Off-Island

by Marlene Hauser

  Krista went to the test tube. She sat like a cat on the arm of the chair with her chin resting on her hand, her elbow propped on her knee. She turned and peered through the Venetian blinds. The street looked stark black and white under the September sun. It looked like an old New York City postcard. She watched Michael approach from around the street corner, carrying his bagels and The Times. As he disappeared from view, just under the windowsill, Krista snapped open the blinds. It was as if for the first time she flipped on the light on the street where she had lived all her life.

  “Kris,” Michael shouted, tossing the bagels onto the kitchen counter, “the instructions say keep it out of direct sunlight.”

  “I just opened them.”

  “Have you read it?”

  “No.”

  “Let’s see.” He looked into the mirror.

  “Leave it alone,” she said firmly.

  “Okay.” He picked up the newspaper.

  *

  An hour later he looked at the instruction leaflet again: “POSITIVE: A DARK DONUT-SHAPED BROWNISH RING (MUST HAVE A HOLE IN THE CENTER). This ring can vary in thickness and color. A ring indicates that your urine does contain pregnancy hormone, and you can assume you are pregnant. You should now consult your physician, who is best able to advise you. NEGATIVE: NO RING. JUST A DEPOSIT – NO RING.”

  Krista stood up. She walked towards Michael, leaned over his shoulder and looked into the mirror where the results were visible. Unimpressed, she wondered what you said when what you had always known was proven to be true. She walked back to the window. Michael thought her hips looked exceedingly narrow. Perhaps it was just the overlarge shirt. She crossed her arms over her already swollen breasts.

  “Doesn’t it make you feel good?” he asked. “Just a little bit?”

  She turned and stared at him in horror. She went back to the desk, viewed the tube and the perfectly formed circle; looked at him without saying a word.

  “Kris,” he said, “I know you’ve made up your mind. But can’t you imagine, just for a split second, us married with a baby? This time next year, playing with a little one on the beach.”

  “No,” she answered, “I can’t.”

  Krista dropped her head, shrouding the tube and the mirror with her long tumble of hair. She took a deep breath, and tossed the hair back over one shoulder. With perfect intent, she lifted the tube from its support and rocked it slowly. Then she shook it vigorously until everything in the circle – the entire mirror – went black.

  Chapter Three

  Dr. Blackwell scheduled the abortion for early Wednesday. Krista had been examined late in the afternoon after the other pregnant women, those carrying their babies to full term, had come for their examinations. As they left the office one by one, glowing, Krista felt left behind, like a bad pupil kept after school. The other patients did not bother her as much as the prints hanging on the walls of the waiting room – Madonna with Sleeping Child, Madonna Enthroned with Child, Angel with Mother and Child. Some of the paintings were religious, some were not, but Krista felt unholy in a holy place. The magazines bothered her as well – Parents, A Child’s World, Good Housekeeping. She felt as if she had gotten off a train at the wrong stop. Dr. Blackwell hummed a yes as soon as he began her pelvic exam, feeling the four-week growth in her womb. Krista wondered if going to a private doctor for an abortion had been the right choice. Maybe she should have gone to a clinic where no one was carrying her pregnancy to full term. The conversation in the waiting room would have been a lot easier.

  After the examination, the scheduling and speaking to the nurse, Krista waited for Michael. He arrived on schedule at six. Together they sat in Dr. Blackwell’s office as he traced the plastic sides of a model uterus with one immaculately manicured hand. He explained the procedure. Krista crossed her legs. In the palm of her hand she wadded and flattened a dry tissue. She asked questions: Would this endanger her chances for future pregnancies? How long would it take? Would it hurt? Would a nurse be with her the whole time?

  To each question, Dr. Blackwell smiled, said no or yes and nodded reassuringly. Behind him, sixteen plastic uteruses displaying doll-like fetuses in different stages of development lined the windowsill. His own healthy, tow-haired children – three of them – were displayed in a framed photograph, sitting on a stone wall with their arms clasped snugly around each other. Krista took Michael’s hand. I wish with all my heart I knew you better. I wish I knew myself better. I wish I knew if this was the right time for us to have this child, she thought.

  Michael nervously pulled out the cuffs of his shirt from under his jacket sleeves. He spoke with Dr. Blackwell, and Krista, who had asked all of her questions, except for the one that had no answer, did not listen. Instead she studied the side of Michael’s face. He said, “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir,” and no one said they were sorry. Only everyone could feel it.

  “Such a nice couple,” the old receptionist said smiling, as Krista and Michael finally stood together in the doorway of the office. A nurse in a white blouse and navy trousers introduced herself to them as Ruth. She said she would be with Krista throughout the procedure. Krista should not eat for twenty-four hours before the surgery, which meant from Tuesday morning at ten forty-five.

  “Only drink water,” the receptionist warned, a look of disapproval on her face now as she handed Krista two sets of papers to sign.

  “Okay,” Krista said as she glanced over the document and signed twice.

  She knew she must take sole responsibility for her actions. She started to cry then, and Ruth handed her a box of Kleenex. Michael held himself erect. He shook Dr. Blackwell’s hand. The receptionist stomped out of the room, and Krista looked up from the papers.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t know why I’m crying.”

