The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966

by Richard Brautigan

  After the girl finished cleaning up the operating room, she went into the kitchen and started cooking a big steak for the doctor. She got a bottle of Miller’s beer out of the refrigerator and poured the doctor a big glass of it. He sat down in the kitchen. I could barely see him drinking the beer.

  Then Vida started stirring in her sleep. She opened her eyes. They didn’t see anything for a moment or so and then they saw me. ‘Hi,’ she said in a distant voice.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, smiling.

  ‘I feel dizzy,’ she said, coming in closer.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said. ‘Everything is fine.’

  ‘Oh, that’s good,’ she said. There.

  ‘Just lie quietly and take it easy,’ I said.

  The doctor got up from the table in the kitchen and came in. He was holding the glass of beer in his hand.

  ‘She’s coming back,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good.’

  He took his glass of beer and went back into the kitchen and sat down again. He was very tired.

  Then I heard the people in the outside gym room dressing their daughter. They were in a hurry to leave. They sounded as if they were dressing a drunk.

  ‘I can’t get my hands up,’ the girl said.

  Her parents said something stern to her and she got her hands up in the air, but they had so much trouble putting her little brassiere on that they finally abandoned trying and the mother put the brassiere in her purse.

  ‘OHHHHHHHHHH! I’m so dizzy,’ the girl said as her parents half-carried her, half-dragged her out of the place.

  I heard a couple of doors close and then everything was silent, except for the doctor’s lunch cooking in the kitchen. The steak was being fried in a very hot pan and it made a lot of noise.

  ‘What’s that?’ Vida said. I didn’t know if she was talking about the noise of the girl leaving or the sound of the steak cooking.

  ‘It’s the doctor having lunch,’ I said.

  ‘Is it that late?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve been out a long time,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We’re going to have to leave soon but we won’t leave until you feel like it.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Vida said.

  The doctor came back into the room. He was nervous because he was hungry and tired and wanted to close the place up for a while, so he could take it easy, rest some.

  Vida looked up at him and he smiled and said, ‘See, no pain, honey. Everything wonderful. Good girl.’

  Vida smiled very weakly and the doctor returned to the kitchen and his steak that was ready now.

  While the doctor had his lunch, Vida slowly sat up and I helped her get dressed. She tried standing up but it was too hard, so· I had her sit back down for a few moments.

  While she sat there, she combed her hair and then she tried standing up again but she still didn’t have it and sat back down on the bed again.

  ‘I’m still a little rocky,’ Vida said.

  ‘That’s all right.’

  The woman in the other room had come to and her husband was dressing her almost instantly, saying, ‘Here. Here. Here. Here,’ in a painful Okie accent.

  ‘I’m tired,’ the woman said, using up two thirds of her vocabulary.

  ‘Here,’ the man said, helping her put something else on.

  After he got her dressed he came into our room and stood there looking for the doctor. He was very embarrassed when he saw Vida sitting on the bed, combing her hair.

  ‘Doctor?’ he said.

  The doctor got up from his steak and stood in the doorway of the kitchen. The man started to walk towards the doctor, but then stopped after taking only a few steps.

  The doctor came into our room.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t remember where I parked my car,’ the man said. ‘Can you call me a taxi?’

  ‘You lost your auto?’ the doctor said.

  ‘I parked it next to Woolworth’s, but I can’t remember where Woolworth’s is,’ the man said. ‘I can find Woolworth’s if I can get downtown. I don’t know where to go.’

  ‘The boy’s coming back,’ the doctor said. ‘He’ll take you there in his auto.’

  ‘Thank you,’ the man said, returning to his wife in the other room. ‘Did you hear that?’ he said to her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, using it all up.

  ‘We’ll wait,’ he said.

  Vida looked over at me and I smiled at her and took her hand to my mouth and kissed it.

  ‘Let’s try again,’ she said.

  ‘All right,’ I said.

  She tried it again and this time it was all right. She stood there for a few moments and then said, ‘I’ve got it. Let’s go.’

  ‘Are you sure you have it?’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’

  I helped Vida on with her sweater. The doctor looked at us from the kitchen. He smiled but he didn’t say anything. He had done what he was supposed to do and now we did what we were supposed to do. We left.

  We wandered out of the room into the gym and worked our way to the front of the place, passing through layers of coolness to the door.

  Even though it had remained a grey overcast day, we were stunned by the light and everything was instantly noisy, car-like, confused, poor, rundown and Mexican.

  It was as if we had been in a time capsule and now were released again to be in the world.

  The children were still playing in front of the doctor’s office and again they stopped their games of life to watch two squint-eyed gringos holding, clinging, holding to each other walk up the street and into a world without them.

  Book Six The Hero

  Woolworth’s Again

  We slowly, carefully and abortively made our way back to downtown Tijuana surrounded and bombarded by people trying to sell us things that we did not want to buy.

  We had already got what we’d come to Tijuana for. I had my arm around Vida. She was all right but she was a little weak.

  ‘How do you feel, honey?’ I said.

  ‘I feel all right,’ she said. ‘But I’m a little weak.’

