The Courts of Love

by Ellen Gilchrist

  At ten-fifteen the next morning they met at the student health center and asked to be tested for the AIDS virus. They filled out forms and sat in the waiting room reading magazines and were called in and blood was drawn and the nurse told them to call that afternoon for the results. “Sometimes it takes a couple of days if they’re backed up but it’s been slow this week. I’ll tell them it’s for you, Doctor Light. I think you’ll get these back by five.” She smiled a professional smile and Nieman held open the door for Stella and they walked back out into the waiting room and out the door onto the blooming spring campus. “Are you free tomorrow?” he asked.

  “Pretty much. I have some papers to grade.”

  “I was thinking we could drive up Highway One to Mendocino and spend the weekend together. I mean, no matter how the tests come out. I want to talk to you. I want to be with you some more. I don’t know how to say all this.”

  “I would love to go to Mendocino with you.”

  “Will you have dinner with me tonight?”

  “Yes. Yes I will.”

  “I don’t know where you live.”

  “Then you’ll find out, won’t you? Call me at six. If we’re positive, we’ll get drunk. If we’re negative, we’ll, I don’t know.”

  “We’ll be negative. Perhaps all we are supposed to do about that is be grateful. I’ll call then. I’ll call at six.”

  A young technician named Alice Yount put the slides underneath the microscope and watched the fine, free T-cells swim in their sea. She called the health center and made the report and then sent the papers over. It was a good morning. Only one test had come back positive and that was a man who had known it already. Some happiness, Alice was thinking as she took off her apron and washed her hands. Some good news.

  At seven o’clock that night Nieman appeared at Stella’s door. He was wearing a blue shirt he bought in Paris. He was wearing his best silk socks and seersucker pants and he had taken off his watch and ring. I am putting myself in the path of pain and suffering and life, he told himself. I am a Mayan sacrifice. I have seen this movie but I have never played in it. I can’t believe it is this exciting and terrible and irresistible. I want to burn every word I’ve ever written. What did I know?

  Then she was there and they walked into her kitchen and poured glasses of water and sipped them and were shy. They walked around her house looking at the books, the bare stone floors, the clean windows, the stark white walls, the wide white bed.

  It was not silly when it happened and neither of them was afraid. “Nice scar,” he told her later, examining her knee.

  “Bike wreck when I was ten,” she answered. “What do you have to show me?”

  “Navel?” he asked. “Appendix scar? Cut on eyebrow?”

  At two in the morning Nieman went home to pack for the weekend. “I forgot my sleeping pills,” he explained. “There are limits to what the psyche can take. I might keep you up all night.”

  “Go on,” she answered. “We’re pushing the envelope. I’d like to be alone for a few hours. What do you take?”

  “Ambien. Benadryl. Xanax if I travel. If I’m at home I usually just stay awake.”

  “Distressing, all the people who can’t sleep. Do you think it’s the modern world?”

  “No. I think it’s always been that way. Neurotic from the start. That’s how I view our history. Short lived and neurotic. Now we’re long lived and neurotic. I call that progress, any way you look at it.”

  “Me too.”

  At ten the next morning Nieman picked her up in Freddy Harwood’s Jeep Cherokee and they drove out over the Golden Gate Bridge and took the Stinson Beach exit and began the 1,500-foot climb into the coastal hills. At Muir Woods they got out of the car and held hands and looked at the ocean for a long time. Already their bodies were joined at the hip. Already there was nothing that could keep them apart.

  “Where’s Nieman?” Nora Jane was asking. “What did he want the Cherokee for?”

  “I think he’s in love,” Freddy answered. “It’s the damnedest thing you’ve ever seen. He’s trying to keep it a secret.”

  “Who is she?”

  “I don’t know. He wouldn’t even look at me.”

  “He’s getting laid. My God, imagine that.”

  “He had on a brand-new polo shirt.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I am not. May lightning strike me if I am. It still had the creases in it. He hadn’t even washed it.”

