Undo by Joe Hutsko (best book club books of all time .txt) 📖

time is it?” he asked as he shakily rose to his feet. Dr. Chen gently steadied him. Daylight shone through the windows at the end of the hall. He glanced at the wall clock. Half past noon. He had been asleep for little more than an hour.

“It’s time for you to see Ivy,” Dr. Chen said. He led Peter by the arm through swinging double doors. “And your baby girl.”

Peter stopped in his tracks. He felt flushed and his throat felt swollen. “She’s all right? And the baby too? They both made it though okay?”

Dr. Chen carefully guided Peter to the wall, out of the way of the busy corridor traffic. “Not entirely,” he said. “There were complications. Both Ivy and the baby are very fragile. The baby weighs only two and three-quarter pounds. She’s in neonatal care right now, hooked up to life-support equipment.”

“But she’s alive.”

“Yes. She’s alive,” the doctor said. “The outlook is fair, but we don’t know yet if there is other damage. Damage we can’t see from the drugs.”

Peter felt a sudden wave of revulsion. Images of strangely twisted limbs and gnarled faces flashed in his mind. He himself and asked, “Is she retarded?”

“There is no disfiguration,” the doctor said. “But it’s too early to judge her overall condition. She appears to be a normal, if premature baby.”

Peter allowed himself a tight smile. “Thank you, doctor,” he said.

They ambled down the hall. “Ivy’s not doing well,” the doctor added, “but she insisted on seeing you now. She’s very weak, so you’ll only have a few minutes.”

Peter nodded. “Then can I see…?” he said and left the question unfinished, wondering what was the baby’s name.

“Yes. But that must be brief too,” the doctor said, bringing him up to a closed door. “Wait, Mr. Jones,” Dr. Chen said, gripping Peter’s wrist as he reached for the door latch. “Her condition is not very good, physically or mentally. Don’t upset her. Try to encourage her. I don’t know what your plans are with her, but try to reinforce her with some positive thoughts. Do you understand?”

Peter nodded, then gingerly opened the door and went into the room. The shades were drawn, and strange electronic sounds emanated from machines stationed beside the bed. He went to her.

A dim lamp spread yellow light over the bed, and through the blankets covering her Peter could see that Ivy was very thin. Her head was tilted toward the window and her closed eyelids seemed dark and bluish. She looked so different from when he had thrown her out of his home. He remembered her pure adoration, her desire to please him with her project. He braced himself against the bed rail and leaned his face closer to hers. She smelled medicinal, sterile. Her delicate bone structure, her pert nose, were masked by thin, nearly transparent skin. He felt responsible. Guilty. He must take care of her.

And Kate…? No. He couldn’t let himself think about that right now. He had to let Ivy know everything would be all right, that he would take care of her.

He whispered her name and she stirred, eyelids fluttering. A thin smile touched her lips, then she blinked a few times and her eyes filled with tears. She let out a long breath through pressed lips, closed her eyes, and made an anguished face. “I told myself I wouldn’t get like this when I saw you.” She looked away.

“Hey,” he said, touching her cheek. She pulled her hand from beneath the blankets and wrapped her thin fingers around his. His body stiffened at her chilly, tenuous touch. At once he felt pity and fear. He was afraid for her life. She looked as if she were a breath away from dying. She had all but destroyed herself. And the baby? What had she done to the baby? He wanted to hold her, tell her she was forgiven, yet he was the one who should be asking for forgiveness. It was all so twisted.

“Don’t,” she said, pulling her hand away. “Just don’t. I don’t know what I’m more disgusted about. Me, or you? I wanted you, and you took me and then you threw me away.” Her words were thick and slurred. She was bombed on painkillers and tranquilizers and whatever else they were feeding her through the intravenous tube. “I threw myself away, too, after you made me go. I think I wanted to make the baby go away. I think I did what I did, the drugs and all, to hurt it. I’m sick Peter. I’m very sick now, and I have to get all this poison out of me. Including you.”

“Ivy, don’t talk this way. I’m sorry. You’re sorry. We’re both sorry for the mistake we made. But we’ve got to deal with it. It’s my responsibility.”

She winced. “Now you come to my rescue,” a pause, then, “I’m sorry. I don’t want to be like this. I just hate you right now. So much. Christ, that ride from LA up here.”

She was making no sense at all. “What are you talking about?” Maybe, he thought, it would be better to leave and come back later, after she had rested.

“Yes. The ride. To see Kate McGreggor. She was the one I wanted to meet, more than you. She was who I wanted to be like. Her guards, or whatever they are, never let me in to see her. I tried to find out more about her, where she lived and all. That was when I found that article about you, with her in it. I didn’t even know who you were. And then I read about what you’d done, and that you were why the Joey was what it was, I don’t know, I wanted to do that instead. I hated her then. I didn’t want to be a musician anymore. I wanted to be a techno-artist or something. It’s my parent’s fuckin’ fault, my liberal upbringing. I don’t know. Or maybe something else. They’re here now. Better late than never, right? Hey, lucky me, I can call them by their first names, but I could never call them Mom and Dad. That’s what I wanted. Rick and Jeannette. No. It’s not their fault. What am I saying? I don’t even know who I am.”

