Authors: Drusilla Campbell
Wildwood (8 page)
Smaze, Hannah called it. “The drought just makes it worse.” The interior of the Volvo was hot and close and Liz rolled the window down a little. The noise of engines and tires on asphalt was unpleasant.
“I can’t hear you over the racket.”
“What about air conditioning?”
“I am permanently and politically opposed to it,” Hannah said and grinned. “If you have time, I want you to visit Resurrection House with me. There’s one little baby, her name is Angel . . .”
“You haven’t changed, Hannah. Always a cause. Always the life saver. Vietnam protests, abused animals—”
“I have changed,” Hannah snapped. “Don’t patronize me because I haven’t had your big exciting life. What I do at Resurrection House is very important.”
Shit.
Coming home was like swimming in a strange sea. Below the surface there were thickets of tangled seaweed. “But you’ve got to admit there was a time—” Liz giggled and covered her mouth with her hand. “Remember when you decided it was cruel of Mr. Silva to keep his Japanese quail in that little cage?”
“He was such a prick. He wanted to send me to Juvie.”
They were eleven and in school they read about the cannibalism of overcrowded, stressed-out rats.
“I couldn’t stop thinking of those pretty birds all pecking each other to death.” Hannah laughed. “How was I to know they were worth two hundred bucks each. They just looked like birds to me.”
She turned off the freeway at Lark Avenue. The exit ran through a new housing development built in an old prune orchard. The homes were two- and three-story affairs with triple garages and massive brick and stone facades crowded onto lots suited to buildings half their size.
“So much tack, so little time,” Liz said.
Hannah braked and idled in a line of cars waiting for a landscape truck to unload a twenty-foot liquid ambar. “Gail Bacci says they’re going for more than a million each.”
Someone in the line of cars banged on his horn.
“Jerk,” Hannah said.
“Who buys them?”
“I don’t know. Computer people, I guess. They’re like an invading species. We never mix. We’re the old-timers. The newcomers think we’re frumpy. All they want to do is buy our houses, tear them down and build more of those things.” The line of cars moved forward. “You’re looking at the new Rinconada. Kids in Ingrid’s class drive Lexus SUVs.”
“Are they nice kids?”
“Jesus, who knows. The school’s got more castes than India. And it’s huge. Not like it was for us, the way we knew everyone.”
“My parents would have hated it.”
Hannah looked at Liz and shook her head. “Your parents wouldn’t have noticed.”
A stinging wind blew through Liz’s mind, plucking the strings of her headache.
When she was seven, she spent the night at Hannah’s house for the first time. On the twin beds in Hannah’s bedroom with its dormer windows and walk-in closet, the blue satin coverlets had been turned down and the pillows plumped. Liz saw Hannah’s sprigged flannel nightie laid across the blankets like a patch of garden and compared it to her own pj’s, buttoned up with safety pins. From the distance of several decades the disregard of her distracted intellectual parents still had power to tear her heart. It shouldn’t matter anymore, she told herself, but it did.
“It’s all so clear in my mind, like it was yesterday . . .”
Say it.
“Remember Bluegang?”
Say it.
“Remember Bluegang?”
Hannah shuddered. “It’s changed too, big time. If I didn’t love my house and if the wildwood weren’t there like a barrier, I’d move across town. Gail says there are homeless people living in those caves up beyond the swimming hole. There’s trash all around and sewage too, I suppose. You’d probably die if you drank the water.”
Talk, talk, talk. Saying nothing, nothing, nothing.
Remember Bluegang?
“Gail’s always after me to join the group she’s organized to clean it up, but I just don’t have the time. You know? I give her a big check every year but there’s only so much a person can do.” Hannah braked and turned into a parking lot.
Liz read the sign painted on the building in front of them: Bacci’s Italian Market. In cement planters between parking places, purple and gold lantana drooped under the midday sun. The fragrance of salami, briny olives and baking bread came through the car window.
