SLEEPING THROUGH CHAOS

What had happened you ask? You probably have a right to know.

I'd not heard the explosion earlier that morning. Eleanor had spent the night in our bedroom which faced that direction. I had been in the doghouse, the upstairs bedroom on the other side of the house - ironically next to the Handmaids room. The Handmaid snored.

The scene in our basement? That had been the aftermath of the explosion, brought to my house. Apparently, with Eleanor's consent. How had they got from over there to here? I never asked. I did not want to know.

The Commander's meeting? At my house? They never showed. The advance team of Guardians never showed either. They were busy elsewhere investigating the explosion. Fortune favours the foolish, little children, and labour-based economists.

Protocol was that without a security detail, Commanders could not meet in numbers outside of the Chancery. Pity. Guardians were busy dealing with the explosion. Cora had delivered. Sort of. All the women, even the injured, were gone by noon. We were eating muffins in the Lawrence house for the next two weeks. That evening, without Cora's permission I went down to the basement. It was empty. And dusty. It would pass suspicion. But today had been close.

But we were now hip deep in it. My dearly beloved had seen to it. I never told them why, but I ordered pistols for me and Eleanor, ordered through the Guardian detail regularly out front of our place. I got them by the end of the day.

EXPLOSION'S AFTERMATH

I've got to stop calling him a prick. Or a dick. Those days were long gone.

He was now my chief benefactor. Him with the Eyes of God, me a full Chancery Commander, albeit down the foodchain. Then again, my Eye-guy kept saying that if it hadn't been for me, none of the infrastructure, hard or soft, would have been put into place. If it hadn't been for me, Gilead right now would be collapsing under a female labour shortage. If it hadn't been for me, the salvagings would have got out of control.

I'd like to tell you his accomplishments. Not too many, though, lest I give away the game. His greatest accomplishment was survival. There had been too much 'drama' as it was in the Chancery among the Commanders as they jockeyed for position. But in my Eye-guy's realm, their version of upward mobility was more straightforward. A bullet to the head, and everyone else gets a promotion. Easy peasey.

So - his favour for the day? He'd called me at the Chancery, "Hey, dude. You owe me another one."

What was it this time? I am well behind in repayment for everything else he's done to keep me and Eleanor alive. He must have thought useful more of the information that I've passed his way than I did. He never said why he needs to know certain things. Better not to know.

He said, "a Birthmobile has just been dispatched to your house. I had to move heaven and earth to get you an exemption. I mean, come on, it's not an Eye's purview anyway. For mercy's sake, I had to deal with the Aunts. One day we're going to have to dial back the Aunts, that's for sure. Top of the to-do list if you ask me. But, dude, it's done. No more Handmaid at the Lawrence house. You can thank me later." And I knew exactly what the thanks would be. Inside info from the Chancery. "But you have to deal with your colleagues. They're the chuckleheads who'll wail away on your masculinity."

THE PEACEFUL LAWRENCE HOUSEHOLD?

Returning home that evening, I was looking forward to some normalcy. A precious commodity these days in this screwed up society - half of which I had fashioned. I wasn't a praying person - not privately, anyway - but as the garage door closed behind me I thought, "Please God, let there be no meeting of Mayday here today. Not tonight. Let's just have a nice quiet night around the fire."

I got up to the main floor from the garage hoping to be met at the top, maybe Cora would take my coat, hat, and briefcase and I'd later find it neatly laid out in my office after I'd enjoyed a nice, serene dinner with my wife. Have a few laughs like we used to.

Instead? Cora was over at the kitchen sink. Hearing me, she turned and said, "Oh, it's you." Turning back to her chore she said, "God, what a doofus."

My imagined peaceful night home from work was fast receding. I said, "Cora, you realize that the Guardians out there on the street, they work for me?"

She laughed. Not even turning to face me, she said, "You'll need them. I wouldn't go upstairs to see Mrs. Lawrence if I were you. You've been warned, old man."

It was true. Eleanor was nowhere to be seen. Disposing of my coat, hat and briefcase right on the floor below me, I went where fools fear to tread. Upstairs. From the top of the stairs you could see the Handmaid's former room, door was wide open, bed made. Good, she was gone.

I knocked on our master bedroom door. "Go away," was what I heard. Now what?

I knocked again, "Eleanor, can we talk?"

"I've got nothing to say to you. You're a monster. They took her away. The Birthmobile just showed up. Didn't even call. She'll be raped. Regularly raped, Joseph. Legally raped. You're a monster, and I married you."

At that I opened the door. A small, formerly intact glass ornament crashed against the door beside me, shattering into pieces at my feet. At that, Cora called from downstairs, "Is everything ok?" I said, "Cora, I got this."

