“Okay, okay,” she mumbled into the pillow.
“Good, that’s what I need to hear.”
He kissed her gently, leaning his forehead close, and took her slender shoulders in his hands. The minute his flesh touched hers the pain was unbearable. She understood why she could not forget. It was Michael’s fault. His presence. How could things possibly return to normal with him hovering over her like this? It was his fault she saw her ceiling as flaking and tawdry. He had come too close. He had violated her inside space. He was the invader. None of this would have happened if it had not been for him. And none of it would go away until he went away.
In an instant, Krista saw what she must do. After all, this apartment, this house, belonged to Daddy Bourne, to her family. She could make Michael go away, just as easily as she could rid herself of an unwanted pregnancy. She took the teacup he offered from the blue tray. He stirred in the honey. Krista blew tiny ripples across the surface of the red tea. Michael’s face appeared to her as if from behind a thin veil. It was the way the nurses’ faces had looked when she came out from under the anesthetic. Cut him out, remove him. She watched his lips move. What was he saying?
The hot tea hit her stomach. Krista relaxed. Everything, she suddenly realized, would be fine, would and could return to normal. All of this, she thought, will be as if it never happened. She sat up, straightened her spine. She felt almost regal. Don’t frighten him. She slowly sipped her tea, holding the cup close to her lips, as if that very gesture would hide all of her thoughts from her lover. What was he saying? She couldn’t hear a thing. He must not catch me. Everything must go smoothly. She returned the half-empty cup to the tray, pulled her knees to her chest, and brought the blanket up and under her chin. She continued to eye Michael, like a threatened animal waiting to seize its moment to escape.
“How do you feel?” he asked impatiently.
“Fine. Much better, but still a bit shaky.” Pure evasion tactics. He must know the truth. He must be made to confront the awful, empty, bleeding thing I have become. But not right now. She planned carefully. She could make him, the abortion, the pain, disappear. I must get upstairs, away from him.
“Do you want to eat?”
“No, the tea was perfect. Hit the spot.” There is nothing I want from you, ever again. Except to be out of my sight. There was nothing I ever really wanted from you. You were merely pretty, comfortable and convenient. My hunger is too great. It is a need you will never be able to fill. “No,” she said, “I’m not terribly hungry.”
She dressed. Her knees felt weak, her body unnaturally cold. She wore Michael’s shirt and her own blue jeans. She recalled the brown paper bag, the clinic, her clothes.
“Stay in bed,” Michael suggested.
“No, I’m going upstairs, need to feed Cosmos.”
“You’re not going upstairs! You’re better off here. Now, what do you want to eat? I’ll fix something.”
“Michael, for the last time, I don’t want anything to eat. Maybe you eat when you’re hurt but I don’t, okay? I’m the animal that likes to hide in the corner, curl up, lick my wounds…”
“Calm down, cut the dramatics. I’ve had…”
“No, Michael, it’s just beginning. I’ve had enough. This, all of this, is your fault. And I want you out of here.”
“Out of where?”
“Here, my grandfather’s house.”
“Krista, lie down…”
“Did you hear me? It’s over between you and me, and I want you out of this house immediately. I don’t ever want to see you again. Do you understand? None of this would have happened if I hadn’t brought you here, none of it.” She leaned heavily on the dining-room table, recalled the miniature lab, the test kit, the black ring, the mirror she had shaken until it went blank.
Michael recognized her distress. “Tell me,” he said, “tell me one reason why now, after it’s all over? This is all wrong. See how you feel tomorrow. We can discuss it then.”
“No, I know what I want. I want you out of here now, this minute. There are no reasons, I simply want you out of my life. It’s not difficult to understand – it’s over. Did you think it would last forever? Did you seriously entertain notions of marriage?”
“Krista, you’re acting like a lunatic.”
“I have that right, too, you know.”
“Get back in bed.”
“I’m going to my own bed.”
“You can’t.”
“I can’t?”
“Krista, no one else is home.”
“You’re not my mother, why should you care? You’re no one to me now. So leave me, get out.”
“Kris…”
He looked like a stranger, she realized. Or, no, someone she vaguely recognized. A handsome man she once saw take third in a race in Central Park.
“Michael, get out of here,” she told him, carefully keeping her voice low and conversational. “I hate you, do you understand? I hate you.”
His forehead creased in incomprehension. He couldn’t be hearing this.
“But… I asked you to marry me.”
“Oh, yes, how could I forget? At the last minute, you assuaged your guilt. Or was it your responsibility? You didn’t go in there with me. I went in on my own – on my own. You know it, and I know it. Now, I want you out. This second. There is no forever.”
“Who’s talking about forever? Just calm down. Tomorrow morning…”
Her assumed patience snapped.
“Get out, damn you!”
“Don’t damn me, damn your…” Michael stopped talking. He didn’t want to lose control. He had made himself a promise – to see Krista through this. “I don’t know what else to say to you. Except that I love you.”
“Say it then,” she taunted him. “Damn yourself.”
“Krista, I’m trying to be patient here. I’ve suffered too.”
“No, you haven’t. You haven’t begun to suffer, and there’s nothing you can feel that would compare this to. Nothing.”
