Misconceptions

She seldom called upon God other than to damn him, so it was unusual that a downward glance could prompt such an upward exaltation from her, a subconscious plea to a God she had heretofore failed to give His due justice. But in glancing down her eyes had chanced upon those of a nearby child amidst the bustling Christmas throngs, a child whose serious expression was simultaneously transfixed on her, innocently gazing upward at her as if she could somehow be meaningful and important to him or to anybody else, which she was not, unless of course that person was a client and was therefore paying her to be important to them. The thing about it though, was that when she looked into the child’s eyes she metaphysically sensed some sort of antennae raising within her, as though she were an ant, or a cockroach, or a mouse whose whiskers sensed without seeing, whose antennae felt without touching.

”Goodness Gracious,” was what audibly fell from her lips when she initially saw him, an old fashioned phrase which she’d never used before, though one she’d heard her mother and her mother’s mother utter a million times before, back when she herself was a child. Still, it was an odd expression to unpack now.

At thirty-nine years old Mason-Lee had come to the belief that her life was beyond novel-ness. She was in a rut. Having lived a man’s work life, what she was experiencing was in effect the traditional working man’s “mid-life crisis”, though she had no concerted realization of this. The longer than necessary hours she worked were partly born of habit, partly because work gave her feelings of both accomplishment and worth which she felt nowhere else, and partly (she admitted this only to herself) because outworking and out-performing the male partners at the firm fed her feminist vanity. At the office Mason-Lee was somebody. The office and courtroom were her arenas to outdo the men, and it was very nearly only men she contended with anymore, as the women she’d associated with early in her career had virtually all given it up for family life years ago, nearly every one except for Mason-Lee, that is. She had not wanted that. A courtroom was all she’d ever wanted really; a place where she could display who she was, an arena where her strengths, namely intrigue and tenaciousness, ruled. A place where she could compete against the smuggest of adversaries and win. A place where, if men did not pay her heed, it was at their peril.

That was all she’d ever wanted, to win. Until today that is... until this very moment.

This was a most unusual child she found herself gawking at, a child she was unable to remove her attention from, and for the most impossible of reasons. The child’s eyes recalled to Mason-Lee the thoughtful expression of her father’s countenance, while the boy’s face itself displayed the softness and beauty of her mother’s. The boy had her Aunt Judith’s dark, wavy hair, and her Grandfather’s bow-legged gait. Mason-Lee felt herself drawn to the child, but no, her newly raised antennae immediately corrected that misguided thought. What she was feeling was not a pull towards. It was much more than that. What she was feeling was a connection with... but why? And how?

”Mason-Lee” was her name, though it really wasn’t. Her birth certificate stated that she was Heather Lee Mason. She had gone by Heather until graduate school, where she’d taken to calling herself Mason-Lee, as it sounded stronger to her, more masculine. She’d reasoned at the time that if she was going to be competing with men in the debate of law, then it was important that the competition begin from a level base, so she reversed her name. The ease of the change had surprised her, that all it took was to tell people something was your name, and to write it the new way when possible, and suddenly it was. Not even her professors, who had only to read her name on their correctly typed rolls, ever challenged her on it. So now, fourteen years later, she was Heather Mason only to her family. To everyone else she was Mason-Lee Heather, Attorney at Law. But still, Mason-Lee was somehow completely oblivious to the irony that in the courtroom, unlike in her classrooms at college, she was referred to much more often as the very feminine “Ms. Heather” than her preferred “Mason-Lee.“

