Marco reads all our mail, and I don’t want Marco to tell me what my father has written.
I take it into the bathroom. These days I have to pee constantly. I turn on the tap, even though nobody’s home, and go. In Japan they have toilets that when you sit down make the sound of water running so no one can hear you pee. Sunny would love that.
Dad’s card is basically a weather report. In Cancun it’s sunny and warm. No surprise. I take it into the kitchen and read it again, between the lines, searching for subtext the way the Sisters teach us in English class.
Dear Mary Beth,
Greetings! Isn’t this sunset amazing? The weather has been great, really cooperating. I’ve been on the golf course every day. Had a super lobster the other night at a restaurant on the beach. You’d love it. How’s school?
Blah blah blah. Like he can’t call me up? Like he can’t pick up the phone and ask me how I am? I haven’t heard his voice in weeks and weeks. I run my finger over his big loopy script, watching my hand move, is that how his hand moves?
Be good, he writes.
Love Dad, he writes.
I throw the card in the trash, then pick it out. I am so weak.
I think about buying myself a beautiful pair of Italian leather boots with his American Express card. He gave me my own charge because he knows how tight-fisted my mother can be.
“I don’t want you to do without,” he’d said, pressing the card into my hand, like the key to some imaginary city, “but don’t abuse it.”
Abuse it? That card wanted it.
I like using his card, it’s as if he’s actually buying me things. Sometimes when I’m feeling blue I’ll go shopping. I’ll hold up dresses and ask, Would he like this? Would he think this looked pretty on me? Mostly, though, I use his card because it’s my right as his daughter; he owed me that leather car coat, he owed me that handbag. Anytime I’m short on a tab, good old Dad steps out of the shadows to help me out. Here my dear let me get that for you, no no I insist. My treat. One day after field hockey practice I took the whole team out for sundaes on Dad’s card. Did he ever get mad? Not really. He’d just say, “Be careful with that card, honey.” Or when we get together for one of our quarterly dinners in the city, he’ll say, “That’s a pretty skirt, did I buy that?” and for some reason I always lie and say no, even though I absolutely make a point of wearing clothes he’s paid for when I see him.
In my room I change out of my uniform and into a pale blue cashmere sweater my grandmother gave me for Christmas last year, a knee-length blue flowered skirt, and a pair of black ballet flats, both from Mom. It’s important, my mother says, to look nice when you go to the doctor. In case, I suppose, you die there.
The clinic’s waiting room is full of slick, uncomfortable orange and yellow plastic chairs, bus-station furniture designed to cause discomfort, to make loitering absolutely impossible, as if anybody would want to hang out here. The ceiling is low. Overhead, one of the fluorescent lights has a bad tube. It keeps flickering, providing a kind of disco effect. Inside the light are dead flies, all on their backs, legs up and crossed. How did they get in there in the first place?
In one corner, sort of hiding behind a dark-blue-and-purple silk flower arrangement, sits a lifeguard type, wavy, slightly long blond hair, tan, good teeth. He’s holding a Coach Grace Kelly–style purse on his knee, bouncing it the way you do a baby. His eyes are completely bloodshot, probably not from crying, but from pot. Stoned courage. A tall, dark-haired guy in khakis and a navy blazer stands looking at the selection of pamphlets—So You’ve Got Genital Herpes, Infants 101, and The Truth About Gonorrhea, which I once thought sounded like a travel brochure for some mysterious and secluded island that doesn’t welcome tourists. He is cute. When he sits down across from me and accidentally drops the lavender cardigan he’s been clutching, I smile at him, and he looks completely confused. Thank heavens I didn’t bring a purse—who would be its faithful guardian? Certainly not the fat man in the shiny green suit dozing beside me, the day’s racing form balanced on his knee. I say a Hail Mary out of nervousness. I haven’t told a soul, not even my girlfriends know, no one. They wouldn’t understand, they are still caught up in making out and dry humping, playing the power game of stopping guys before things go too far. Well, too far is where I live. I think of my mother. What would she say? What would she do if she knew what I had done? I imagine the lightning crack of ice cubes being hurled into a glass. Slut! The slosh of vodka as my mother, Athena of the cocktails, prepared to annihilate me. You are no child of mine!