“Come here.” He made an attempt to embrace her.
“Don’t!” she screamed. “Don’t touch me.”
“Okay, okay,” he said, backing off, his eyes wide with alarm. “Let’s talk about this rationally. You hurt, but the abortion…”
“The abortion,” she said, mocking him.
“An abortion…”
“Okay, Michael, tell me about it.”
“You were vacuumed out.”
“Explain it to me, Michael.”
“Describe it?”
“Yes.”
“I… I can’t. I can’t.” He could not picture what she had been through.
“Well, let me tell you then. Dr. Blackwell performs a combination vacuum and D&C. D&C, Michael, dilation and curettage. The cervix – you know where that is, don’t you?”
“Don’t be facetious.”
“My cervix was dilated by passing a series of metal dilators, each a little bigger, then the last, into the opening. Then my womb was scraped clean by a surgical scoop. Then hoovered. Do you understand? You may think a fetus is nothing more than a spoonful of cells. Okay, think that, but the pain is extraordinary. There is pain.”
“Whoever said there wasn’t? Come on, Kris… what do you want? A medal?”
“No, I want you out of here, now.”
“Do you want to talk with a counselor?”
“No, I just want you out.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Oh, yes, you are. It’s only a question of whether you do it now or wait until D.B. tells you to go, which will be a matter of hours.” Up the street a truck stopped, brakes squealing. Michael and Krista fell silent. More city sounds crept into the apartment.
“Okay, Krista. It won’t take me any time to get out of here, forget the whole thing. But for you, it’s
going to take years, maybe a lifetime. You brought this abortion on yourself. You wanted it. You wanted it like some kind of merit badge. You wanted it the way some men want Mount Everest. Or maybe to impress your mother.”
“Or a million-dollar deal?”
He recoiled slightly, still guilty that he had gone into the office instead of staying with her.
“Or a million-dollar deal. This, Krista, was part of your initiation, another step in your spaced-out idea of becoming a woman. Well, let me tell you something: it’s not working. You might be nineteen, but you act like a spoiled seven-year-old, still waiting for her daddy to come home. But at least Helen will be proud of you now. Her daughter wasn’t a victim of circumstance. Her daughter went blithely out and took a life – killed – to assert her own independence. Only now that she has to face the music, she can’t handle it.”
“Don’t talk to me about killing, because if I killed—”
“There is no ‘if’. How does it feel? Or can you not feel the difference between life and death? Between full and empty? You’re only half here ninety-nine percent of the time, holding yourself back like you’re some kind of prize. You better wake up to yourself, lady!”
“Stop it. I want you quickly and quietly out of this apartment, this house, my—”
“Your life,” he finished for her. “Easier said than aborted.” He tossed clothes wildly, randomly, from drawers and closets, into a leather valise. “You know, I did want to marry you once, when you were innocent. I suppose I did think this,” he motioned to the walls, the ceiling, “you, General Energy all of it had a forever feeling. Not magic, just safe. Comfortable. That’s how I picture love – pictured love – safe, comfortable.”
“Well, you were wrong,” she told him, though she had to force the words out.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, “I was wrong.” He closed and locked the suitcase. “Or maybe I was wrong about loving you. But anyone can make a mistake. I am leaving, and not because you are throwing me out. I’m leaving because you, Krista, with your endless self-concern, are like bad stock, going down. So I’m selling up… bailing out.”
“Fine,” she told him. She turned to the door and slipped back the top bolt. The second bolt jammed. She tugged, slammed the knob with the heel of her palm. She felt terrified, as if now she would never escape, never be free from him. “Open this!” she screamed.
“Open it yourself,” he answered. “You let yourself in, you let yourself out.”
Again, she desperately hammered the knob, tried the bolt. Then she stood still and quiet, as if submitting to the door being locked, as if she were prepared to accept the worst and remain there forever.
From behind Michael watched her breathing, the rise and fall of her thin shoulder blades through his shirt. He’d been kidding himself. He still loved her.
He took her by the shoulders, and she leaned submissively into his chest, thinking, Will nothing make him go away? If she told him she did not want the child only because it was his child, would he go away then? Would he leave if he was told it wasn’t the child she didn’t want, it was him? She thought of several lies she could tell. But somehow, as Michael held her in his arms, she knew he would never leave. He was steadfast, loyal, and she would stay there, locked in his arms forever, kept from the past forever. He would never let her retreat, disappear into her once-safe inside.
“Please,” she whispered, turning into his chest, “please let me out. I’m sorry. I’m terribly sorry, but I do not love you.” Then she began to cry, and the huge, gaping, empty hunger she felt in her gut began to gnaw at her.
“Hey,” he said, brushing his lips against her forehead, taking her hair in both his hands, lifting it over her shoulders on both sides. “Nobody said you have to love me. We’re just friends. We’ve always been just friends. You live upstairs, and I live down.”
“No,” she said, “we’ve never even been friends. You know it, and I know it.” She spoke into his chest, into his shirt pocket. “I don’t even know who you are. I just brought you home because you were pretty. You were the prettiest man in the park. And then you became a part of everything, and it was as if you were always, had always, been here, like…”
“Don’t say it, Kris.”
