare too, Judy takes Georgie out of his Johnny-Jump-Up. She takes my hand and leads me onto the orange shag carpet. She puts Georgie down, holding his hands so he can stand. He squeals and stomps his feet. Judy closes her eyes. “I’ve always wanted to know how that felt,” she says, still whispering.

“Why didn’t you try before?” I ask, even though I know. Even though eleven-year-old me is thinking what kind of men would make it so even when Wives are alone, they’re miserable?

She looks down at Georgie, who is still dancing his feet and crowing. “It’s in the Handbook,” she says, “about the shoes.” Then recites like a schoolboy:

Clean body, smart frock, necklace and heels

Wide smiles, say yes, cook him tasty meals

That’s the way to be a girl, the way to his heart

That’s the way to be a girl, that way if you’re smart

Georgie pulls one hand free and loses his balance. He falls and looks at us to see if he should cry. “Whoops,” I say. He hums a bit and buries his hands in the carpet.

I sit down next to Georgie and say, “Judy… if you think I care about that stuff, I just… I don’t.”

Judy rolls her eyes. “I suppose you wouldn’t mind if I wore my nightgown all day, bare feet, no girdle.”

“I would wear my nightgown all day,” I say, bewildered, “if I were you. Yes, good lord, wear any goddamn thing.”

“…es,” says Georgie to the carpet, “…ess essss.”

Judy swoops Georgie up and squeezes him so tight he bleats in protest. “Who is the smartest boy!” she says, and I put my arms around them both and we all say ess, ess, ess for the rest of the night. Our bare feet whispering through the house.

It takes a week for Judy to show up at the front door without her pearls. I touch her bare neck and say, “Ess,” and from the kitchen in his high chair Georgie shouts, “Ess!” and it doesn’t take many more days for her to start wearing my undershirts and pyjama bottoms. The net curtains always pulled shut tight now.

One day when we’re all playing blocks on the living room floor, there’s a knock on the door and Judy’s face goes white. “You answer it,” she says, her voice urgent and low. “Tell whoever it is I’ll be right down.” She runs up the stairs without making any sound and I answer the door, holding Georgie.

“Oh!” says the girl on the doorstep. She’s standing with two smirking boys in matching shirts. “Hello there. You must be Mr. Young. I’m Mrs. Robert Danforth, from down the road?” She’s taller than Judy, and her eyebrows are pencilled high in a look of constant surprise.

Behind me, I can hear Judy’s clacking heels and I turn Mrs. Danforth over to her with relief. I’m already imagining the conversation the Danforths will have later. “What a rabbit!” Mrs. Danforth will say. “He was babysitting the little boy and Judy was nowhere to be seen!”

Mrs. Danforth is asking if Judy will watch her twins for just a little while, as the washer at her house if broken and she must clean up all the water before the repairman comes.

Judy says yes with more enthusiasm than I’d have mustered in her place and the twins troop in. Mrs. Danforth flutters off with promises of a Bundt cake tomorrow. “Hi there,” I say, and in my arms Georgie flaps his arms in an approximation of a wave. “I’m Mr. Young.”

The twins stare at me. One says, “Your baby smells awful.”

Judy says, “Danny, Davey, would you like a grilled cheese sandwich and some tomato soup?” She starts for the kitchen and they follow her at a run.

Georgie reaches his arms after them. I hug him close. “They’re just crummy old jerks, who needs ‘em anyway? Let’s play blocks.” I sniff him. “Or maybe have a diaper change. Then blocks.”

The boys are at our house for what feels like years. Once they’ve eaten all the Wonder Bread and half a block of orange cheese and Judy’s in the kitchen cleaning up after them, they settle on playing Civic Services in the backyard. They trade off playing Rebel and Civic Services Agent, but the game goes the same way every time. The Rebel sneaks around the backyard rubbing his hands together and cackling. The Civic Services Agent tackles him and the Rebel says, “You can’t get me, I’m unique! I’m special!” and the Civic Services Agent shoots him in the head with his fingers. I think that if Danny and Davy weren’t set to be Reclaimed, they would make successful Civic Services Agents.