A rotund nurse with a mad scramble of red hair and the tiniest mouth I have ever seen shows me into a cool pink room. It is like being inside a cone of cotton candy. I hang up my jean jacket and get undressed. I drop my sweet-sixteen pearl necklace into the toe of my shoe and put on the blue robe, ties in the front. My hands are shaking so badly I can hardly make a knot. The nurse takes my blood pressure. Her hands are cold and soft. She is humming. She makes no small talk. She just smiles at me and hums some tune like a polka. I can’t tell what she is thinking. She scribbles down some numbers. I wonder if she has ever had an abortion, if she hates me for doing this.
“Everything normal?” Conversation would be nice.
She hums and nods and then vanishes.
It is positively arctic in here. I stand on tiptoe. I pinch my gut, I am getting fat. I tell myself, No solid food for two days. The Muzak station is playing the hundred-strings version of “Stairway to Heaven.” That was my old boyfriend Michael’s and my song. Now Michael, Michael would have come with me.
I pace for a while. My feet are freezing from the tile floor, so I finally climb up on the table. It’s a huge stainless steel table, covered with white paper that comes off a giant roll, the kind you use as a kid in art class. On the ceiling someone, perhaps the red-haired nurse, has taped a National Geographic photo of a cool green waterfall buried in the jungle. It looks like a place you would really have to hike to, a place that is special because so few people have seen it. It is a lovely distraction. That’s what it is, and I laugh out loud; that’s what Phillip called me once, a lovely distraction.
Where is Dr. Andrews? Usually he makes an appearance before the nurses take my blood pressure and temperature. It is like he is so happy to see me that he can hardly wait until they are done with me, but today, so far, he is a no-show. It is prom season, I think, he must be backed up. Out in the gray-and-green-tiled hall, gleaming silver gurneys are lined up against the wall, like limousines waiting to spirit girls into recovery. Recovery is nice. It’s quiet, it is like a war hospital in the movies, rows of white beds, girls lying there, some weeping, some sleeping. Some girls have IVs trailing from their arms, some are chatting with their neighbors. I would not be surprised to see somebody, one day, break out a pack of cards. Anything for a distraction. Then the nurse comes by with a tray of cookies and juice. Everybody who can sit up sits up and takes one. Last time they were butter cookies with the imprint of a little schoolboy on them. I nibbled off his feet, then his stomach, and finally I ate his face. By the time you leave, you have had a nap and your snack, and a nurse has given you a thick sanitary pad, dense and white as a snowbank. Leaving the hospital with this huge pad in your pants it feels like you are a girl again, like it is your first period and your mother won’t let you use tampons because they might break your hymen. It is like your virginity has been restored, and you are a good girl all over again.
I wait. I wonder if Dr. Andrews is married. Does he have kids?
I close my eyes and think of him. He’s at least six feet six inches tall and thin as a weather vane, his graying hair brushed straight back from his high forehead, and because he uses some kind of pomade, you can always see the furrows from his comb in his hair. He likes to wear those old-fashioned suits with high-waisted gabardine pants, and on the street he wears a marvelous felt fedora, which makes him look like an old movie star. He’s from the Midwest, he told me that, and that as a kid he was clumsy and lou
sy at sports. He grew ten inches his freshman year of college. Sometimes he sounds a little like Jimmy Stewart. I love to hear him say my name.
The first time, he asked me if I wanted a nurse to hold my hand during the procedure. He asked me if there was anyone waiting for me, or should someone call me a cab. I said yes, someone was waiting for me, but I didn’t tell him that Michael was loitering outside smoking like a fiend. Neither Michael nor I wanted him to come in. I suppose he could have sat out in the waiting room with all the other guilty-looking sperm dumpers, but it just felt too personal. Still, I didn’t want the doctor to think I was a slut, or somebody who nobody cared about.
The second time, he did not ask me if I wanted a hand-holder, instead he told me jokes. What did the little pig say when he fell down the steps? Oh, my achin’ bacon. What did the grape say when it got stepped on? Nothing, it just let out a little wine. Jokes, I now realize, that were all about pain. Maybe he was afraid that despite the anesthetic, I would be in pain. He didn’t want me to be in pain.
