“Well, they have husbands who cheer them on and co-workers who smile and say how wonderful they look and it’s all a lot easier with the whole world congratulating you. When you’re pregnant and you have to hide it, it’s not the same.”
“I know. And I am just getting fatter and more ugly every day. And everyone is saying, ‘What’s wrong with you? Why do you look so bad?’ My God, I am so glad this is ending today.” She clutched the door handle and looked out the window.
The clinic was inland, to the east, on a strip of asphalt that looked like an airplane runway with a couple of rectangles of grass laid out around it. We walked up some stairs and through a linoleum hallway to a brown door marked 210, the number Cornelia had written on the slip of paper in the side pocket of her bag. A pleasant-looking woman behind a window had her fill out a form and pay three hundred dollars with a check and forty dollars in cash.
“Why the cash?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Cornelia shrugged, leading us into the waiting room. “This is what they told me on the telephone. ‘You can pay the three hundred any way you want, but we must have this forty dollars in cash.’” She swept a look at the other people in the room and then sat down on a red vinyl chair with metal legs. “Do you want to wait or go and come back later?” She tugged at a magazine from the pile on a nearby table.
“I took the day off,” I said. “I’ll do whatever you want. Shall I wait for a little while and then maybe take a walk or something?”
“Okay.” Cornelia leaned back and closed her eyes. The magazine slid to her knees. She had on her usual pink tights, white canvas sneakers and a dark-gray sweatshirt with a big metal zipper.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She opened her eyes and closed them again. “I think I will live.”
I sat back in my chair. Around us were the other women, some with worried boyfriends, every one of them subdued and tense, poking through magazines, waiting, their faces quiet and drawn. More women, some with girlfriends, filed into the room. There were fewer and fewer corners to squeeze into, and now they wedged themselves next to faces and bodies they didn’t know, sinking behind the large, protective copies of Seventeen and Mademoiselle. One girl had her parents with her. The father stared impassively at the opposite wall and the mother sat on the edge of her plastic chair, a hand pressed tightly to the handbag on her knees, wedding band glinting against yellow-pale skin and the blue threading of veins underneath it. The daughter, skinny and teen-aged, a shaggy haircut gracing her limp shoulders, fixed her eyes on the floor. No one spoke.
A woman in black stretch pants called names from time to time and one by one the women who waited got up and followed her. She smiled very brightly and most of them didn’t respond.
Cornelia’s eyes remained shut. The magazine rested on her pink knees. I picked it up and set it on the floor. She blinked and struggled to sit up. She looked at the clock on the wall. “I am hungry,” she said, looking at her watch.
“Did you eat?” I asked.
“Not much. They said half your normal breakfast. I had half a toast.”
“Well, they’ll probably call you soon.”
It was an hour before the lady in the stretch pants called Cornelia’s name. She grabbed her bag and flung herself after the black legs, casting me a frightened glance. I smiled with a thumbs-up.
Ten minutes later she returned. She shoved her bag under the chair. “It was only a u-rine test.” She pronounced it youreen. “And they were taking blood. Next I am going for counseling. Can you believe this?” She plopped down on the red vinyl which hissed as air escaped from its seams.
“What do you mean, counseling?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Cornelia exasperatedly. “They are telling you everything about this abortion, how it is going to feel and everything. And do you really want to have it.” She crossed her legs and arms and leaned back again, closing her eyes. “I do not want all these talks. I just want this to be finished.”
Half an hour later the stretch-pants lady called her name again.
“Oh-h-h,” said Cornelia, standing up and dragging her bag. I watched them go through the metal door at the far end of the waiting room. The stretch-pants lady closed it behind them. I picked up a copy of Good Housekeeping.
This time she didn’t come back. An hour later, a nurse opened the wooden door and signaled to me. I stood up and crossed the room. She gave me a flashy white smile. “Your friend wants you to come into the recovery room.”
The recovery room was an L-shaped affair with large recliners and an industrial-grade speckled mauve rug. Cornelia lay on a couch at the far end, next to an orange-juice cooler. Her feet were propped on cushions and she was covered with an afghan.
“Is she okay?” I whispered to the nurse.