Despite my efforts to distract Georgie, he wants nothing more than to sit at the sliding glass door, rapt. Every once in awhile, he turns to me and breathes, “Oys,” and I say, “Stinky oys.”

At four o’clock, Mrs. Danforth returns to collect the twins. “Will we see you at the neighbourhood potluck?” Judy asks as the boys run outside.

“Well… no.” Mrs. Danforth looks behind her, then leans forward and says in a low voice, “I’m not supposed to say really, but… oh Judy, we’re moving. Just in time for the boys to turn eleven. To a big house in Rexford! Charles says it’s so big the boys will have their own rooms and there’s even a sewing room for me.”

“That sounds just about perfect!” says Judy, and turns to me. “Doesn’t it, Charles?”

I can’t answer. I nod instead and when the front door closes, I tell Judy the boys were exhausting and my head hurts. I tell her I’m going upstairs to lie down. She feels my forehead and promises to come upstairs soon with an aspirin.

I lie in the darkened room under the covers. Mrs. Danforth and the twins are not moving to Rexford. I know what happens to eleven-year-old Starter Children. I know what happens to their mothers. I think of the grainy filmstrip the Headmaster showed us in our first Civics Class.

We sat in restless rows as, on the screen, we saw a group of boys just like us sitting on wooden chairs, in shorts and button-down shirts, their ties flapping. They waved to the camera and, in the auditorium, we waved back. The narrator said, “Here’s a group of happy ten-year-old boys. You were one of them, just a few months ago.” On the screen, half the boys stood up. “As you know, Starter Boys don’t go to your classes. Gosh, they’re not bright enough!” The standing boys moved over about six feet and sat back down. They started to pick their noses, punch each other, and shout. The narrator said, “You would never behave like this.” A few boys in the audience snickered. “You are a Forever Boy. Treasured and loved by your Forever Mother.” On the screen, the group of Forever Boys on the screen sat in a polite circle and chatted — something that I was sure had never happened in our school — as the Starter Boys brawled. I nudged Matthew and whispered, “I’d rather be one of them,” and he nodded.

“Say,” the narrator asked, “Did you ever wonder where the Starter Boys went?”

There was a murmur, and a lot of us looked at each other. We’d wondered, of course we had. Though most of us didn’t mix much with the Starter Boys — there was no rule against it, it just wasn’t encouraged — when they’d vanished, all anybody would tell us is that we’d learn all the answers in Civics Class.

On the screen, a Headmaster with a fluffy white beard waved a ruler in the air at the Starter Boys. Jaunty accordion music played, and the Starter Boys began to vanish on the beat. Ba-da-BUM, ba-da-BUM, until all the chairs were empty. The narrator said, “Why, they were Reclaimed by Fruition Corp! And someday, when you have your own Starter Family, a little bit of Harold or Frank might be part of it.”

Matthew hissed, “Gross,” and I nodded like crazy.

The camera returned to the polite circle of Forever Boys who seemed about to suggest a nice game of bridge to round off the school day. “But what is a Forever Boy?” asked the narrator, and a boy behind me muttered, “Mister, if youdon’t know, we’re sunk.”

The narrator said, “A Forever Boy is the lucky child who gets an experienced father. A man who’s already practiced with a Starter Family. He’s made his fortune and is ready to support his Forever Family in high style.” On the screen we watched a man in a suit plaster a Sold sticker over a For Sale sign in front of a sprawling ranch house with a Buick parked in the driveway. “A Forever Boy is the lucky child with a Forever Mother,” and on the screen a grownup man hugged an old woman and kissed her on the forehead. There was a chorus of, “Eww,” throughout the auditorium.