The second time, he told me, “Mary Beth, you are a good girl with very bad luck.”
I had lied and written on my form that I was using a condom and a sponge, when in truth I was unprepared. It was my first and only date with Paolo, a gorgeous curly-haired Italian waiter from Mezzaluna. We ended up at the Plaza, at Trader Vic’s. I took him up to the second floor to show him the ballroom where I had gone to my very first fancy-dress ball. I thought about saying, “Stop it,” but it was over so fast, it was like an accident. It didn’t seem so bad until he didn’t call me, until I saw how he’d torn the hook and eyes out of my bra when he couldn’t get it undone, until every time I went into the restaurant he had somebody else wait on me.
I had told Dr. Andrews that I was alone. I did not tell him what happened, although I wanted to tell him, but I would rather he think me mysterious.
Today, who knows, maybe Dr. Andrews will sing “Ol’ Man River” to me and accompany himself on harmonica—that would be a nice counterbalance to the drone of machines, the dreadful sucking sounds. Today when Dr. Andrews asks me about the cab, I will say, “Can’t you take me with you?” Or, “Maybe you could just drop me on your way home?”
Then we’ll ride together in his car. He’ll have lemon drops in his glove compartment, plus maps of all the prime foliage states. He’ll buy me a tuna melt at the coffee shop. We’ll talk. He’ll like me. I’ll tell him my really dumb knock-knock jokes, and he’ll ask me if I want to go to the aquarium this weekend to see the seals, and I’ll say yes, yes please.
There’s a soft quick rap on the door. I sit up. Dr. Andrews has my file pressed to his chest. He is wearing a dark blue suit today, with a very worn alligator belt. He pinches the bridge of his long nose and rubs his eyes for a moment.
“So, here we are,” he says, closing the door behind him. He’s been working too hard. “How are we feeling today?” he asks, sitting down hard on the metal stool, his knees sticking out like a praying mantis’s, and I believe he cares, but for some reason he’s looking not in my eyes, but at my neck, or into my chest.
“Not so hot.” I lean over and grab my stomach. Now I do not want to look in his eyes. Something feels wrong.
“Well, I can’t say I’m surprised,” he says, shaking his head a little. He seems angry. He attempts to rig up a smile, but he cannot sustain it. It collapses in a grimace.
“I’m sorry,” he says. He shakes his head, and rubs his eyes again. I suddenly feel sick. I want to say, “It’s not my fault that this happened.” Instead I just sit there and feel myself shrinking, getting colder and colder, and smaller and smaller.
He picks up a tongue depressor and starts turning it over in his hand like it’s some kind of artifact he’s never seen before. He is stalling.
“What is it?” My God, maybe I’ve got cancer or toxic shock or something.
“Mary Beth,” he starts slowly, “as your doctor, I have to advise you that despite your age and good health, what you’re doing here just isn’t advisable for you, you know that, don’t you? Do I need to give you the whole your-body-is-a-temple, sanctity-of-life spiel again?” He pauses; he’s actually angry at me.
“Well, I wouldn’t say my body is exactly a temple, it’s more like a roadside shrine,” I start to say, but he interrupts me.
“Now come on, cut the rigmarole, this is, what, the third time you’ve been here in two years, Mary Beth.” He stops. I roll my eyes, but I don’t mean to. I want to hear the spiel again.
“Darn it all, forget medically—emotionally, psychologically, I’m concerned. You’re a smart girl. I…” He looks flummoxed. He pops open the file and extracts a pair of tortoiseshell half glasses from his coat pocket.
“You’re, what, a senior?” he says. “Do you know where you are going to college?” he asks, squinting over the top of his glasses.
“I don’t know, Swarthmore, maybe Princeton.”
“Well now, that’s a very fine school. Go Tigers!” he says, some color finally coming into his cheeks.
“Go team!” I say, making a triumphant fist. We both laugh, but it’s a small, uncomfortable laugh. I hate the way he’s looking at me, so disappointed.
“This is the last time, Mary Beth,” he says, settling down at the end of the table. “I’m sorry,” he says, and I think he almost means it.
“What do you mean?”