Hannah switched off the ignition and reached into the backseat for her straw purse. “You want to come in? It’d tickle Mario to see you. He and Gail are coming to dinner Saturday if you’d rather not.”
“I’ll stay.”
Liz put her head back and closed her eyes. Fatigue and apprehension lay on her eyelids like iron coins.
“Were you asleep?” Hannah asked as she opened the door fifteen minutes later. “Do you feel okay?”
“I’m fine.” Liz poked in the brown paper bags. “What did you buy me?”
“Salami. Biscotti with walnuts and anise dipped in chocolate. Mindy Ryder makes it.”
“What’s she doing with herself?”
“That’s probably not a good question to ask.” They laughed. “She’s coming on Saturday too so you can ask her yourself.” Hannah pulled out onto Rinconada’s main street lined with specialty shops and boutiques with clever names: Bearly Yours, Heavenly Heels.
Liz said, “I was in love with him once. Mario.”
“When’s the last time you saw him?”
“Fifteenth reunion, I think. It was before I met Gerard.”
“Well, let me prepare you. The Italian stallion has eaten a bit too much of his own spaghetti.” The car in front stopped suddenly. “Shit.”
Liz double-checked her seat belt.
“Gail’s made a fortune selling real estate to half of Silicon Valley and they all drive down Santa Cruz Avenue cruising the shops. Jeanne says when Judgment Day comes, Gail’s going to burn in hell for what she’s done to this town.”
“How is Jeanne anyway? Her letters don’t give much away.”
Hannah drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as they waited for traffic to clear. “She’d say the same of yours.”
“Lord, Hannah, I’m an open book.”
Hannah’s gaze snapped. “Don’t forget who you’re talking to, Lizzie. I’m the girl who knew you when.”
And I you.
Liz asked, “How’s the abominable spouse?”
“Still abominable.” At a stoplight Hannah signaled right and turned up Casabella Road.
By contrast to Santa Cruz Avenue, Casabella Road had changed little in the years since Liz and her two friends walked it to and from school every day. It began at the Corner Drug Store and, staying level for a while, curved around the little town cemetery before it turned again and ran parallel to Santa Cruz Avenue for several blocks. Beyond St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church where Hannah’s father was rector for more than twenty years, it veered left and up the long grade old-timers in town still called Queen Victoria’s Hill. On either side, restored Victorian homes faced each other like a dowager standoff.
“Stop a second,” Liz said. “Pull over.”
It had been her intention to fix her gaze directly ahead when the car reached the corner of Casabella and Manzanita. But the wind was blowing hard again, stirring up the grit of memory. The two-storied Victorian stood in the middle of its half-acre lot and called her name.
Hannah said, “It belongs to some people from Rhode Island now. Big computer bucks.” The verge board, the bracketed eaves, and the arch of rosettes crowning every window: all had been scrupulously restored and, like the rest of the house, sparkled achingly white in the sunlight. On the porch there was a swing with a bright blue canvas awning.
“If you want to see inside I can call the owner. Her name’s Mitzi Sandler. I know her from the Spring Festival Committee. Most of the invaders are two income families, too busy to get into town affairs. She’s different. We don’t really know each other but she seems okay, better than most maybe.”
“I wonder what it was that made my parents buy such a big house in the first place,” Liz said. “They never intended to have a family. If they told me once I was an accident, they told me a hundred times. I’m so used to thinking of them as totally a-parental, but this house . . . I mean it’s such a . . . grandmotherly house. You know what I mean, Hannah? Maybe there was a time when . . .”
Or maybe the big house made it easier to pretend she wasn’t there.
Beyond Manzanita and Greenwood and Oak Streets, Casabella Road leveled out again and followed the shoulder of the hill for a quarter mile then dropped abruptly into a shadowy canyon and a hairpin curve across a bridge over Bluegang Creek. When it rose again, Liz saw a sign, a discreet bronze rectangle:
HILLTOP SCHOOL
,
ONE QUARTER MILE
.
HILLTOP SCHOOL
,
ONE QUARTER MILE
.