  We saw an old man crouching like a small gum-like piece of death beside an old dilapidated filling station.

  ‘Hey, a pretty, pretty girl!’

  Mexican men kept reacting to Vida’s now pale beauty.

  Vida smiled faintly at me as a taxicab driver dramatically stopped his cab in front of us and leaned out the window and gave a gigantic wolf whistle and said, ‘WOW! You need a taxi, honey!’

  We made our way to the Main Street of Tijuana and found ourselves in front of Woolworth’s again and the bunnies in the window.

  ‘I’m hungry.’ Vida said. She was tired. ‘So hungry.’

  ‘You need something to eat,’ I said. ‘Let’s go inside and see if we can get you some soup.’

  ‘That would be good,’ she said. ‘I need something.’

  We went off the confused dirty Main Street of Tijuana into the clean modern incongruity of Woolworth’s. A very pretty Mexican girl took our order at the counter. She asked us what we wanted. ‘What would you like?’ she said.

  ‘She’d like some soup,’ I said. ‘Some clam chowder.’

  ‘Yes,’ Vida said.

  ‘What would you like?’ the waitress said in very good Woolworth’s English.

  ‘I guess a banana split,’ I said.

  I held Vida’s hand while the waitress got our orders. She leaned her head against my shoulder. Then she smiled and said, ‘You’re looking at the future biggest fan The Pill ever had.’

  ‘How do you feel?’ I said.

  ‘Just like I’ve had an abortion.’

  Then the waitress brought us our food. While Vida slowly worked her soup, I worked my banana split. It was the first banana split I’d had in years.

  It was unusual fare for the day, but it was no different from anything else that had happe
ned since we’d come to the Kingdom of Tijuana to avail ourselves of the local recreational facilities.

  The taxicab driver never took his eyes off Vida as we drove back to America. His eyes looked at us from the rear-view mirror as if he had another face and it was a mirror.

  ‘Did you have a good time in Tijuana?’ he said.

  ‘Lovely,’ I said.

  ‘What did you do?’ he said.

  ‘We had an abortion,’ I said.

  ‘HAHAHAHAHAHAHAVERYFUNNYJOKE!’

  the driver laughed.

  Vida smiled.

  Farewell, Tijuana.

  Kingdom of Fire and Water.

  The Green Hotel Again

  Our desk clerk was waiting for us, agog with smiles and questions. I had an idea that he drank on the job. There was something about how friendly he was.

  ‘Did you see your sister?’ he asked Vida with a big false-teeth smile.

  ‘What?’ Vida said. She was tired.

  ‘Yes, we saw her,’ I said. ‘She was just as we remembered her.’

  ‘Even more so,’ Vida said, catching the game by the tail.

  ‘That’s good,’ the clerk said. ‘People should never change. They should always be the same. They are happier that way.’

  I tried that one on for size and was able to hold a straight face. It had been a long day.

  ‘My wife’s a little tired,’ I said. ‘I think we’ll go up to our room.’

  ‘Relatives can be tiring. The excitement of it all. Renewing family ties,’ the desk clerk said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  He gave us the key to his mother’s room.

  ‘I can take you up to the room if you don’t remember the way,’ he said.

  ‘No, that’s not necessary,’ I said. ‘I remember the way.’ I headed I him off by saying, ‘It’s such a beautiful room.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘Very lovely room,’ Vida said.

  ‘My mother was so happy there,’ he said.

  We took the old elevator upstairs and I opened the door with the key. ‘Get off the bed,’ I said as we went into the room. ‘Off,’ I repeated.

  ‘What?’ Vida said.

  ‘The Mother Ghost,’ I said.

  ‘Oh.’

  Vida lay down on the bed and closed her eyes. I took her shoes off, so she could be more comfortable.

  ‘How do you feel?’ I said.

  ‘A little tired.’

  ‘Let’s take a nap,’ I said, putting her under the covers and joining her.

  We slept for an hour or so and then I woke up. The Mother Ghost was brushing her teeth and I told her to get into the closet until we were gone. She got into the closet and closed the door after her.

  ‘Hey, baby,’ I said. Vida stirred in her sleep and then opened her eyes.

  ‘What time is it?’ she said.

  ‘About the middle of the afternoon,’ I said.

  ‘What time does our plane leave?’ she said.

  ‘6.25,’ I said. ‘Do you feel you can make it? If you don’t, we’ll spend the night here.’

  ‘No, I’m all right,’ she said. ‘Let’s go back to San Francisco. I don’t like San Diego. I want to get out of here and leave all this behind.’

  We got up and Vida washed her face and straightened herself up and felt a lot better, though she was still a little weak.

  I told the hotel ghost mother good-bye in the closet and Vida joined me. ‘Good-bye, ghost,’ she said.

  We went down the elevator to the waiting desk clerk whom I suspected of drinking on the job.

  He was startled to see me standing there holding the KLM bag in my hand and returning the room key to him.

  ‘You’re not spending the night?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘We’ve decided to stay with her sister.’

  ‘What about your snoring?’ he said.

  ‘I’m going to see a doctor about it,’ I said. ‘I can’t hide from this all my life. I can’t go on living like this forever. I’ve decided to face it like a man.’

