"Those who can, do. Those who can’t, bitch about it on the Internet." -Simon, from The Book of Simon
Some bios list credentials, such as: Education BFA in Illustration, Massachusetts College of Art Occupation Former Production Slave, Ballantine Books Comics Credits Columnist, Writer, Artist, Editor Etc…
And some bios tell a story, such as: I can remember sitting in front of my television one morning, watching the old Batman show, when Julie Newmar appeared in that skintight black leather outfit as Catwoman. It was my first boy/girl thing. >A year later I was in kindergarten telling Katherine Burke that I loved her. It’s pretty much been a string of stupid mistakes ever since…
Still other bios state an intent, such as: This is a series of essays illustrating the life of one particular struggling artist as he plods through the world and occasionally bumps into some interesting shit.
But most bios just sit to the right of the column and are never looked at. So ignore this space and just read the damn column already…
Through the window of Wanda Schenkman’s house, Megan could see a funeral motorcade driving down the road into the cemetery. She thought of Mrs. Austin-Reade, the empty casket sitting at the Trafalgar Brothers Funeral Home. It couldn’t be her procession because it was too early in the day. How many other people were being laid to rest in Putnam that afternoon?
“Three,” Wanda said, handing Megan a glass of chilled white wine. “The Austin-Reade service isn’t until later. Then we’ve got the Gunderson funeral. That one going by now is Wallace Mobely. Nobody you’d probably know. Doug told me he left Putnam years ago and his family had his body brought back here for burial. They don’t expect a big turn out. I guess that’s what happens to black sheep.”
Wanda poured a bottle of spring water into her wineglass and took a sip like it was actual wine. Barely a day had passed but she looked even more pregnant than before, if that was at all possible. She was eight months along, but seemed ready to burst at any second.
Megan helped take the food out to the back sun porch, where they sat down to eat their lunch. It felt strange being there, Megan’s mind on so many other things, the difficulty of connecting with a friend she’d barely known in fifteen years nowhere near her main concern. Luckily, Wanda had been isolated with her pregnancy and was more than willing to do most of the talking, and prod the conversation when it lagged.
“So, what do you do down in DC?” she asked. “Something with the government?”
“No actually, I’m a teacher,” Megan said, slurping her tomato soup. “I teach the six to nine group at a Montessori school.”
“Oh really,” Wanda seemed interested, like any soon-to-be parent would about education. “How is it at those places? We’re putting our kid in private school. We just don’t know which one yet.”
Megan opted for honesty. “It’s not for everyone, parents or students. Parents have trouble dealing with the unorthodox methods of teaching. They come in considering themselves freethinkers and open-minded. But a few years in, with no real grades for them to judge their child’s progress, they start to get suspicious. I’ll admit, it doesn’t work for every kid, but we have a good number of parents who pull their children out before they can give it a real chance. It’s not a program you can just send your kid to for a few years. You have to commit to it in order for it to really work.”
“And the kids who stick,” Wanda questioned, “they come out better educated than public school kids?”
“Like a lot of things, you get out of it what you put into it. If the kid doesn’t take to the program, they’re not going to excel.” Megan remembered her junior pornographer. “Then there are those kids who excel, but in unexpected ways. It depends on your definition of special.”
“Sounds like you’re not convinced yourself,” Wanda wondered aloud. Megan rolled her eyes, her expression saying all she had to say in response.
Wanda recognized her cue to change the subject. “That guy that was with you yesterday, that was your husband?” Megan nodded, taking a nibble of her tuna salad on rye. “He looked cute. And a superhero? He must have some body.”
“I wouldn’t say he has a bad body,” Megan shrugged. “He’s definitely fit. Not insanely chiseled. But he still looks good out of his clothes.”
Megan smirked just enough that Wanda noticed. “Sounds like you’re talking from recent experience,” Wanda pried. “I got the impression from what you said yesterday, that everything wasn’t exactly domestic bliss.”
“We’re working on some things,” Megan confessed, withholding all the details right away.