“Like…”
“Don’t, Kris.”
“Like a…”
“Dog?”
“No, a brother.”
He drew in his breath sharply.
“You know, I finally see the whole set-up. Suddenly it’s all very clear to me.” He unlocked the door, opening it wide for her. “I understand the whole abortion, from beginning to end.”
“No, Michael.”
“Yes, Kris. I know now why you took the life of my first child.”
“I didn’t take—”
“Call it what you want. You made the decision. You did away with what would have been my child. And I know why.”
“No,” she said, “you don’t.”
“Very simple, very clear, Krista. All of this, getting rid of the fetus, getting rid of me. I understand. It all makes sense now. It’s because I’m poor.”
“Yes,” she said, hearing his words fall like a tumbler in a lock. “Yes.” And she agreed to the only thing he would accept. “I had an abortion, and I’m asking you to leave because you are poor, come from nowhere, have no family. Think about it. You have nothing to offer me. Absolutely nothing I don’t already have. You live under our roof and work for my grandfather. Why should I let you leech off me any longer?”
“I knew it,” he said, brown eyes turning black and empty.
“Yes,” she said, aware of the pain she was inflicting, “it is because you are poor.”
Chapter Five
Krista locked the door to her apartment behind her. She listened for Michael’s footsteps on the stairs.
“God, please don’t let him follow me,” she whispered.
It had been so simple, telling him it was because he was poor, telling him that lie. In fact, he had practically told himself. She just agreed. The room spun in the twilight, the time of day she liked best, patterned by the shadows of the leaves swaying in the wind and the headlights of the traffic heading home. Krista felt confused. Everything seemed to have a different life, older, not belonging to her. The phone rang, and she let it ring. The painting above the mantle, the loft bed over the sofa, the stereo, the albums, the collection of oversized books. Nothing looked familiar. The animal skin on the floor appeared for the first time as something dead. It was no longer simply a soft rug upon which Krista might curl up in front of a fire, to read a book, to listen to music or to dream.
Everything had another dimension. One she had previously refused to recognize. Krista attempted to divert her fear. Beginnings and ends. Yes, things die. There is a natural arc. People leave and don’t come back. On the teak sideboard there was a triptych of photographs: Charles, Helen and Krista. Father, Mother, Baby. She turned them on their faces. She picked up a tarnished brass bowl, and as if it might help her locate her identity, began to read the old campaign buttons stashed inside: Kennedy for President, Witches Heal, The Goddess Saves. No wiser, she set the bowl back on the lace doily.
In the kitchen she threw water on her face. Helen’s kitchen, she thought to herself, my mother’s kitchen. She noted details as she stood struggling to recall something, something she was sure was important: vitamins, herbs, cookbooks. On the counter lay Helen’s paper, an assignment for a graduate-school course: “Repercussions of the Weaning: Feminists Born After The Feminine Mystique” by Helen Bourne. Krista picked up the short manuscript, flipping through the pages. It had been on the counter the entire time Helen toured, yet it appeared unfamiliar. The paper was about her, about her generation. Who was Helen Bourne? And why would she write a paper on the effects of The Movement? She is my mother. Krista looked through the long windows at the cats stretched out along th
e railing of the deck.
“Christmas, Cosmos, Allegro!” she called out.
A cramp knifed her belly. She doubled over, then started to cry uncontrollably. She heard doors downstairs slam. The only other human life in the brownstone was leaving. Michael, I’m sorry, I’m terribly sorry. Forgive me, please forgive me. Again the cramping seemed to send out malignant tentacles. Her entire circulation seemed to tighten as if intent on strangling her. Krista felt the void inside her like an empty cradle. In anger she shouted at the ceiling fan and to Michael who stood outside hailing a cab.
“You tell me where it came from, and I’ll tell you where it went. Do you hear me, Michael?”
Krista beat her fists on the counter. Sliding her back down the kitchen wall, she squatted and cried. If only I could make it all go away. She acknowledged the physical pain. That, she could understand. But what she could not fathom was the excruciating ache in her heart. A full extension, she kept hearing her dance teacher say. A full extension. Cold and disorienting fear spread through her. Was this how it was going to be for her always? What had she done? She recalled the passage, printed on yellowing paper.
… like a Hoover… same idea… vacuums the walls of the uterus… drawing it up, through and out the tube. Start to finish? Six minutes. May feel a stitch, a slight cramp, nothing different than a bit of premenstrual discomfort. Perhaps some spotting… But all in all, painless.
I must go to the bed. I must get into bed. I need to sleep.
Krista called out to the cats again and again. This time Cosmos heard and followed her into the bedroom, which had once been the nursery. The room was dark, with the shades still drawn from the last night she slept there with Michael. The night I conceived. The satin comforter lay just where she left it, loosely folded at the foot of the bed. The room was chilly with a hint of autumn. Krista felt another sharp cramp and sat on the edge of the bed. She lay down and pulled the blanket up and over her shoulders. Shivering, she watched as Cosmos sat on the dresser, cleaning his fine fur, his head dipping in short regular thrusts. As if nothing has happened.
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