I spent the next two hours both listening and occasionally giving Eleanor a reality check. She had been the one who'd not wanted the Handmaid in the home in the first place. "Her name is Susan!" Eleanor spat back. She had a family. She didn't know where they were, but suspected that her husband was now in Hawaii. She didn't know if any of her three kids were with him. "They'd got out through Mexico, Susan had created a diversion and he literally carried all three of the little ones over the border-wall to get to safety."

That was the most coherent Eleanor had been. As the hours passed, she got more incoherent. She needed her meds, and we were rationing. Tonight would be the night where we would throw rationing out the window. I finally got her settled.

Her last words before succumbing to sleep, "Get Susan back. She's going to be raped."

At that I went downstairs, joined Cora who was already sitting with a coffee at the kitchen table. Knowing what had just transpired, she graciously poured one for me, without me asking. As I sat, with my first sip she said, "You know, you people created this. People like you need to fix it. Fast."

I said, "Can Beth get more meds? Not just more of the stuff we have. We need the stuff Eleanor had been on….. before."

Cora said, "I'm going to Loaves and Fishes tomorrow. I'll stop by Jezebels and put in an order."

"Cora, we cannot wait. I'll go talk to her myself. Down at Jezebels."

She said, "What are you going to do about the Handmaid?"

"I sincerely do not know. No one will even know where she is."

NAVIGATING MONSTROUS THINGS

It was easy to get another pass from High Commander Pryce's people. What had made it easy was that I'd had one before. Apparently his aide now considered mine a standing order.

It was just enough of a breeze to get past the first line of security at the Eyes of God headquarters. Me a Commander mentioning my buddy's name, easy peasey.

Once again, though, I was held up in his office's small lobby, the effeminate secretary holding court. In the building at the Chancery, appearances were everything. With Pryce, that guy would last five minutes. Like before, my buddy's office door opened, he came half-way out and motioned me in.

As he was returning to his seat, he said, "Joseph, this has to stop. It will get out that we're linked."

As he sat, I said, "it probably already has got out. Someone else is trading that knowledge for other kinds of favours. It's what we do."

He leaned back in his chair, "Ok Joseph, what now? Don't tell me you want your handmaid back," he said with a big grin. It'd been me who'd once called him a prick, and now I was going to be one.

"That's exactly what I want. I need the handmaid back."

He managed to hold his smile for a lot longer than I thought possible. Then the penny dropped. He then looked like I was the stupidest person in the world. Which was not far off.

He just pointed at me, "You're insane." He didn't know the half of it. If he'd known about the martha gathering in my basement the morning of the bombing, he would have had a taste of real insanity. Then again, given that I'd cleared security here at Eyes of God headquarters, it meant that probably no one here, much less him, knew how insane I actually was.

He ranted, "Do you know what I had to go through to get the Aunts to agree? Have you ever dealt with them? Of course you haven't, you don't fuck Handmaids! What is the matter with you?"

I trusted this guy with a lot, but I knew there were limits. "Look, I just need the girl back, that's all."

"What do you mean, 'the girl'? What are we talking about here? You now want a Handmaid, but only that one will do? That's a little weird, Joseph!"

There was only so many times I could play Eleanor's illness-card. "I know it sounds silly, but it's for Eleanor. She wants us to have a baby in the house through that girl. That specific girl."

He sat up in the chair and folded his hands on his desk, "Don't lie to me, dude. You don't do it very well."

"Look," I said, "We can argue if you want. But let's cut to the chase: we need that girl."

My brother rolled his eyes. "Cannot be done. Even if it could, it wouldn't be me doing it. I'm not taking on the Aunts again with your weirdness. Not any more." He touched his temple, "I've got a list in my head, dude, of things you already owe me - things you should be doing just to pay me back for getting you to where you are. But not this, dude, not this."

"What if I called the Red Centre?"

"Be my guest, dude," he said. "It's your funeral. And Eleanor's and your martha's." We argued back and forth some more, but he finally concluded, "Best case scenario, you'll get a second handmaid. But getting that specific girl back, it can't be done. She's gone. Either getting fucked by some other Commander in some other District, or she's shoveling waste in the colonies. You remember unwomen, Joseph? You used to lecture us not to salvage so many of them."

This time me descending the steps at Eyes of God headquarters didn't even merit a check. Driving home I wished I'd not been an academic. I needed to be in sales. I was driving home preparing myself to tell Eleanor that the best we could do was get a second Handmaid. Maybe she would have an equally sad sob-story that Eleanor could latch on to. Officially, she'd be Ofjoseph, but Eleanor being Eleanor, she'd quickly discover the girl's real name.

Am I a monster? Today I'd tried to navigate some very monstrous things.

Tomorrow, Jezebels. And Beth. And an order of meds. The good stuff.