“Mary Beth, I like you. If you were my own daughter this could not sadden me more. Do you understand? I’m going to write you a prescription for the pill, all right?”
“I do not need the pill. I do not want it,” I whine. “It is not like I’m really, you know, sexually active or anything,” I say.
“This is it,” he says, handing me the prescription. “I’m really very sorry.”
I dig my fingernails into the palm of my hand. But I have to see you again, I think, you can’t leave me. But I don’t say it. I cannot believe I’m losing him.
I lay down, scoot my butt down the table, and stick my feet into the icy stirrups. The red-haired nurse comes in and lifts my feet out for a moment, then slides two folded-up paper towels into the stirrups, so they aren’t so cold and hard. I don’t know what to do with this kindness. I cross my arms behind my head like I’m lying out on a tropical beach. I’m casual and cool. Get it out of me, just get it out of me. But when he inserts the speculum and winches me open, when he goes inside me with the tube, my whole body cringes. Before I’d been so relieved, so ready. Out, out, damned spot! Sayonara.
I try to see Dr. Andrews crouched down at the foot of the table, but he is tented by sterilized blue paper, a white mask hiding his lips and nose, his head covered in a blue surgical cap, his eyes behind glasses that reflect the light. He is like a miner, bent over in concentration, prospecting inside me. This is the last time I will see him, and I cannot see him. My hands fly up to cover my face. He never asked me if anyone was coming to get me.
In the recovery room I lie still as a stick and feel the blood leaking out of me, soaking into the pad. I wish I could pray. I swear I feel as though something is wrong with me. Mary, give me a sign, I pray. I feel like a glass jar spidered with cracks, just waiting to shatter. Do I have to break for Mary’s goodness to enter me? What has to happen to make me pure?
The room is quiet but for the hum of the fluorescent lights. Most of the others are sleeping, all except for a woman with gray streaks in her dark brown hair who’s wiping her eyes on the hem of the sheet and the black girl beside me who has been staring at the ceiling ever since they wheeled her in. Forgive me, I beg. Forgive me.
“Is there someone waiting for you?” the nurse asks me when I refuse my cookies and juice, although I am ravenous. “Someone you can call?”
I think about my father standing in a pool of tree shade practicing his chip shot. His hand reaching out to stroke his chin, my chin. My mother at the Garden, surrounded by a sea of dogs, her hands authoritatively placed on her hips, giving simple, easy-to-understand dog orders: Sit, r
oll over, beg.
I shake my head. “I’ve got cab fare,” I say, and turn on my side.
At the front desk I pay for the abortion on my father’s credit card. I sign my name boldly, and I write on the bottom of the credit card slip, Weather is here, wish you were beautiful.
Halfway home I change my mind and ask the cabdriver to take me to Madison Square Garden, though I do not know why exactly. Out the window I look at the girls on the street, girls my age smiling and laughing, talking on pay phones. I wonder who they are, if they are like me.
The last time I was at the Garden was for some ice show with my school. The nuns are crazy about ice shows. Today the ice is covered up, the hardwood floor is down, and they’ve laid down AstroTurfy carpet, like half these dogs have even ever walked on grass. I cannot see the show area, but over the loudspeaker a man with an English accent is describing the dogs as they enter: “Belvedere, a plucky miniature schnauzer, is a stocky little playmate! This gay, friendly little dog is Salome, she’s a Lakeland terrier, we all know what feisty little showboats they are! Look at that saunter! She simply owns the ring!”
I walk slowly up the aisles, half looking for my mother, half staring at the dogs. Some are locked in cages; others, like a black-tongued chow, are being fussed and picked at while they try to nap in their dog beds; then there are those absolutely ridiculous mutts who are unfortunate enough to be tricked out in gear only leather queens and Milquetoasts could appreciate, like the Yorkshire terrier in a studded leather harness and cap behind the wheel of a miniature red sports car, and the teacup Chihuahua in an ascot and monocle curled up in a miniature armchair. They seem sad and bewildered, but maybe it’s just me. I mean, maybe it’s not such a bad life.
“Princess Cortina D’Empazzo is a saucy Italian greyhound bitch,” the disembodied voice booms. “Dogs smile with their tails. Goodness, I think she’s flirting with the judge!”
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