  “My folks drove this highway on the bus,” Stella was saying. “I wish they didn’t disavow that so much. They were just kids. Everything is in a state of anarchy, Nieman. Every single thing we see about us. Our universe is a nanosecond, the blink of an eyelash, and yet, we are here and this experience seems vast. Last night, after you left, I fell asleep giggling. I kept seeing us marching into the student health center to be tested. That will be all over the campus by the time we get back. Technically I can’t date you, you know. Since you are a student.”

  “We aren’t dating.” Nieman slowed down. He drove the car to a wide place that overlooked the sea. He turned off the motor and turned to her and took her hands. “I am in love with you. That’s been clear since Friday afternoon at six o’clock. I have waited all my life for you. I want to marry you, or live with you, or do whatever you want to do. I have three hundred and forty-seven thousand dollars in assets and no responsibilities I can’t get rid of in an hour. I will go anywhere you want to go. I will live any life you want to live.”

  “My goodness.”

  “I wrote that down several times this morning. There’s a draft of it in my jacket pocket. You can have it.”

  “Let’s get something to eat first. I can’t get engaged on an empty stomach.”

  “This is real, Stella. This is deadly serious on my part.”

  “I know that. I’m serious too. Don’t you think I know a miracle when one slaps me in the face?” Then Nieman was extremely glad he had borrowed Freddy’s Cherokee, because it had an old-fashioned front seat and Stella slid over next to him and stayed there all the way to Stinson Beach.

  Which is how Tammili and Lydia Harwood finally got to be bridesmaids in a wedding. “I thought it would never happen,” Lydia told her friends. “The last person I thought would give us this window of opportunity was Uncle Nieman. I am wearing pink.”

  “And I am wearing blue,” Tammili would add. “It’s going to be at our beach house. There will be two cakes and lots of petits fours and Jon Ragel from Vogue is going to take the photographs.”

  “Uncle Nieman will never get a Nobel now,” Lydia would sigh. “Dad says Nieman has forgotten all about wanting a Nobel prize for biochemistry.”

  Design

  Gabriela was first in line when the truck from the Salvation Army pulled into the driveway of the orphanage and unloaded the boxes. The older girls tore open the first box and began to sort through the clothes. The nun who was in charge had gone inside to finish a book she was reading.

  Gabriela was only seven years old but even the older girls wouldn’t tangle with her. She had come to the orphanage three months before and quickly established a reputation as a dangerous adversary. She would kick and bite and never back down. Also, she had an ally. An enormous eleven-year-old named Annie who had red hair and was listed as an incorrigible. An incorrigible was the best thing you could be at Santa Ramona del Rio in Potrero. Even the nuns didn’t cross the incorrigibles.

  Gabriela let the older girls open the first two boxes. Then she went up to the third box and tore it open and took the first garment in the pile. At first she thought it was a blanket but when she shook it out she saw it was a cape. A long brown cape of some very soft, very fine material. She threw it over her shoulders and walked off down the long covered walkway to her room. She took the cape into the room and laid it across the bed. Something about it appealed to her. It reminded her of a lighter, warmer world. Not the house with many children where the food was nasty. Not the thin man with the ugly no
se. Not the time before that in the truck. Someplace that was warm and sunny, where women with soft bosoms were laughing in the sun. Gabriela lay down upon the cape and wrapped the edges around her arms and fell asleep. It was Saturday morning. There was nothing she had to do until noon, when the bells would ring to call her in to lunch.

  “They want a little girl. Someone who needs a family,” the social worker from Oklahoma was saying on the phone to Sister Maria Rebecca. “They lost their child in an accident. They’re fine people. Good, stable, attractive people. They speak Spanish, although the child would need some English to start school. Any age. Their child was four. They told me in Los Angeles you had the ones no one else will take.”

  “We have seventy girls,” Sister Maria Rebecca answered. “Perhaps they would like to come and see them.”

  “They want a child who needs them. Someone you can’t place elsewhere. Anyone in Oklahoma City will vouch for them. They’re devout. There wouldn’t be a problem with that.”