  Vida gave me a little nudge with her eyes to tell me that I was carrying it a little too far, so I retreated by saying, ‘You have a lovely hotel here and I’ll recommend it to all my friends when they visit San Diego. What do I owe you?’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Nothing. You’re Foster’s friend. But you didn’t even spend the night.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘You’ve been very friendly. Thank you and good-bye.’

  ‘Good-bye,’ the desk clerk said. ‘Come again when you can spend the night.’

  ‘We will,’ I said.

  ‘Good-bye,’ Vida said.

  Suddenly he got a little desperate and paranoid. ‘There was nothing wrong with the room, was there?’ he said. ‘It was my mother’s room.’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘It was perfect.’

  ‘A wonderful hotel,’ Vida said. ‘A beautiful room. A truly beautiful room.’

  Vida seemed to have calmed him down because he said to us as we were going out the door, ‘Say hello to your sister for me.’

  That gave us something to think about as we drove out to the San Diego airport sitting very close together in the back seat of a cab where the driver, American this time, did not take his eyes off Vida in the mirror.

  When we first got into the cab, the driver said, ‘Where to?’

  I thought it would be fairly simple just to say, ‘The International Airport, please.’

  It wasn’t.

  ‘That’s the San Diego International Airport, isn’t it? That’s where you want to go, huh?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, knowing that something was wrong.

  ‘I just wanted to be sure,’ he said. ‘Because I had a fare yesterday that wanted to go to the International Airport, but it was the Los Angeles International Airport he wanted to go to. That’s why I was checking.’

  Oh, yeah.

  ‘Did you take him?’ I said. I didn’t have anything else to do and my relationship with the cab driver was obviously out of control.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘He was probably afraid of flying,’ I said.

  The cab driver didn’t get the joke because he was watching Vida in the rear-view mirror and Vida was watching me after that one. The driver continued staring at Vida. He paid very little attention to his driving. It was obviously dangerous to ride in a cab with Vida.

  I made a mental note of it for the future, not to have Vida’s beauty risk our lives.

  The San Diego (Not Los Angeles) International Tipping Abyss

  Unfortunately, the cab driver was very unhappy with the tip I gave him. The fare was again one dollar and ten cents and remindful of the experience we’d had earlier in the day with that first cab driver, I raised the tip-ante to thirty cents.

  He was startled by the thirty-cent tip and didn’t want to have anything else to do with us. Even Vida didn’t make any difference when he saw that thirty cents.

  What is the tip to the San Diego airport?

  Our plane didn’t leave for an hour. Vida was quite hungry, so we had something to eat in the cafe. It was about 5.30.

  We had hamburgers. It was the first time I’d had a hamburger in years, but it turned out not to be very good. It was flat.

  Vida said her hamburger was good, though.

  ‘You’ve forgotten how a hamburger is supposed to taste,’ Vida said. ‘Too many years in the monastery have destroyed your better judgement.’

  There were two women sitting nearby. One of them had platinum hair and a mink coat. She was middle-aged and talking to a young, blandly pretty girl who was talking in turn about her wedding and the little caps that were being designed for the bridesmaids.

  The girl was nice in the leg department but a little short in the titty line or was I spoiled? They departed their table without leaving a tip.

  This made the waitress mad.

  She was probably a close relative to the two cab drivers I’d met that day in San
Diego.

  She stared at the tipless table as if it were a sex criminal. Perhaps she was their mother.

  Farewell, San Diego

  I took a closer look at the San Diego airport. It was petite, uncomplicated with no Playboy stuff at all. The people were there to work, not to look pretty.

  There was a sign that said something like: Animals arriving as baggage may be claimed in the airline air freight areas in the rear of bldg.

  You can bet your life that you don’t see signs like that in the San Francisco International Airport.

  A young man with crutches, accompanied by three old men, came along as we were going out to wait for our aeroplane. They all stared at Vida and the young man stared the hardest.

  It was a long way from the beautiful PSA pre-flight lounge in San Francisco to just standing outside, beside a wire fence in San Diego, waiting to get on our aeroplane that was shark-like and making a high whistling steam sound, wanting very much to fly.

  The evening was cold and grey coming down upon us with some palm trees, nearby, by the highway. The palm trees somehow made it seem colder than it actually was. They seemed out of place in the cold.

  There was a military band playing beside one of the aeroplanes parked on the field, but it was too far away to see why they were playing. Maybe some big wig was coming or going. They sounded like my hamburger.

  My Secret Talisman For Ever

  We got our old seats back over the wing and I was sitting again next to the window. Suddenly it was dark in twelve seconds. Vida was quiet, tired. There was a little light on the end of the wing. I became quite fond of it out there in the dark like a lighthouse burning twenty-three miles away and I made it my secret talisman for ever.

  A young priest was sitting across the aisle from us. He was quite smitten by Vida for the short distance to Los Angeles.

  At first he tried not to be obvious about it, but after a while he surrendered himself to it and one time he leaned across the aisle and was going to say something to Vida. He was actually going to say something to her, but then he changed his mind.