And Mason-Lee was still a “Miss,” though she was plenty attractive enough, and more than successful enough to be considered quite a catch. Even still, she had rarely been asked out on dates fifteen years ago, much less now. Looking back, which was something she frequently did these days, she had to assume that this was because she’d been as driven then as she was now. Driven people, she reasoned, have neither the time nor the inclination to “put themselves out there.” Mason-Lee had certainly never done that. She was nearing forty and had had sex with exactly two people in her life. Her current lover, seven years younger, was a nice looking if somewhat effeminate beta-male “friend” whom she felt empowered over, whom she could manipulate, and whom she was thus willing to let herself go with, as he could be easily discarded and knew it. But even with that, Mason-Lee did look forward to their usually wine-fueled, weekend trysts. While usually tender and compliant, there were those moments when “Drunk Steven” forgot himself in his inebriation and became a real man, contorting her for better access, holding her with a strength she had not believed he possessed and literally pounding her, his skin slapping her belly or her ass with such force that it reduced her into a willing submissiveness that she didn’t know she desired until she was lost in it’s throes. It was strangely in those moments, when she was at her most vulnerable, and when his body literally hummed with desire for her, that she felt the most empowered. That in those moments Steven, or any man, could want and need her so badly that it would take the threat of death before he could or would stop. Mason-Lee had been pleasantly amazed to discover the equalizing properties that sex with a man could offer, that she could be both submissive and in control; sex providing the physical sensations that he craved while supplying her with the rare moments of complete and undivided attention from a man that she so longed for.

Mason-Lee’s other sexual partner had been her college roommate, whom her younger, more naive self had allowed to seduce her. Mona was smart, somewhat pretty, and had never from day one hidden her interest, which was very attractive in itself. In honesty, no one had ever come after Mason-Lee with the intensity that Mona had, and Mason-Lee had happily bathed in the attention Mona showered her with. And she could not say that those sexual experiments with Mona had not had their highs, but sex with her had mostly felt coerced, almost forced, as if she was performing on a stage for an audience’s approval rather than giving of herself without reservation the way that Mason-Lee felt a ”real” relationship should be, though she’d had no experience at the time to base that on. And never, no matter how uninhibited Mason-Lee had eventually become with Mona, was she sure in her mind that this was what she wanted long-term. And in the end Mona had really only amounted to a “breaking away” experiment, so that all that became of their relationship was the begrudging realization that Mason-Lee was not a lesbian, that is to say that Mason-Lee had actually been more in love with the idea of lesbianism, of women empowering women, than she had been in love with Mona… and so, at Mona’s sad expense Mason-Lee had given it the old college try, masquerading herself as one.

The child was being led away now, his tiny hand in his mother’s, his face turned back over his shoulder, his fascinated and fascinating eyes still locked on hers. He felt it too, didn’t he? This same connection she felt? Unconsciously, Mason-Lee began to follow.

The hundreds of oblivious gift shoppers quickly became maddening. Every single time the masses got between she and the child, blocking him from Mason-Lee’s view, she experienced an uncomfortable, almost unreasonable panic twinging from her chest outward to her extremities, much as the pain from a diseased heart must do, leaving her desperate and afraid, so that she used her hands and voice to push bodies out of the way, heedless of their sexes, their ages, or their capacities. She found herself desperate to find the boy’s eyes again, and to ensure that they were searching back for hers, and each time she caught up to him his eyes were looking back, leaving her even more desperate for him! She felt an almost undeniable craving to rush forward, to take the boy in her arms, to kiss the child’s mouth, to smooth his hair, and to pull him close to her so that she might feel his pulse, and his breath, and his cheek against hers. “Was this how it felt to be a mother,” she wondered? It must be! But why this child? And why now?

It was then she remembered the eggs.

Back at thirty years old, when Mason-Lee’s career was just beginning to sky-rocket, she’d read an article, actually an advertisement about a woman’s reproductive timeline. The article had informed her that she was peaking. Her chances at producing a child, though she had not desired a child at the time and was doubtful that she ever would want one, would only diminish going forward. But according to the article her eggs could be removed and saved, frozen before their genetic qualities began their inevitable deterioration. Oocyte Cryopreservation it was called, and ever one to hedge her bets Mason-Lee had called the phone number supplied by the article that very day. Within a week she had plopped down the required $12,000, set up an automatic withdrawal on her credit card for the $1200 annual “storage” fee, and made appointments for the required hormone injections that were necessary prior to the actual harvesting. A few short-lived physical side effects later, some cramping pains mostly, the entire thing had been pushed to her back-of-mind. But now, as she and this child gazed at one another through the nameless, shapeless throngs, those hoarded eggs were pushing their way back into her front-of-mind, the eggs hardening in the now roiling waters of her heated anxieties, forcing the thought that she did not want to think to surface upward…

Could this child be hers?