  “I might know the child for them,” Sister Maria Rebecca said. “Yes, there is one I was worrying about this morning. She bit the last two people who tried to keep her.”

  “I know this couple personally. She’s capable and kind. They could come any time.”

  “They have to understand we can’t guarantee adoption. We don’t know where she came from. She’s been in the system two years since she was abandoned in San Diego. She’s a pretty little thing, healthy and strong. Yes, they should come and meet her. We call her Gabriela.”

  “I’m sure they’ll come soon. They’re determined about this. They’re not looking for a child to save them, you know, they just want to be of use.”

  “Send them on. I will look forward to talking to them.”

  That was Saturday morning. On Saturday afternoon, the social worker, whose name was Denise, got into her car and drove over to Allen and Jennifer Williams’s house and got out and walked up the path to the door. Jennifer was on her knees by a bed of flowers. She got up when she saw Denise and walked toward her. She pulled off a yellow glove and used the free hand to shove her hair out of her face. She was a beautiful woman. Even in sweat pants and an old shirt. Even with grief written on her face as if forever. “What’s happened?” she asked. “Could you find out anything?”

  “There’s a place in California that has children no one wants. The sister who runs it said there’s a child you can meet. A little girl. Are you sure you want to do this, Jennifer?”

  “Yes. I have to be of use in some simple, clear way. Just to feed and dress a child. Keep it safe. Nothing more complicated than that.”

  She pulled off the second glove and put them in the pocket of the pants. “Come inside. Tell us what you know.”

  They found Allen Williams in the kitchen. There were untouched newspapers on a table. He was sitting beside them looking out the window. It was very quiet in the house. Everything was in its place. No disorder anywhere. Not a sound.

  “I should have called,” Denise said. “But I wanted to see your faces. There’s a little girl in California you can meet. This is going to be expensive, Allen. Are you sure you’re up for this?”

  “There’s plenty of money.” Allen got up and held out a chair for her. “We can go whenever you want us to go.”

  “How about Monday?”

  “Monday’s fine. The office doesn’t care. They’ll do anything to help.”

  “It could be a wild goose chase. It’s a home for girls they don’t know what to do with. They don’t have records for some of them. And it wouldn’t be a final adoption. Maybe couldn’t ever be one. You’d just be volunteering to be out-of-state foster parents. I don’t think there’s a chance of losing one of these children once you have one, though. It’s never happened. I researched this for days, Allen. Several people I trust told me about this place. The child would be healthy and free of disease. That’s about all I could guarantee.”

  “We’ll go.” Jennifer came around and sat beside Denise. “Thank you for this. For all this trouble. You don’t know what it means, to have this hope.”

  “You may not thank me a month from now.”

  “We’re going to do this,” Allen said. “And we’re going to see it through. If we bring a child up here we’ll keep her no matter what. My brother’s a child psychiatrist. Our parents know.”

  “Allen said if all else failed he’d teach the child to ride,” Jennifer said. “He says we’ll move to the country if we have to and be cowboys.”

  “Okay.” Denise opened her briefcase and got out a sheet of paper. “Get the airlines on the phone. Here’s where we’re going. I’ll go with you if you want.”

  “We can do it.” Allen took the paper from her and began to dial the phone. “If we need you, we’ll call and you can come out later.”

  Jennifer put her hand on Denise’s shoulder. The refrigerator began to hum. A child’s drawing on the refrigerator door moved in the breeze from the air-conditioning vent. It was a drawing of a house. There was a setting sun. A moon, some stars, a cloud. In a corner, rain was falling on a tree. Adelaide had brought it home from the day-care center the day before she died.

  After Denise left Allen and Jennifer went for a long walk to talk things over. “If we go and meet this child and we don’t like her, what do we do then? Will she know we came to look her over? What are we doing, Allen? Do we know?”

  “I thought we were going to like any child they gave us. That’s what we said we’d do.”

  “I meant it. As long as the child isn’t mean. I don’t want someone who’s mean. Or mentally handicapped. I couldn’t handle that. Well, I couldn’t.”