  “I do,” Michael said.

  They argued until the wee hours of Tuesday morning, Michael finally agreeing to do whatever was necessary. He said he would do what Krista wanted.

  After he left for work, she mentally reviewed the previous day. She ran through her options one last time. Should she have this child after all? It was possible. At noon, Michael called to ask how she was doing. He suggested she go to a movie, to distract herself, and he also asked if he could go along with her on Wednesday.

  “No,” she told him firmly. “It is a very simple surgical procedure. Don’t blow things out of proportion.”

  Tuesday night Michael ate dinner and Krista drank glass after glass of Perrier. Michael told her he was glad she could take care of things on her own because something important had come up at work. He had orchestrated a major deal for General Energy, which included several Japanese partners.

  “Even your grandfather was impressed. He wants to come to the signing luncheon.”

  “When?” Krista asked perfunctorily.

  “Tomorrow at eleven. Signing first, then lunch.”

  “That’s great. Tomorrow night we’ll celebrate.”

  They both stayed awake all night. Michael went over Krista’s bus route to Dr. Blackwell’s office three times, even sketching it for her on an index card. In the end he scrapped the whole idea. Said he thought she should take a taxi. She agreed, and they laughed uneasily. What were they getting so carried away about anyway?

  While Michael showered on Wednesday morning, Krista left his apartment, went up to her own and locked the door. He called to her from the shower.

  “Hey, where are you?”

  When there was no answer, he waited for one minute. He called out again, and then panicked. He thought Krista had not woken. What if she died in her sleep? He laughed at his own paranoia, his stupidity, his anxiety about work and the abortion. He wrapped a towel around his waist and ran upstairs. Where was she?

  “I changed my mind.” He pounded on the locked apartment door. “I changed my mind. I want to take you.”

  �
��Don’t be ridiculous,” Krista answered through the locked door.

  “Unlock this door. What are you doing in there anyway?”

  “Nothing. I’m getting dressed. I want to be alone, okay?”

  “No, it’s not okay. You’re making me anxious.”

  “About what?”

  “You.”

  Krista opened the door. “Why are you making such a big thing out of nothing, something which for all practical purposes does not exist?”

  “Because I love you.”

  She closed the door in his face.

  “I want to go with you today,” he insisted from the other side.

  “No.”

  “Unlock this door!”

  “It’s unlocked,” she answered, deliberately trying to make him feel foolish.

  Michael walked into the kitchen where she was sitting at the table.

  “Kris, I think I should be with you.”

  “Michael, let’s not do this again. This is really very simple. Like taking off a wart,

  removing a stitch, whatever. Remember, today’s your big day. Your signing luncheon.”

  “It can be cancelled. This is an emergency.”

  “It is not. Now tell me who’s going to be there.”

  “Suzuki from Matsumoto – Abington – Krista, you’re more important!”

  “Michael, get out of here.”

  “I don’t know what to do…”

  “Do whatever you normally do on a Wednesday. Go to work.”

  “This doesn’t feel like a normal Wednesday.”

  “Well, it is,” Krista said as she pushed him out the door and closed it.

  “Kris,” he pounded on it once more, “call me if you change your mind.”

  I won’t, she thought as she walked down the hall to get dressed.

  What do I wear for an abortion? She sorted through the clothes in her closet while she ran the water for her bath. She momentarily watched the water from the faucet cascade and turn a delicate blue. The bath oil created tiny pellets of color. As she slipped into the hot water up to her chin, she touched her abdomen. I am pregnant.

  She closed her eyes. She seemed to hear Helen’s voice. “Ignorance is an awesome thing… the province of the simple-minded… the rich will always find what they want, what they can afford. It will be the poor who will be left to their own devices: rubber tubes, lye, Pine Sol.” It was a voice she could not drown out. For a minute, Krista considered calling her mother, telling her about the abortion, about what she was preparing to do, but she slipped back under the water. This she would do on her own. Again, her mother’s strident voice came to her, reading passages from her second book, A Woman’s Right to Life.

  It is a frightening thing, controlling one’s own fate. What does it mean when we have a hand in our own destiny? That we should have more respect for life than to consider it a twist of fate, that we should plan for it, not allowing it to be viewed as some mystical work of predestination in which we have no choice. Can women bear responsibility for the decision-making process without bearing guilt? I bore a child against my will, and do not think I have not suffered anger, oppression.

  No doubt, Krista thought, everything my mother says is true, but what do I tell this Little One? What do I tell this being which, from its conception, I have felt? What do I say to this other life that is not mine? I can distinguish its separateness. Reflecting on the moment of conception, that instant flooding of light, Krista wondered what other women might feel. Was it similar to her own experience? Surely not, she thought, because, if it were, she would have heard about it. She would have read about it. Helen would have mentioned it… but no one had. Krista blamed her body, her dancer’s body, which had been trained to react to the slightest stimulus. She chastised herself for being too sensitive, and dusted her body with talc. She tossed the towel over the sink.

