Angel Falling Softly by Eugene Woodbury Page A

there. Hell, we’re all getting up there. The odds for things going wrong in a major way are starting to get scary. The last thing I need in my life right now is a kid with a screwed-up chromosome or two.”
    “ I’m getting up there, Carl. I’m only two years older than you. I’m not over the hill. Yet.”
    “I mean, come on. It’s not something you have to worry about, Rache.”
    She leaned toward her brother and said in an insistent stage whisper, “There are other ways, less permanent ways.”
    “How do you think we ended up with five kids? Our gametes laugh at latex. Anyway, I thought they figured out what was wrong with you, some autoimmune thing.”
    “ Alloimmune, ” Rachel corrected him. Yet another medical subject she knew too much about.
    “Whatever. Look at it this way—your body zaps the little bastards before they get planted. You’ve got yourself a built-in IUD. Think of what I’ve got to do to get myself similarly equipped.” He squirmed in his seat.
    Rachel sighed. Carl’s way of looking on the bright side of things was not always the brightest way of looking at things. Her immune system was like a gang of sacking and pillaging Goths. Her husband’s sperm, her daughter’s marrow, it showed no mercy. Had they left things to God and nature, the family would have stopped with Laura. The prednisone worked—once. Jennifer was the result. An IUI was next on the list and then in vitro , but Rachel had her doubts. For all her faith in the miracles of modern medicine, she found herself unsettled when it came to messing with the powers of procreation. So she’d convinced herself that two children were enough. Two children were all she really wanted. Two was God’s will.
    It was drawing too late in the day to take back that lie now. Easier to go on believing it.
    Their entrees arrived. Rachel commenced eating with studious intent. They’d started out talking about software and ended up talking about their gonads. Par for the course when it came to Carl.
    Rachel drove south on State. She’d invited Carl to dinner, but he had clients to schmooze and a nine o’clock flight to catch back to San Jose. David would be grateful—not grateful that she’d invited Carl, but grateful that Carl couldn’t make it. David didn’t get along with Carl. Most people outside their immediate family didn’t get along with Carl. Even Laura thought her Uncle Carl was an odd duck, but a child could hold worse prejudices.
    And Carl getting a vasectomy—that was weird. Only in Carl’s que sera sera view of the world was the whole thing not a huge, cruel joke—Carl getting his plumbing cauterized to keep the little bastards from doing what God and nature intended them to do, while she was stuck with a womb armed like the Maginot Line.
    The traffic light turned red. Rachel stepped on the brake and numbly watched the cars flashing by. Come to think about it, what was she doing driving a minivan anyway? What, with her one-point-five children? Talk about wishful thinking. Sure, she hauled girls to church camp once a summer, but that was all rationalization.
    She hit the steering wheel, hard, with both hands. A shock of pain shot up her wrists. Buy it and they will be born, was that it? Was that what they were thinking? She hit the steering wheel again. Bam! And again. Bam! Bam! Bam! Until she had to stop, holding onto the wheel like she was going down with the Titanic and grasping at a life preserver. A car horn blared behind her. Her head jerked up. Through her blurred vision, the traffic light was a smear of green. She coasted through the intersection, turned into the Chevron station, and put the transmission into park.
    She sat there with her head pressed back against the headrest, eyes squeezed closed. Inhale, exhale. That’s right. Inhale, exhale—
    “Mom,” said a small voice.
    She answered automatically. “Yes, Jenny.”
    “Mom,” her daughter said again, looking at her with quizzical eyes. “What’s the