  “We’re going to see what happens. I’m willing to take a chance on that, on anything. I want to fill our lives with life again, Jennifer. Remember when Mother said we should get some dogs. Can you imagine us filling this hole with dogs? Not that I don’t like dogs. Christ.” They had stopped on a corner by a building project, a huge house on a small corner lot. “Look at that,” he continued. “Maybe we’ll be like that. They didn’t know what they were doing. They just started building and now they have this monstrosity on their hands. We could be like that. We could end up with some terrible problem we can’t handle. But I have one now. Our house is so empty and quiet. We’ve gotten quiet. We have to fight back if we’re going to live.”

  She was beginning to cry and he reached out and pulled her into his arms.

  “We can’t replace her,” Jennifer said.

  “We aren’t trying to. We’re going back into life. Dickie’s a child psychiatrist, for God’s sake. You used to be a teacher. I used to barrel race. Do you think there’s a reasonably healthy child on the planet we can’t save?”

  “We’ll find out.” She held on to her husband for dear life, right out on the street at six o’clock in the afternoon. For the first time in months she felt desire, real desire, and she was going home and do something about it.

  At three that morning she woke and went into the kitchen and took the drawing off the refrigerator and put it in her desk.

  “So what did you do then?” Gabriela was asking. She and her friend Annie were sitting out in the yard talking. It was late in the day and they were trying to find something to do until supper. There wasn’t much to do, but you could always sit on the boards by the fence and talk about things.

  “I kicked him in the balls and ran for it. What do you think I did? I’ve told you about this before. Then he gets up and starts chasing me but he can’t catch me. I used to be so fast I could outrun everyone. I’ll probably get all soft and fat living with a bunch of girls. There’s nobody in this place who could whip me.”

  “I know there’s not, but Sister Felicia might hit you if you don’t do your homework. She might not have been kidding about that. I heard she beat the shit out of some girls.”

  “I never saw her do that.”

  “Well, how long have you been here?”

  “Two months before you came. I can’t remember wh
at month it was. I was glad to get here, I can tell you that. I was about worn out by the time they took me out of Doris’s place. She was on the scam. She had six kids and she didn’t give any of us a thing. I didn’t have a pair of shoes that fit.”

  “Don’t talk about it. I don’t like to think they were mean to you.”

  “It was okay. I’m glad it happened or I wouldn’t have met you.” Annie put her hand on Gabriela’s black curls and patted them down. Gabriela was the best kid she had ever had for a roommate and gave her half her food. Anything with sugar in it, Gabriela saved half of it for her. “My mother was fat,” she added. “I guess I’ll have to get fat too.”

  “You might not.” Gabriela put her hand on top of Annie’s hand and left it there. “You look great, Annie. You’re the strongest-looking girl I’ve ever seen.”

  “Let’s go in.” Annie squeezed the small hand. “Let’s go see what they have for dinner.”

  On Monday Jennifer and Allen Williams boarded a plane and flew to San Diego. They rented a car and drove to Potrero and found the orphanage. It was a stucco and brick building that had been a school. It sat on a flat brown patch of land that turned to mud when it rained and a dust bowl when it was dry. The only redeeming architectural feature of the place was the covered walkway that led from the main building to the wooden dormitory.

  Jennifer was wearing a batik skirt and a soft pink blouse. She had put on makeup very carefully. “We shouldn’t look sad,” she said to Allen. “We have to try not to look sad.”

  “We are sad,” he answered. “But maybe we won’t always be.” It was one of the things he had begun saying. He didn’t believe it yet but he kept saying it as though to trick it into being so. In many ways Allen was more shaken than his wife by what had happened. He was the one who had dropped their child off at the day-care center. He had identified the body. He didn’t care what happened now. If Jennifer wanted a child, he had made up his mind to follow her and do what she wanted. At least she had an idea. Allen had run out of ideas. The one thing he believed was that he would sleep again. He no longer believed in God but he believed in the future more than Jennifer did. She had an idea and she was willing to follow wherever it led, but he believed that things would get better.