My pretend headache is real now, my head throbbing as I lie in the bed. There’s a knock on the door and Judy comes in holding a glass of water and two aspirin. I’m glad she can’t see me in the dim light, or the rabbity tears leaking down my cheeks. She leaves them on the bedside table and tiptoes out.

When the filmstrip ended, one kid who’d been particular friends with a Starter Boy asked why Starter Families had to be Reclaimed. The Headmaster said, “If we didn’t Reclaim them, where in the world would they live? Who would take care of them?” and the picture of a girl and her son living all alone was so absurd that we all started laughing. Even the boy who’d asked the question.

On the Saturday that the Danforths are supposed to move house, I kiss Judy and shoulder my golf clubs and walk to the subway station. On the subway car, I sit holding the golf bag between my knees, most of the other men doing the same, and eleven-year-old me is asking why I’m playing golf with the men at work while three sentient human beings are being Reclaimed. Why I’m doing nothing, nothing, nothing. At Fairview Station I get off. I meet the men from work. I play golf.

By the fifth hole, I’m ready to chew my own arm off. Walter from Production is showing the others a glossy catalogue. They’re huddled around it while another man makes practice swings at the ball. “Charles, come see this,” says Walter.

I drag my feet. But I go. Whether it’s participating in a government that advocates murder or playing golf with men I wouldn’t save from a burning house, I go. They make me a space in their huddle. The man swings for the hundredth time above his ball. Walter holds up the catalogue. A girl in a yellow gown is draped on a purple chaise lounge. There’s not a hair out of place. She’s looking up at the camera and her mouth curls up at the edges. Above her, the text says, “The Forever Wife: Wake Up to That Face Forever”.

“She looks like she’s hardly twenty,” I say without thinking.

“Of course she does,” says Walter.

I curse myself for saying anything. “Just… we’ll be in our forties.”

“What, you want to spend ten years of your hard-earned money on some old hag who thinks she has a mind of her own?” says a man who works in the marketing department. Everyone laughs. I don’t say anything. “It’s a kindness. Girls hate being old. My mother got her first gray hair and stopped speaking to anybody. Dad had her Reclaimed about a week later.”

Walter flips to the next page. This girl has white gloves and is wearing a Paces watch. The text says, “The Forever Wife: Be With Her Until the End of Time”.

I think about that awful box, Judy naked inside. My Judy is the bargain Wife, the cheap kind. The girls in this catalogue are what I’m supposed to want. Right now, Mrs. Danforth and her boys are in the car heading to what they think is a penny arcade or a swimming pool. Right now, Mr. Danforth is driving, thinking of the Forever Wife he’s already picked from this catalogue. And his Starter Family is vanishing, ba-da-BUM, ba-da-BUM, ba-da-BUM. Gone.

Walter says, running his fingers over the girl in white gloves, “Aw, man, how am I gonna wait nine more years?”

I pick up my golf bag. I walk away from the group. A couple of the men call out, asking if I’m sick or what, and I don’t answer. I’ll be in for it Monday — this is not Socializing for Success by any stretch — but I don’t care. I hate the catalogue, I hate what I’m supposed to want. What I want is what I have. And nine years doesn’t seem like a long time. It feels like if I blink for too long it will have passed by, and my Judy, my George, will be packing for our big move and I’ll know. I’ll know the whole time that they are going to be Reclaimed.

I flash to the Civics Class film narrator. “A little bit of Harold or Frank might be part of your Starter Family!” and drop my golf bag and run into the bushes and throw up until I’m bringing up nothing but bile.

When I open the front door, I hear Georgie crying. I go upstairs, calling Judy’s name. Georgie’s wailing in his crib and Judy’s sitting on the floor, her back against the wall. She’s crying too. I pick Georgie up and he doesn’t seem to register my presence at all. He just keeps crying. His diaper’s dry. Judy looks up and blanches. She stands up and tries to stop crying. As soon as Georgie sees her, he reaches for her and howls. I open my free arm and she comes to us and I hug them both to me. I hold them like we’re in a tornado and I’m keeping them safe.