“Oh, she had a little blackout,” said the nurse cheerfully. “Nothing major, just a little fainting spell. She’s feeling better now.”
“You’re kidding!” I exclaimed.
“Nothing to worry about,” said the nurse, pulling Cornelia’s afghan tighter around her toes. “Her blood pressure dipped a little, but she’s doing fine now.”
Cornelia turned her face to me and rolled her eyes. “Here’s your friend,” said the nurse. “You’ll feel better in a few minutes and then she’ll take you home.”
“How was it?” I asked Cornelia as the nurse busied off.
“Terrible.” Cornelia reached for a paper cup of orange juice on the floor by her bag and sighed. “This doctor was just terrible. I mean, he was okay—he did the abortion and everything, but he was terrible in the questions he was asking.” She sat up and drank. “He said to me, ‘How are you today, Cornie?’ and I said, Nobody is calling me Cornie. This is not a compliment. And then he laughed and continued with stupid jokes.” She lay back on the couch. “And this counseling was so stupid. At least ten times they were asking me, ‘Are you sure you want this abortion?’ and every time I said yes, why do you think I am here? And then when it is all happening, this doctor asked me again, with this pump that sounds like the airport, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ and I said, my God, yes, why do you think I am here?”
“Shhh, take it easy,” I said.
Cornelia paid no attention. She was yammering away. “And then these rods were hurting like hell. Seven rods they are using, to open you, and this seventh rod is just so terrible, I cannot tell you. I could not even think, the pain was so bad. And then after, they tell you, well, you can stay here for three minutes—after three minutes we need this room for the next person. So stand up and put on your clothes and go to the other room.”
“Well, you did it,” I said.
She nodded and stared at the ceiling. “Ya, thank God for that. I will never do this again.”
She drank another cup of orange juice and then stood up slowly. I carried her bag for her. The nurse saw us as we rose. “Do you want to use the restroom to check on your bleeding?” she asked Cornelia brightly.
Cornelia shrugged. “Why not.” She reached into the bag I was carrying and pulled out a couple of sanitary pads. I waited while she went in the bathroom and then I heard the toilet flush. She came out. “There is not too much,” she said to the nurse.
“Half the pad? The whole pad?” asked the nurse.
“Half,” said Cornelia.
“Wonderful,” said the nurse. “You’re doing just fine.”
“I want some chicken,” said Cornelia when we got out into the sunlight. “Chicken or fish. Can we stop somewhere?”
“Wherever you like,” I answered, unlocking the car.
“Any place with fast food,” said Cornelia. “I know they will have chicken or fish.”
She made me drive into a McDonalds. I watched her wolf an order of greasy chicken with her fingers, the paper carton folding as she dug into it. Her eyes were big and haggard, the pupils wide and black in the thin line of blue that ringed them. “I do not understand why I am doing this,” she said. “I ju
st have to eat some chicken. They said at the clinic I should have a big lunch with protein.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Take your time. Eat as much as you like.”
Cornelia pressed her fingertips on the crumbs in the carton and transferred them to her mouth. “I figured out this forty dollars cash was for the blood and u-reen tests. So if you change your mind that you don’t want the abortion, they have your money for the tests which they already did. Then they can give you back the check for the rest.”
“Oh,” I said. “That makes sense.”
I drove her home to the rangy wooden house under its roof of eucalyptus leaves. She pulled her feet onto the couch and spread the blanket over them. I brought her a mug of tea and set it on the floor by the couch. “There,” I said. “Do you want me to stay?”
She reached for her glasses and the TV remote. “I think I will just sleep for a while.” Her face was pale and dark wells had pooled around her eyes. “Cornelia,” I said suddenly. I wondered how to ask. Her pupils watched me, lacquer-black and sharp. There had been someone, a real person, not a Tom or Bob. And she had opted not to talk. I stopped.
“Call me if you need me,” I said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Laws
Dear Diary: Yesterday Cornelia fell down the stairs and hemorrhaged and had to go to the hospital. I really can’t believe the luck some people have. Yet on the other hand I think we make our own luck: we write the script to call for tragedy, happiness and twists of fate. The emergency room told her she would be okay and to take it very, very easy for the next few days. And I sit here thinking, that’s only the next few days, what will she do after that?