She turned her head away from him and rested. She lay still for a while, and when he thought she was asleep he turned to go.

“Stop,” she said in a rasp. “We’re not done.” She was sitting up. Her eyes were dry now, awake yet unalive. “We’re gonna make a deal. You’ve got a baby to take care of now, Peter. I can’t do it. Not right now, at least. I can’t even piss on my own. I have to push a button to get one of them to help me. How the hell’m I gonna take care of a baby? I can’t even name the thing. That’s your call, too. You get to call all the shots, Peter. Shoot, bang, bang, I’m almost dead. You’re holding the gun, man. Don’t go shootin’ your own head, though. Oh, don’t worry, I’ll get better - it’s the only way I’ll get you. Get back at you is what I mean. You got a cigarette?”

He shook his head.

She made a disgusted face at him and waved her hand, scratching her fingers through her hair. “Then there’s the other thing. I can’t do any more about it. Not for a while. You might as well take a look at it.”

“What other thing?”

Like a drunkard at a bar, signaling for a particular brand, she gestured to the corner of the room. “In there. In my pack. Get it.”

He opened a narrow cabinet door and pulled her blue knapsack from the shelf. He held it to her. She smacked it with her hand. “Open it yourself.”

Inside he found several notebooks and pens.

“The disks, dick.”

And he found a large stack of diskettes, bound together by rubber bands.

“What is it?” he said.

Once more she turned her head on the pillow so that she was facing away from him. “What’s it say on the label?”

“ISLE.”

“You can read.”

“Ivy,” he started, but then held his tongue. She had every right to be treating him this way. But she was saying things he didn’t want to hear her say. She was heavily drugged and needed rest. They could deal with all this in a few days. “Why don’t we do all this later?”

“There is no ‘later.’ I don’t want to see you again. Not for a long time, till I’m able to look at you without all this shit in me and coming out of me.”

“Then what? What is this? What do you want me to do with it?”

“That ride I told you about, from LA back up here with the idea of somehow meeting you? I heard ‘Teach the Children’ on the radio on the way up. It hit me like a cyclone. I had to stop in Fresno to find the tape. I played it over and over. I thought, yeah, teach them well, and do it with computers. I mean, it’s what I knew I had to do, with what I was thinking about language, the idea of it applied to Joeys and letting kids learn with them. And somehow my hormones and whatever else was in me when I met you thought, ‘Do it with your own kid, like with him, you, make a baby out of it all and the program will write itself.’ I waited until it was the right time of the month to make you that dinner I made, so we’d do it, and get it all going the way I saw it.”

“You did this on purpose? This baby?”

“Yes. But stop it. I mean, we’re talking about the other now. We’re on that, what’s in your hands.”

“What’s it got to do with what you said?”

“It means Intelligent Speech and Language Environment. There’s a little box in there too, synthesizer and recognizer all in one. But it’s not just for kids, or learning. It’s whatever you want it to be. You’ll see what I mean. Go ahead, take it, the notes and code lists and everything, it’s all in there. See if it’s worth anything to you. Hell knows, I’m gonna have a shit load of bills when I’m through with this rinse cycle.”

“Okay.”

“‘Okay’ is all you say. No thanks? Jesus. That’s just like you.”

“Thanks. I mean, we’ll figure this all out. We will.”

“Blah, blah, blah.”

The door opened behind him. He turned. The nurse and a middle-aged couple entered the room. “Mr. Jones, Ivy’s parents would like to be with her now.”

He looked at Ivy. He could not see her face.

“Get better,” he said to her and she responded with a huffing sound.

The man came before Peter. His face was tanned and pleasant, and the woman at his side was attractive. Her hair was bright, like Ivy’s. She looked at Peter sadly, and pressed her husband forward an inch.

He spoke. “Mr. Jones, we’d like to know how you intend to take care of this.”

“Dad,” Ivy said to the window, “lay off. We’re dealing with it.”

“We had hoped you wouldn’t come,” Mrs. Green said. “We would be the child’s guardians if you hadn’t. We’ll gladly take care of her.”

“Get out,” Ivy said, poking Peter in the ribs. “Just get out with it all.”

“This child’s an enormous responsibility,” the father said. “Please let us take her.”

“Right, Dad. Like you know all about it. Got a joint on you?”

“I can take care of her,” Peter said, clutching the knapsack with both hands. “And I will provide for Ivy.”

“You sure will,” Ivy piped