“Anything you want to talk about?” Wanda asked, full of food but starved for conversation.
Megan thought it over. There was so much she could say, things she wanted to hear out loud if only to make better sense of them, to make them real. Eddie was no longer a hero, and his identity was never a closely guarded secret. But she was sure he didn’t want his current weakness out there as common knowledge. Still, who did Wanda know? She was a bored housewife about to have a baby, someone who had to beg a barely-friend to have lunch with her for entertainment. Putnam was far from a center of supervillain activity, the recent incident with Shadowclaw not withstanding. Maybe Wanda could offer an outside perspective that even Greta would be incapable of.
She told Wanda everything. Abyss, Eddie trying to get back together with her, what it had been like when they were married, what the past few days home had been like, the phone number on the business card and how the voice on the other end knew her name, all of it was laid out for Wanda’s dissection. Megan reached into her pocket and unfolded the flier for Roland Balthasar’s Center for Rejuvenation and explained what she thought the code meant.
“So you think Eddie has a chance to get his powers back?” Wanda summed up. Megan nodded an affirmative. “And he’s not telling you about it, keeping the whole thing a secret.”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this,” Megan said. “He was desperate when he agreed to come here with me, but he really stood by me when I needed it. Some of the things he said…I started to think his intentions were genuine. But now I can’t help wondering how much of that was because he had nothing else. He’d lost the one thing that defined who he was, and now maybe he’s just clinging to whatever he can find. What if the flier is true? What if I take him back, allow myself to get emotionally invested in him again, and he gets his powers back? Is he going to stick around and build a real relationship, or is it going to go back to the way things were, me sitting on the couch every night watching television while he’s off saving the world?”
“He could be off doing something worse,” Wanda offered. “Like Doug does.”
“Doug is having an affair?” Megan asked.
Wanda nodded. “A couple. At least those are the ones I know about. In fact, I think he might be off screwing one of them right now.”
This was the mystery Megan suspected when she’d talked to Wanda the day before. She could tell from the innuendoes that something wasn’t right in the Schenkman household.
“Let me tell you something,” Wanda began. “Men can’t be trusted. If you trust them you’re just going to get hurt. So don’t. Accept them for what they are and what they’re going to be. If the worst your man is doing is dressing up in tights and saving the world, consider yourself lucky. A job like that will probably keep him too busy to be sticking his dick in some other girl.”
The cynicism was not comforting. “Maybe I don’t want to share my husband with the rest of the world,” Megan argued.
“Maybe you don’t have a choice,” Wanda fired back with reality. “If he gets his powers back you might have to. So you’re going to have to ask yourself, is he worth it? If you only get to have him occasionally, is that enough? And consider the odds that you’re going to find someone better.”
“How do you do it?” Megan asked, knowing that their situations weren’t entirely the same.
“I have my ways,” Wanda admitted. “I didn’t want things to be the way they are, but Doug made the rules. He didn’t tell me about them, but I found out anyway. So I do my best to live by them.” She leaned in, beckoning Megan closer with her finger. “You want to know a secret? This baby…I’m not even sure it’s his.”
After lunch Megan was in no hurry to get back to her family, but she knew she should go. The wake was only a few hours away and she needed time to get prepared, on the outside and the in.
“Don’t go yet,” Wanda pleaded, hoping to steal a few more minutes to liven up her day. “Let me give you a tour of the house. You have to see this place.”
Megan agreed and followed Wanda around the first floor, kitchen, living room, library, dining room, front and back porches, pantry, and even the bathroom. Wanda acted like she was leading a group through a museum, giving more information and pointing out as many knick knacks as she could think of. By the pantry it was starting to feel pathetic.
They finished the first floor and were standing in the front hall when Megan decided she couldn’t stay any longer.
“Just let me show you the upstairs really quick,” Wanda begged.
“Really, I can’t,” Megan argued politely. “I have to get going.”