Hannah said, “Low keyed and very high priced these days.”
At the end of a long driveway Hannah and Dan Tarwater’s white country farmhouse sprawled in the shade of half a dozen California live oaks. Hannah stopped at the mailbox and leaned out the car window to open it. She riffled through the bundle of envelopes, advertising flyers, and catalogs. She held a large overnight mail envelope, reading the return address. “This is for you,” she said and handed it to Liz, eyebrows raised. “It’s from a doctor. In Miami.”
Friday
D
r. Reed Wallace was young. His diplomas hung on the wall, but Roman numerals confused Liz and besides, she didn’t really want to know exactly how young. Under the circumstances, age made no difference anyway. The lab in Miami had provided his name in San Jose and no other.
r. Reed Wallace was young. His diplomas hung on the wall, but Roman numerals confused Liz and besides, she didn’t really want to know exactly how young. Under the circumstances, age made no difference anyway. The lab in Miami had provided his name in San Jose and no other.
He entered the examining room, her chart in hand, a few strands of dark brown hair engagingly drooped across his forehead, and leaned against the wall smiling and comfortable as a neighbor chatting over a fence.
Easy for you. You’re not going to be east-west in the stirrups, gaping like a Bekins box.
She perched on the end of the examining table and answered his routine questions—her age (advanced), her general health (perimenopausal), childhood ailments (emotional neglect), allergies (good-looking young ob-gyns; they made her blush).
Easy for you. You’re not going to be east-west in the stirrups, gaping like a Bekins box.
She perched on the end of the examining table and answered his routine questions—her age (advanced), her general health (perimenopausal), childhood ailments (emotional neglect), allergies (good-looking young ob-gyns; they made her blush).
He was tall and slender with excellent teeth and probably wearing contact lenses. Clean fingernails, a discreet yin/yang tattoo on his wrist.
Wallace left her alone in the examining room to strip and don a paper hospital gown. His nurse—a petite Asian woman with a name tag saying Marilu—came in. She weighed Liz, took her temperature and then her blood pressure. Her smile never dimmed from incandescent.
“You can get up on the table now.”
Knees up, feet in the stirrups, scoot down, a little farther, a little farther, always a little farther.
Bad as this was, always was and would be because there was no way of doing a pelvic that was not humiliating, physically uncomfortable and emotionally tense, her first exam had been the worst.
She had expected condemnation for wanting birth control pills at a time when the sexual revolution had barely entered the guerrilla skirmish stage. But her lover, Willy, had assured her that in France clinic doctors were worldly and approved of sex. The exam had been carried out in an ill-heated, badly lighted examining room with a speculum the size of a tire jack; and her prescription had come in an ordinary glass bottle, twenty-five at a time. In those days, there weren’t even safety caps to struggle with.
On the way home from the dispensing chemist Liz had purchased a little plastic tray divided into seven lidded sections. As she was writing the days of the week on the lids using a laundry pen, she had suddenly remembered Billy Phillips and Hannah’s underpants and the mystery of their disappearance. That’s how the memory of Bluegang was, a sleeping infection like herpes that awoke unexpectedly and made her miserable for a while.
The last thing she had ever wanted was a baby and for years she could no more begin a day without her birth control pill than she could walk out the door without her underpants although occasionally, she did that on purpose, just because she liked the feel of the air and the slightly risky sensation. She always took her pill, but she never quite trusted it to work. Looking back, she saw her adult life patterned by twenty-eight-day cycles of panic and relief.
After fifteen years the pill had become like a credit card she used impulsively, unwisely. She switched to a diaphragm and though occasionally inconvenient, she liked the system better. But the diaphragm made her panic cycle worse. Just to make sure she never got lulled into thinking sex was healthy or fun or even perfectly normal for an adult woman with a thriving body, she obsessed over microscopic holes and visions of deteriorating rubber. Even when she bled she fretted and remembered stories of women who continued to menstruate into their fifth and sixth months of pregnancy, the poor souls who arrived at the hospital complaining of gas pains and delivered healthy twins moments later.