Against my chest Judy says, “I just — he kept crying — he has new teeth and, and nothing makes him happy, and I was going to ask Mrs. Danforth for advice — but she’s gone now — and I got so mad I was afraid I’d —” She’s sobbing and so is Georgie and I say over the two of them, “I kind of feel like crying too,” and Judy is surprised into a laugh, which makes Georgie goggle and then hiccup and hiccup again and he says in a fury to his own stomach, “O,” and I poke his tummy and say, “Es!” and he leans his head against me and sighs in that way he has and I hug them both and in that moment I know. I know I won’t survive without them.

After we’ve read Georgie to sleep, Judy is doing the dishes and I’m sitting at the kitchen table cleaning my pipe. I don’t actually know how to smoke the thing, but it was part of my First Home package and I found the repetitive motions soothing. The radio’s playing an ad for Fruition Corp. “Want to save a buck or two? Instead of buying a Starter Wife, win the Starter girl of your dreams! The man who sends in the best essay on why he deserves that gorgeous beauty for free gets to pick eye and hair colour and even some naughty —” I shut the radio off.

As Judy wipes down the counters, she asks, “Charles, do you know how to get in touch with the Danforths?”

I think for a horrible moment of Mrs. Robert Danforth, who I can’t even grant the dignity of her own first name because I never knew it, I think of her as component parts. Bits of her, arms or eyelashes, standing naked in a glass box. Her memory of life on this street and her children erased. Labelled with some young man’s idea of the perfect name. Dorothy, maybe. Or Margaret. Waiting to come alive when her new husband takes her across the threshold. I think of the Danforth twins, now part of a series of new babies. Lying in the bassinets upstairs in the Starter Child Store. And that seems like the saddest part somehow. That the boys will never see each other again.

And Mr. Robert Danforth. Leading his Forever Wife (Isobel, or maybe Gwendoline) around his enormous new house. Planning their meeting with a Forever Child Broker. Lush orange carpet and panelled walls. Low lighting. Instead of a Stork, a quiet distinguished man in a pinstriped suit, handing them the Forever Baby they’d ordered. No Reclaimed parts, a real boy made of flesh and blood.  I know what it looks like because there are photographs in my father’s photo album.

“Honey, did you hear me? About talking to Mrs. Danforth?” asks Judy. She’s been washing the same counter for a long time.

I could just say no and she’d nod and never bring it up again. It’s one of the awful rhymes they learned.

When hubby shakes his head, when hubby says no,

You’d better just listen or he’ll come to blows!

But I don’t. I ask, “Do you miss her?”

She turns around and doesn’t meet my eyes. “Maybe — not her specifically. But having someone to talk to, I miss that. I know Starter Families aren’t allowed in Rexford, but maybe she would come back? For coffee cake or something?”

I run the pipe cleaner around the rim of the bowl. I’m thinking about the Headmaster, about the rhymes we memorized. How he said in Civics Class that if we ever revealed even one word, our mothers would die, die, die.

“She said when they got to Rexford, her husband was going to buy her a car. A Cadillac. So it wouldn’t take her long to drive here.”

My father had a Starter Family. My father chose his Forever Wife from a catalogue and one day he dropped his Starter Wife and Starter Boy off to be Reclaimed and never gave them another thought. Then he and his shiny new Wife ordered me like a Thanksgiving turkey, brown hair, pleasant disposition, aptitude for math, curious and ambitious. And I was their Forever Boy and the boy who came before me — he must have been scared. So scared.

Judy rinses the sponge and sits across from me at the table. “Charles?”