  In the living room, she sat cross-legged in the overstuffed armchair. It was too early yet for the trip to the East Side. She heard Michael close the front door, and she cried, wrapping her arms around herself. She heard him whistle. In her mind’s eye, she saw him walk to 7th Avenue, hail a taxi, and for a split second she was sorry he was not coming with her. She thought about prayer, and did the only thing she knew to do.

  “Little One,” she said, “please wait for me. Little Spirit, there will be a time when it is right, I promise. I will know then, just as now I do not. Little One, please wait. I am sorry, I am terribly sorry.”

  Krista cried, making amends for what she thought might just be the wrong choice. How can anything feel so right and so wrong in the same instant?

  “Little Spirit,” she cried out loud, “I do not want to let you go. Little One, please wait.”

  Krista repeated the words several times, to herself and out loud. They were the same words she’d once heard on the Island at the close of season late one night on the narrow walkway to the lighthouse. She had gone to the spot alone to watch the night sky and to listen to the surf wearily rolling itself to extinction on the sand. She had gone to see if somewhere between Jupiter and Orion she might catch that glimpse of her father for which she always hoped. Krista knew it was whimsical of her but she liked thinking about him this way.

  She knew it was Deirdre coming down the walk as soon as the first steps resounded against the wooden boards. Krista wanted to rise and run, but there was no time. Instead she had moved into the shadows. Her friend sat with her feet dangling over the water at the end of the walk. Deirdre’s shoulders rose and fell. Dry grasses whistled, and buoys tinkled in the harbor. Deirdre spoke to herself. A bicycle bell rang twice far away. Krista could hear what her friend was saying.

  “I couldn’t. I couldn’t have another.”

  Silence washed over the beach. Krista held her knees against her chest. She smelled brine, rotting seaweed and a beach fire. A skip darted between the anchored boats, its light searching the face of the water. Krista felt the sand in her tennis shoes.

  “Wait,” Deirdre said, “wait, Little Spirit. There will come a time.”

  Deirdre jumped instantly to her feet and ran the full length of the walk back to the street. The words seemed to hang in the air behind her. Wait, Little Spirit. There will come a time. Krista never mentioned that evening to anyone, especially not to Deirdre, because she had not quite understood, and because she respected those she thought might also be searching, like her, for the dead.

  Sitting in the overstuffed armchair, waiting to make the trip to the East Side, it came to Krista what Deirdre had been talking about and to whom she had been speaking. As they had that night, her words seemed to hang in mid-air. Krista repeated them. She said the same short prayer to the child she had chosen not to birth.

  *

  Krista hid behind the large-framed sunglasses she borrowed from her mother’s dresser. On a cross-town bus a passenger said hello. Krista nodded back. I’m on my way to an abortion. How ’bout you? Sunny day, isn’t it? The passenger returned to reading her paper. Krista imagined jumping to her feet and telling the whole bus: I’m going to abort a fetus. How does that grab you? She saw herself interviewing each passenger. She would ask their opinion, and as if pulling petals from a daisy – he loves me, he loves me not – she would decide. Abortion yes, abortion no. She would let this random sample of human beings be her judge and jury. That, she thought, would be much simpler than having to decide for herself.

  She crossed her legs and tapped her foot. She looked like a hundred other young women in New York who might be dancers, lawyers, teachers, thieves, or perhaps on their way to see their obstetrician for a safe abortion. Suddenly, Krista wanted only one thing. She wanted it all over with so that things could return to normal. She would be as she had been. She would even go back to studying dance with Madame Chevalier.

  The office she had last seen late in the afternoon looked different at nine thir
ty in the morning. A baby murmured, a woman at full term breathed heavily, and another with her pregnancy barely showing flipped through a magazine. The paintings seemed to loom even larger. A toddler pushed a gaily colored train over the carpet. Krista wanted to run but Ruth intercepted her.

  “Mrs. Bourne.”

  “Miss, Ms., I’m not married,” Krista corrected her.

  The nurse remained unfazed by this.

  “Your husband asked that you call him.”

  “Michael?”

  Krista took the piece of paper on which a number had been noted and dialed from the receptionist’s desk.

  “Krista,” Michael answered immediately, “thank God! I didn’t think you were going to call. Listen, this may sound stupid, really stupid… but I want to marry you. I do! We can have this baby. It’s all right really, to do it this way. I love you. We don’t have to be married first. You don’t have to have this abortion. I want the baby.”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  Krista hung up the phone as Dr. Blackwell walked a patient in her eighth month from one examining room to the next. Just when Krista thought she did not know what to do, Ruth appeared from a back office and ushered her outside.

  “Dr. Blackwell uses facilities across the street for abortions,” she explained.

  The traffic at ten o’clock was congested. The nurse held Krista’s elbow and they both darted through the oncoming cars.

  In a smoke-filled waiting room, men waited for their wives or girlfriends. They lounged, stood in corners, held various reading material on their laps and drank Coca-Cola. For the first time Krista felt afraid. She allowed the nurse to guide her. She signed another set of papers.

  “Sit here and when Dr. Blackwell arrives,” she was told, “you will take your clothes off over there. I will give you a paper bag for your things.”