A year ago when her periods had become irregular, and her doctor in Belize told her she was in early menopause, she had misplaced her sense of humor and slipped into a funk. She imagined her body’s depleted nest of eggs like last season’s potatoes growing mold at the bottom of the bin. One day, feeling a mixture of grief and glee, she cut her diaphragm in half with the kitchen shears and tossed the pieces in the trash.
Dr. Reed Wallace came back into the examining room. As he slipped on rubber gloves, he said, “I’ve never been to Belize. I hear it’s beautiful.” He opened the front of her gown and began to palpate her breasts. As he performed this exercise, he didn’t look at Liz or her anatomy. He gazed up at the holiday pictures tacked to the acoustical ceiling over the examining table. The travel agent photos of turquoise water and sugar-cookie beaches were there as much for him as for her.
“What do you do down there?”
Same as you, Doc.
“I own a bed and breakfast.”
“You get lots of business?”
In my time.
“The rain forest and the Mayan ruins are a big draw.”
“It’s not exactly Miami Beach though.”
“Thank God.”
He closed the front of her gown.
“You’re okay.”
Liz supposed that meant no suspicious lumps.
He sat on a wheeled stool and took up his position directly in front of her, facing the tent of sheet over her gaping legs. He spoke to Marilu, and she handed him an instrument. He raised the sheet, and Liz couldn’t see him at all. The whole procedure was less intimate than a root canal.
Reed Wallace said, “I was down in Panama with the Peace Corps.”
Liz tensed as she felt the warmed speculum slide into place. She experienced an instinctive and irrational panic that he would split her in half.
“Bocas del Toro. Miserable place.”
Something scraped her insides, Torquemada’s clamp loosened and was withdrawn. Liz heard it clink onto a metal tray and the tension drained from her body.
“Next time you might try breathing,” Reed Wallace said as he stripped off his gloves and tossed them into the trash. “It’s generally a good idea.” He had a broad, kid grin. “Get dressed and come across the hall.”
He stood up when she entered his office a few minutes later. The old-fashioned gesture made him seem like a well-behaved boy being visited by his great aunt.
“You told Marilu you had a period last month. Have you been regular all along?”
“Pretty much.” She asked him the same question she had asked the doctor in Miami. “Isn’t this unusual?” Not to mention unfair, biology sneaking up on her just when she’d stopped worrying about it. “I never heard of a woman my age getting pregnant.”
“Highly unusual, but we see it every now and then.” He glanced at her chart.
For years she had guarded against this occurrence. Once on her way to Orly she realized she had forgotten to pack her pills and risked missing her flight to Copenhagen to drive home like a crazy woman, frightening even the French drivers. And now this, this joke of biology. She imagined her eggs conspiring over time, waiting for the moment when she let down her guard.
“No symptoms at all, huh?”
“My breasts ached but I didn’t pay much attention. The man I live with noticed I was gaining weight.” She reached into her bag and handed him the envelope that had arrived for her at Hannah’s address. “I wanted an American doctor so I went to Miami. When she confirmed the pregnancy they did some tests.” She waited a moment, watching him scan the documents in the envelope. “The fetus is perfectly healthy. No genetic abnormalities.”
“Good, good,” he said distractedly.
“I want an abortion.”
That got his attention. He studied her a moment, tipped back in his chair and swung it around a little so he half-faced the window over the parking lot. The tinted window turned the sky an improbable navy blue. “How’d you happen to come to me, Ms. Shepherd?”
“I grew up in Rinconada. I still have good friends there.” Liz looked down at the freckles on the back of her hands and then at him. “Will you do it?”
“I think we need to talk about it first.”
That word
need,
it cropped up everywhere in American speech these days. Had Americans grown uncomfortable in their luxury and choices, a little ashamed? Did
needing
make them feel less guilty and more like the rest of the world?
I need a four dollar latte.