In Civics Class, we role-played this kind of conversation, the Headmaster playing the part of the Wife, a blonde wig on his head that in any other setting would have made us howl with laughter. I’m supposed to tell her she needs new Starter friends. I’m supposed to tell her to leave me be, can’t she see I’m busy. I’m supposed to slam doors. And if she won’t let it go, make sure her fingers are in the way first.

I set my pipe down. I reach across the table and take her hands. “I have something to tell you.”

And I tell her, my Judy. I start with Civics Class and as I talk, she takes her hands away. I tell her everything and she watches me and I know I’ve kissed her, held her, heard her laugh for the last time. I talk for so long my throat feels full of razor blades. My heart starts beating too fast, because Judy and George are what makes being alive possible, but how could I have done otherwise?

Judy stands up and says in a flat voice, a new voice, “We have to tell the other Wives. We have to tell everybody. This can’t go on.”

I’ve never seen her be fierce before, I didn’t even know she had fierceness in her, and the thought of a Judy who is even more glorious than I knew is heartbreaking. All I can get out is, “We can’t —  Georgie —” before I break down in sobs. But Judy understands. She sits down again. She doesn’t cry. She watches me like I’m a poisonous snake. When I recover myself, Judy says, “All right. You’ve told me. Why? Why tell me anything?”

“Were you real?” I whisper. “Before, was that you?”

She smiles and it’s Judy, but it’s also this new person, the one I didn’t know was in there. She says, “Yes. Part of me. The part that was taught to fear everything, every single thing, including you. And what do you know? The teachers at the Finishing School were right.”

Eleven-year-old me is quiet, for once. And I want so badly to explain about Uncle Dennis, about what happens when you aren’t a good citizen, but what would I really be saying? I didn’t want to be poor? I didn’t want to be a janitor, or rent an apartment? As bad as this society is, I didn’t want to be an outcast? That I feared loneliness more than — than throwing Judy and Georgie into the Reclaiming meat grinder? So I just nod.

“You must have told me for a reason,” says Judy.

“I have an idea,” I say, and we talk through the night, and all I can see for my own future is a loneliness so stark I can hardly breathe, but as we talk — as the person I’ve always been inside and the real Judy talk — I begin to believe that maybe. Maybe my family will be safe. If we do everything right.

I take vacation time. I tell my boss I’m taking my family to the seaside. I have enough money put aside in my Forever Wife Fund to rent a car, to book a bed and breakfast. It has to look real.

And we do drive to the seaside. I Confirm With Confidence at every gate, the gatekeepers scanning the backs of Judy and Georgie’s necks.

At the last gate before the seaside, the young gatekeeper’s uniform is ironed and his badge is shiny. He looks inside the car with care. I was offered a gatekeeper post myself when I was his age. They told me it could be a stepping stone to a high rank in the Civic Services and I spent the day dropping my resume off everywhere I could think of, unsure if they could force me to be a gatekeeper and desperate to find another job first.

This gatekeeper looks like he lobbied for the job.

After I’ve Confirmed and he’s scanned Judy and Georgie he asks, “What’s your business at the seaside today, sir?”

I say, “Just want to show my boy the ocean!” and even to my own ears I sound like a perfectly normal man.

The gatekeeper darts his eyes to my magnificent family and says, “With them?” as if they’re spiders, as if they’re toasters, as if they’re blocks of wood.

I resist the urge to smash him in the nose. I try to smile. I lower my voice. “Oh, you know how it is. Gotta keep ‘em happy or they whine all the time, right?”

He grins and gestures for us to go.

After a long gravel road, we arrive at the shore. When we get out, Judy’s eyes widen and she puts her hand over her mouth. She doesn’t say anything to me, but she touches Georgie’s cheek and says, “Look, look over there,” and Georgie turns and crows and claps his small hands. The wind is bitter and the sky is grey, but as we sit on the damp sand and watch the waves come in, I want to tell Judy about the first time I went to the seaside with my father. How it was warm and the beach was full of happy people and when I asked Dad why Mom hadn’t come with us, why she really hadn’t come with us, he gave me money for ice cream instead of answers. I want to tell Judy that even this dreary day is ten thousand times better because she’s here. Because Georgie’s here.