Kevin is motivated by fear. At the moment, anyway. His motivations of lust and greed are riding in the back seat, and up in the front of the car, next to Kevin in his sunglasses with the neon-pink shoelace, is the navigator, Fear, his ram-face and curled horns clacking on the windshield as he turns about slowly, pointing his hoof, telling Kevin where to go. “Leslie, I haven’t had any time to think about our talk. I’ve had work to worry about. We have these new accounts and I have to train all the new reps over the next few weeks. I’m going to be gone a lot this month, I’ll try to call you in between trips if I get a chance, but don’t hold me to it.”
Don’t hold me to it. Boy oh boy. As if I would ever make that mistake. I remembered the letter I had gotten from Judge Shutter, whose pardon I had begged for my Texas citation. Dear Ms. Kovalsky, he wrote, Thank you for your letter of January 24. While I can appreciate your feelings, you must realize that I do not make the laws.
I do not make the laws. I can appreciate your feelings, but I do not make the laws. The laws were: business first, business-related things second, feelings third. Ms. Leslie Kovalsky, O trespasser in this state, I do not make the laws. The lawsa Texas say you need to use directionals whin changing lanes. It don’t matter how many lanes there are or how many cars there are; you need to use directionals whin changing lanes. Because you didn’t, Ms. Leslie Kovalsky, by the lawsa Texas you’ll be fined the sum of Thirty Dollars. But don’t hold me accountable; I do not make the laws.
Don’t hold me to it, Leslie. A scorpion cannot help stinging people.
Dear Diary: A scorpion cannot help stinging people. I walk the beach in search of quiet and calm, elements which, though not the words I want to hear, still pacify and seal. In my twenty-ninth year, I saw that Real is but the stream I go a-fishing in. Real is never quite here, but more a toy we try to fish for, a gold medallion winking underwater, distortions pulling it closer, farther, tilting it away. Here, Leslie, come get me, take a dive; this time it’s gonna be real. And each time, dear Diary, it was water, only water, in the sea.
I wrote that down on a piece of paper torn from a shopping bag and took it to the Unicorn.
“For Pete’s sake,” he snorted, “I want to see you get real.”
“What are you talking about?” I had my fists in my pockets, their favorite haunt, and I watched him make a cylinder out of my shopping bag.
“Well, Leslie, real is … not jaded, not deluded—it’s able, alert and calm. That’s what Love Doctoring is about. That’s what I hope to accomplish. That’s how I hope to leave you. This stuff about scorpions is all well and true, but it’s about being stuck, wedged—jammed like an old bookmark in a never-read book and stuck way up on some shelf. And maybe some day, years later, a little thirteen-year-old girl will poke around her uncle’s library, stand on one of those sliding ladders and pull down this book, and there will be Leslie Kovalsky, wedged among the pages, saying, ‘A scorpion can’t help stinging people, you know.’”
“Okay,” I said. “So I sound like an old lady. Is that your fault or mine?”
“Time driveth onward fast, and in a little while our lips are dumb. Let us alone. What is it that will last? All things are taken from us, and become portions and parcels of the dreadful past.”
“Wow,” I said, “What was that?”
“The Lotos-Eaters. Tennyson. They ate the lotos flower to forget.”
“Well, I don’t want to forget,” I said. “I want to remember.”
The Unicorn shrugged. “If you say so.”
“Are you telling me I should forget?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Did I say that?”
“I thought that’s what you just said.”
“Uh-uh.” He shook his head.
I could feel him leaving. He was pushing me back. Don’t come any closer, Leslita, I have given you my gift and now I have to leave. Don’t ask me why. It is part of my law. Don’t hold me accountable; I do not make the law. The horn was glinting, piercing the light, polished and phosphorescent as it glittered, signaling for all to make way. The Unicorn was drawing up his front legs, priming for the final bow, the fixing of the horn in the ground, the pristine moment of balance, and the ultimate springing away. To another part of the state, another haunt, another strip of the Golden Coast. Laguna, San Mateo, Santa Barbara. Who knew. It had been a thin winter.