Well, she
wanted
an abortion and Reed Wallace obviously
wanted
to talk her out of it and she
wanted
him to shut up.
need,
it cropped up everywhere in American speech these days. Had Americans grown uncomfortable in their luxury and choices, a little ashamed? Did
needing
make them feel less guilty and more like the rest of the world?
I need a four dollar latte.
Well, she
wanted
an abortion and Reed Wallace obviously
wanted
to talk her out of it and she
wanted
him to shut up.
“I’m not going to change my mind.” She decided she didn’t like him after all. He was only a boy but already he had the medical attitude that announced he knew more and better about her body than she did. Just because he’d taken a look at her clear up to her tonsils didn’t give him special rights. “I know what I want and I know what’s good for me.”
“I’m not trying to change your mind, Ms. Shepherd.” He put his hands out, palm forward:
whoa
. “Let’s just go slow here, okay? I make it a rule to discuss every surgical procedure with my patients beforehand.”
whoa
. “Let’s just go slow here, okay? I make it a rule to discuss every surgical procedure with my patients beforehand.”
Liz sagged a little. “Go ahead and tell me how it has eyes and ears and already loves rock and roll.”
“Maybe reggae.”
“Maybe John Philip Sousa. Frankly, I don’t care.” Liz leaned across the desk. “Let me see if I can make you understand, Doctor Reed Wallace. I’m fifty years old and my health is excellent. My lover and I have been living monogamously for more than seven years. I know that if I’m careful, I could probably have a relatively untroubled pregnancy and deliver a healthy infant into the world in a few months. Hooray for you, me and modern medicine.” She stood up without thinking about it. “It isn’t giving birth that bothers me. And it’s not money either. Even if Gerard left me flat, I have plenty of money. What I don’t have,” she swallowed, “is any desire to be a mother. I’ve never wanted children. I wouldn’t know how to connect with a child.”
“You’d be surprised how many women feel as you do at the beginning. You’d learn, Ms. Shepherd.”
“I doubt it.” A good shake was what Reed Wallace needed. “Let me tell you, I am the only child of parents who never wanted me. Probably the best thing about dying was they were rid of me for good.”
“Ms. Shepherd, I don’t think—”
“Just let me say this. They weren’t bad parents. They were responsible people who did one irresponsible thing and I was the result. I got what I was supposed to get—haircuts and vaccinations and tennis lessons . . .” Lessons, opportunities, encouragement: she could go on for a long time listing all the good things her parents had given her because they knew in a bookish kind of way everything there was to understand about parenting. Braces and good clothes and shoes that supported her arches. They drilled table manners into her and sent her to camp where she learned how to ride and not humiliate herself on a tennis court.
“But whatever you’re meant to do for a kid to make it feel loved and wanted and needed and respected and safe and all the rest?” She took a breath, realized she was standing up and gabbling, sat down. “Well, it never happened for me.”
“That doesn’t mean . . .”
“I’m not going to bring another accident into the world.” Liz took a deep breath. “Anyway, what kid wants a sixty- or seventy-year-old mother?”
“Age isn’t so important anymore.”
Spoken like a man on the smiling side of forty.
“If you won’t abort this, I’ll find someone who will.”
“Ms. Shepherd, I’m not trying to change your mind about the surgery. It’s your body and I respect your right to choose. But I need to make sure you’ve looked at every angle because there are few things as final and forever as a terminated pregnancy.”
“No kidding.”
“And at the risk of making you madder at me, I have to say that women who come on as strong as you do, are often the ones who suffer most afterwards.”
“Often doesn’t mean always, doctor.” She waited a moment for his riposte. Nothing. “So, do we schedule the thing or do I go look for another doctor?”
He flipped through his desk calendar. “Next Friday’s okay.”
“Will I have to stay overnight?”
“In the hospital? No. I’ll see you down at the Woman-care facility on San Antonio and Third. You’ll come in here to the office the day before so I can insert a microscopic dilator. The procedure doesn’t take long, but you might feel a little uncomfortable for a day or two afterwards. Every woman’s different.”
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