We walk until we arrive at the marina. It’s off-season, and most of the boats belong to Forever Families. But there’s a section off to the side with small motorboats that men with Starter Families have scrimped and saved for. That’s where I lead Judy and the still sleeping Georgie. We stand looking at a small motorboat with a roof. The boat Dad bought and secretly gave to Uncle Dennis when I was a kid. I clamber on and check underneath the captain’s chair. The keys are still hidden in a small magnetic box.

I’ve told Judy everything I can remember about how boats work. I’m still getting used to her new self, the way she brushes aside my efforts to make it simple for her. She says, “I know. Charles, I understand,” and I think of all the times that I assumed I was smarter than her and my face gets hot.

The wind is blowing her curls into Georgie’s sleeping face and he stirs. He opens his eyes and regards me with such solemnity and my heart twists. I reach for him and Judy hesitates for a moment, then hands him to me. He relaxes against me and touches my nose. “Ess,” he says, and I touch my forehead to his and when my tears touch his cheeks he squirms and bats at his face.

She climbs into the boat and puts on a life jacket that was sitting on a bench, then rummages around to find the smallest life jacket, and we put it on Georgie together. It still dwarfs him. She takes Georgie and my arms are desolate without him.

I want to say you are both precious to me. I want to say you deserve everything, everything good in the world. I want to say I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. But I don’t say anything. I stand on the sand and Judy lays Georgie in one of the storage containers and he plays with his toes as she starts the engine. She doesn’t look back. I watch the boat until I can’t see it anymore. I stand there until the sun begins to set, until the gatekeeper will start to get suspicious.

I get back in the rental car and I drive down the long, long gravel drive and when I get to the gate and the gatekeeper grins and leans into the window I think, for a moment, that he might miss my family’s absence. He says, “Hey there, did you folks have a —” and then sees the empty seat next to me. His hand goes to his radio. “Forget something back at the seaside, sir?”

“They’re collecting shells,” I say, trying not to clutch the steering wheel. “I’m picking up burgers and fries and bringing them back.”

He stares at me. His hand moves from his radio to his gun holster. “Try that again,” he says.

I try to look sheepish. “Uh… we — we had an argument. I wanted to cool off.”

“You don’t look like a stupid man,” he says. “You know they’re not allowed to be out there by themselves.” His eyes are avid.

“Yeah,” I say. “I guess in the heat of the moment…”

“You don’t look stupid,” he says again. “Not at all.” He touches his radio button. “We have an emergency here —”

— is all he’s able to get out before I smash him in the face and he falls, and I get out of the car and kick him, and kick him, and I’m shaking, and he looks like a young version of my Headmaster and I kick him until he’s unconscious and I get back in the car and drive as fast as I can, and in the distance I can hear alarms and sirens, and I am driving through the darkness and I don’t think they’ll be able to find a boat in the dark, not a small boat, not in the middle of the ocean, not even with planes, not even with helicopters, men get lost at sea and no one ever sees them again, I am driving fast, so fast, and when I see the dense forest looming on the left I stop and get out of the car and run, and run, and the sirens are so loud now, and I’m thinking of Wayne in his sleeping bag telling the other boys that it’s one cigarette and a firing line and I don’t know if they have dogs but it has to be harder to track someone in the woods and then I am running, and running, and maybe my beautiful family will find an island, maybe they will find an island with enough to eat and shelter and maybe Georgie will grow big and strong and maybe they will find others like them and maybe and maybe and it isn’t a firing line at all it’s a shot in the back, and I fall and I think of Georgie, and how much I wish I could watch him grow into the man he will be, the sunburst of his laugh lines, Georgie who is kind, and honest, and brave…

I fall. I fall.

___

Copyright 2025 Sage Tyrtle