“Uh-uh,” he repeated, bringing me back to the present. “I never said you should forget.”
I stared out at the ocean. Our filter, the giant sieve that purged our stabbing, embryonic thoughts of their misdirection, correcting, retracking, setting the questions straight. The tide was very low. In sections of the beach, the shallow wash of water had laid bare vast trickles of rock, elongated and flat, like blue-green skeletal fingers bared from under the skin. See me, see me, called the ocean, rumbling from far away, the waves that boomed its message rolling with love. See me, Leslie Kovalsky, see my rock bottom.
It was hard for me to look. It had always been easier to wonder what lay under the moving, rolling water—and now I knew. Fingers of rock, blue-veined and cold; flat, hard clothing on the crust of the earth. See me, Leslie Kovalsky, look at my blue.
Rock bottom, rock bottom, violet and blue.
“You’re mad because you’re leaving,” I said to the Unicorn. “You have a hard time saying goodbye.”
His eyes widened as he turned to me. The centers were bright and round, like solid pennies, first hard and flat, and then less hard, and less hard, and finally the pennies melted into pools of copper. He grinned abruptly. “I guess you’re right.”
Then he turned back to the water and was quiet for a long time. I waited with him, watching the ocean, the waves working like tongues far away from the shore in the recesses of a blue, wide-open mouth. A language neither of us could bring ourselves to speak. “‘Oh, at home had I but stayed, ‘prenticed to my father’s trade, had I stuck to plane and adze, I had not been lost, my lads.’ A.E. Housman,” said the Unicorn, as if he knew I would ask.
“A poem about you?” I watched, again, the side of his face.
“The Carpenter’s Son. In a way it comes close.”
“But you won’t tell me what way.”
He turned. The grin was honest, self-conscious and contrite. “The tireless heart within the little lady
—” He lifted his hand to me.
“What’s that?” I asked, taking it.
“The best. John Crowe Ransom. Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter.” He held my hand in a long and loving shake. His fingers were warm and dry.
“She was someone just like me, you said.”
He smiled. “Exactly like you, Leslita. It is no wonder her brown study astonishes us all.”
“Oh, no,” I said, embarrassed. “You’re too nice.” Our handshake was dissolving. Slowly, I put my hand in my pocket. The Unicorn laid his on his knee. I took a deep breath. “I have really loved your poems,” I said.
“Look with me for a minute at the ocean,” said the Unicorn. I stood very still. The rock bottom glimmered as the tide kissed it gently, appearing, beckoning, and hiding away. “A poem should be … silent as the sleeve-worn stone of casement ledges where the moss has grown—A poem should be wordless as the flight of birds. A poem should be motionless in time … as the moon climbs. A poem should be equal to: not true. For love … the leaning grasses and the two lights above the sea—A poem should not mean, but be.”
The tidepools swirled gently in the fingers of the rock. Beyond the rock, the language of the water moved … swelling, giving, falling back. Over and over the song played and, streaming in its rhythm, a dozen pelicans in formation glided over the sheen. “Archibald MacLeish,” said the Unicorn quietly, knowing that I would want to know.
All things change, my mother used to say. You may get used to something, Leslie, but in the end, it only changes. All it can do is change. I did not believe her, as a little girl. I watched her smoothing bedsheets with an iron that hissed, shaking her head as all her strength went into the steam. That’s the way it is, the way the cookie crumbles; don’t hold me accountable, I wasn’t the baker.
I appreciate your feelings, Ms. Leslie Kovalsky, you who have decided we should re-write all the laws. You may have feelings, Ms. Kovalsky, and you may have taken risks, but the lawsa Texas say you gotta pay up all the same. Same as her, same as him, same as me. Step by step, my feet plowed forward in the sand. I was heading home. Home was where I could close the doors on the lawsa the game, stalling the formula, stopping the hurricane from stopping me. Sorry, Ms. Kovalsky, we have a warrant for your arrest. The charges? Expectations. You were advised in the beginning to take those away. We do apologize, Ms. Kovalsky, but we do not make the laws. We appreciate your feelings, but the laws are the laws.
The Shadow Man Page 28