Wanda stood on the bottom stair. “Come on, just a few more…” Her eyes bulged in their sockets and her face went flush. She pursed her lips and started taking deep, stifled breaths, her cheeks sucking in, then puffing out. Her hand gripped the railing tight.
Megan took two steps toward her friend. “Are you alright?” she asked.
Between breaths Wanda huffed, “I think so. Probably just a contraction. I get one every once in a…” A splash of slimy liquid gushed to the floor from beneath her maternity dress, coating the steps with a clear layer of shining slime.
“Oh shit,” they said in unison, realizing what was happening. The Montessori school required all teachers to take a general first aid course. The course devoted one class to labor procedures. Megan was sick that week and missed the class, but she’d seen enough sitcoms in her time to know roughly what to do. There were no elevators around to get trapped in, so at least she had that going in her favor.
“Okay, just relax,” she comforted, taking Wanda by the hand, helping to keep her on her feet. “We’re going to get you to the hospital. Do you have a bag packed?”
Wanda shook her head, sweat beading on her brow.
“No problem. We’ll take care of that later. How about Doug’s number,” she didn’t bother asking about the other potential candidates for paternity. “Does he have a cell phone? Do you know the number?”
Wanda nodded, hunching over and holding her arm under her bulbous stomach for support as if trying to keep the baby where it was, still inside.
“Alright, I’ll call him from the car and have him meet us at the hospital. With any luck he’ll be there when we get there.” Megan led Wanda to the door and grabbed a set of house keys off a hook next to the light switch. Fumbling, she locked the door behind them and put Wanda in the passenger seat of her Subaru. Loose rocks kicked up; exposing the dry dirt underneath as Megan sped out of the driveway and out to the road.
Keen Memorial was on the other side of the highway, the other side of town, far away in the relative scheme of things. Megan drove as calmly as she could, doing her best to avoid being pulled over by a police officer and adding more time to their journey. Every minute she asked Wanda how she was doing, reminding her to keep breathing. Wanda’s face was drenched in sweat by the time they reached the firehouse at the far end of the Town Square. Something in the back of her mind kept telling Megan that first time labor tended to take a long time. It was the only way she could convince herself that she wasn’t going to have to pull over and deliver a baby on the side of the road. That was definitely something she didn’t read in her first aid training manual.
Sitting at a light, Megan pulled out her cell phone and dialed the number Wanda gave her. Doug answered, out of breath. “Hello,” he panted.
“Doug, this is Megan San…Kroeger, Megan Kroeger. I’m with your wife and she’s just gone into labor.”
“Tell that asshole,” Wanda snarled, “to jump off whatever bitch he’s fucking right now and get to the goddamn hospital.”
“I’m driving her to the hospital,” Megan told him, sanitizing Wanda’s request. Doug said he would meet them there and hung up. The light changed green.
The Subaru hopped onto the highway for the short trip north, then turned off at the housing projects that were being built near the hospital. Shifting gears was made difficult because Wanda was constantly grabbing her hand with her pregnancy-powered vice grip. At the base of the hill leading to Keen Memorial, Megan tried to break free from Wanda’s grasp and, for a split second, pictured herself as a superhero trying to get away from some villainess with the strength of ten men.
In record time they completed the trip from Willow Lawn Cemetery to the emergency entrance of Keen Memorial hospital. Megan waved the doctors out and they came with a gurney for Wanda. As they wheeled her through the automatic doors and past Admissions, Megan held her hand the entire time. With her other hand she took a clipboard of forms a nurse handed her along the way. She didn’t have the first clue what to put in each space beyond Wanda’s name. The best help she could be was comfort.
After an examination, the doctors assured both women that it would still be a while before the baby would be born. Wanda was in for a lengthy labor and Megan did her best to ease her mind for the twenty minutes it took before Doug arrived. He stormed into the room and took over Megan’s support position, barely acknowledging her presence. His attention was wholly focused on his wife. The affection and worry seemed counterfeit, knowing where he’d been only minutes prior. But for the uninformed they looked the very model of a happy marriage soon to be a happy family.