It’s “mother” was walking faster now, forcing Mason-Lee into an uncomfortable, high-heeled jog to keep pace as she slipped, sliced and fought her way through the smiling idiots with their bulging plastic bags and their maxed-out credit cards. God damn them, would they not get out of her fucking way!

Could her eggs have been stolen? Sold to someone else? Just how many eggs had that clinic harvested from her? She didn’t know! The number hadn’t really seemed important at the time, yet how could she not have acquired that basic fact? And it only took one egg, didn’t it? One healthy egg to produce a child, yet how did one verify? Through DNA testing? She would have to do some research on the matter, Mason-Lee thought as she continued her bent-kneed shuffle after mother and child, her anxious hands clinging tightly to her own bulging, plastic shopping bags.

They were in the parking lot now, woman and child. In another moment the woman would be strapping the child, which Mason-Lee now considered to be “her child”, into a car seat and driving him away to God knew where. Her anxiety turning to panic Mason-Lee fought for control. What to do? A DNA test could only be forced if she had the boy, or if she at least knew where to find him. The woman held up a key-fob and pressed. From two rows over came an answering chirp which the woman bee-lined for.

Mason-Lee, generally the most thoughtful, analytical, and nonplussed of people, found herself in a blind panic which left her startled and defenseless when the woman wheeled on her with an expression twisted in fear and concern. “I don’t know what your problem is lady, but you’d better leave us alone!”

”What? What do you mean?” Mason-Lee’s own timid reply surprised her.

”I mean,” the woman’s angry voice twisted the words like licorice. “That you have been following me since Macy’s! Go away! Leave us alone!” The woman huffed away, towing the boy in-hand. Temporarily taken aback, Mason-Lee let them go, but the moment didn’t last. It couldn’t last, could it? Not with what was at stake! With the woman’s back turned Mason-Lee dropped her bags and rushed forward, grabbing the boy’s free hand and tugging, but the smaller woman did not yield. Caught up in their tug-of-war the boy’s shrieks attracted on-lookers with cell phone cameras at the ready. Letting loose of her child the woman jumped at Mason-Lee, swinging and clawing at her with an unexpected ferociousness as Mason-Lee hauled the child up into her arms and began to run with it. But with all of her education and training she should have known how it had to end.

Try as she might, she could not run fast enough, nor far enough.

It was not one of those nice, hide-away, rich people jails Mason-Lee was taken to, but was the regular city holding cell where she stood in a corner, unwilling to sit on any one of the filthy cots amongst the tattooed and drug addicted whores and thieves whose disapproving eyes stared at her gentrification from beneath tired, heavy lids. The only good in the wait was that there was plenty of time to contemplate what she had done, and what she might do yet. Well past her anger at the slowness of a system which she was observing for the first time from its other side, Mason-Lee, a perennial chess player, pondered her next moves.

Holding the child had been all she’d hoped it would be, even if she had been running for their lives at the time. With him in her arms Mason-Lee had felt alive for the first time in seemingly ever. With him in her arms she had finally felt a purpose beyond herself. To the layman it might have seemed that Mason-Lee had acted rashly, but no. Mason-Lee was a lawyer. A good one. One who understood the system she worked, and those who made it up. As a first-time offender she would be released on bail from this dingy hell-hole, and as a lawyer she would have access to the names and address of her accuser or victim, however you wanted to look at her. With that information, Mason-Lee would file her own case, the system’s first “maternity case,” where she would herself accuse the other woman of stealing her eggs, and thus kidnapping Mason-Lee’s unborn child, rather than the other way around. She could undoubtedly find something in the woman’s past to besmudge her with before the jury. There was always something, wasn’t there? If she could have the ”other mother” incarcerated, she might be able to keep the other mother in systematic limbo for years while she wrangled the boy through the foster system and back out in her favor. After all, money really could talk, and Mason-Lee had enough to make it sing.

Mason-Lee might have blown her chance when younger, but she would not blow this one now. No, she would use every tool of this conniving, ruthless trade she had mastered and she would win. She would have that child… hers, or not.