Range of Light (11 page)

“I'm a student.”

Dacia looked skeptical. Amused.

“College student.”

“Oh.” She lost interest, glancing out the window at evening lights.

I followed her glance.

“I am not a loose woman,” she declared. “I would like to marry. But this man not ready. You know.”

“I know,” I said.

“Your family not Catholic?”

“My mother, yes,” I said uncomfortably, wanting to disconnect from this woman and not knowing how. Stealthily I retreated to my bed.

“But not Italian.”

“French Canadian.”

“Italians don't do abortion. I know this is a sin. I know God, he will punish me.”

I pretended my bed was another room. Pulling covers around me, I picked up my history book. Dacia didn't notice as she continued to describe her difficult family and the priest at her church and how the women at work would find out and …

The blood tests provided interruption. I turned on the TV news. Da Nang. Newark. Khe San. (I was beginning to have doubts about the war: all this devastation. Maybe Adele was right; maybe Tom was wrong. But Tom didn't have a choice. He had to go. Had to believe. So did I, if I loved him.) Eugene McCarthy. Hanoi. Football salaries. Dacia continued, her voice ringing over the television, about being kicked out of her family, about burning in hell.

Excusing myself to take a walk, I found the hospital buzzing. Cheerful in a way I hadn't noticed during my morose, isolated first five hours. Each room contained two or four women sitting in beds, eating Jell-O, watching TV, knitting, chatting. I had a surreal vision of my entire dorm being transferred here: all the girls suddenly pregnant from the breakfast cereal. I paced the entire corridor twice before turning into our room. Dacia waved enthusiastically.

“Oh, I forgot something.” I swiveled and walked out. Staring at the pay phone near the nurses' station, I wondered how you called Edinburgh. Dad had called Norway twice that I could remember. Once after the death of each parent. The hospital lounge was a brightly decorated, airy room.

Four women in bathrobes sat talking, while a fifth woman nursed something that resembled a skinless rabbit. Taken aback by my hostility to the newborn, I forced myself to smile as I walked into the lounge. Two women nodded to me as the one holding the baby talked about nursery furniture. I checked my watch. 8:00 P.M. I had another forty-eight hours in this bin.

“When did you deliver?” asked the freckled woman with glasses.

Deciding to let them learn what they wanted to learn, I simply answered, “I haven't.”

“False labor?” asked the nursing woman kindly.

I pretended not to hear, as if I were listening to the other women's conversation. Clearly this wouldn't do. I had lost my nerve and would have to leave. I leaned against the couch for support. “No.”

The freckled woman spoke to my stomach. “Then why are you here?”

“For an abortion,” I said, interested that I felt no embarrassment, “for a saline injection.”

“Oh.” The nursing mother blinked as she looked at her baby.

The oldest woman invited me to sit. “Motherhood should be a choice,” she said to me, addressing the others. “Children should be wanted.”

The tension was palpable. One woman cradled her stomach. Two others looked away as if they might catch leprosy from me.

Stupidly, I stood by the pink and blue couch trying to devise a graceful good-bye.

“Then why did they put you
here
?”
blurted the freckled woman timorously.

At the door now, I replied, “Where would you like them to do it—on a kitchen table?” Flushed, I walked from the cozy lounge. Adele, where are you, Adele, old friend?

Dacia was delighted
to see
me. I resigned myself to listening and reassuring her conscience with the occasional murmur. Lights out at 10:00 P.M. Sleep took a while.

Then, out of nowhere, in the hospital's semidarkness: “Are you scared?”

Dacia's voice? My own? Adele's?

Because I couldn't tell, I responded softly, “Yes.”

They woke me at 5:0
0
A.M
. to take blood. Then at 7:00 to serve a liquid breakfast. Since my procedure wasn't scheduled until 10:30, I took out Mr. Hofstadter and read for my makeup exam. Dacia passed time praying her rosary until she was wheeled downstairs. Once she returned, she spent hours and hours sleeping, for which I was tempted to say a prayer of thanks to the B.V.M. After my saline injection, the rest of the day became a blur of waiting, fretting, reading about American political reform and, growing bored with that, scrutinizing tattered hospital copies of
Glamour
to determine whether the girls really looked better after their makeovers. I watched a John Wayne movie and walked up and down the hallway until I got rude stares from the nurses. I avoided the lounge. Cramps came early the next morning. Contractions. And I expelled the fetus before dawn. I didn't remember being wheeled back into the room. I did remember the nurse's sympathetic face when she woke me.

“All over?” I asked groggily.

“All over,” she said with Soviet robustness. “The tissue was removed hours ago. You didn't have any complications.”

She was right, I thought woozily, I had never been a complicated person. A simple procedure. No more fetus. “Tissue.” I was half-grateful for the anatomical diplomacy of her language. But a fury was building in my chest. And my heart constricted with grief. No more traces of Tom in my body. Overcome now, I wept for the baby we wouldn't have. Tears streamed onto the fresh sheet, bruises on a white petal.

“Happens sometimes,” the nurse whispered. “Now that your body's back, it's safe to cry.”

I didn't want a baby. Couldn't afford one. Didn't have time to take care of a child. Still, I felt cleft in two. Would they tell me whether it had been a girl or a boy? No. I didn't want to know. Must have been a boy. How would I cope if it had been a daughter?

The nurse went on calmly, “Let me insert this new antibiotic for the intravenous.”

I noticed the plastic tubing in my arm. “What?”

“Don't worry. Salines always get antibiotics to prevent infection. We're using an IV because we didn't want to take any chances with your heart murmur.”

What had my heart murmured? Who had heard?

She fiddled with the contraption almost tenderly.

I should tell Tom. The baby, the tissue, had been half him. But it had been my body. If I didn't feel the need to tell him before, why now? Why was I experiencing all these qualms after the fact? Why couldn't I leave myself alone? Because I had made myself alone.

The nurse reached into her tray of pills. “Look at that face, flooded!” She shook her head with a kindness I resented. “Valium time, I'd say, send you right back to sleep for a while.”

At first I didn't want the pill. I pictured dazed Mrs. Ward. Out the corner of my eye, I noticed Dacia perched in bed, anticipating my return. And I succumbed.

Later, much later,
I felt
myself rousing from sleep. No more fetus. No more strands of Tom. No more worries. Now
darkness shaded the window. Dacia's dinner tray was scattered with half-empty dishes. My eyes closed again, not quickly enough.

“The lady down the hall, she said that maybe we have no more babies after this.”

“What?” My voice was groggy from the drugs.

“We are sterile now? No more babies?”

Maddeningly encumbered by the IV, I leaned over with care. “Don't listen to those old wives' tales.” I could hear the anger racing to my throat. “You had, we had, abortions, not sterilizations. You'll have your family. Don't worry.”

“You sure?”

“As sure as I can be of anything.”

Certainty had become elusive lately. I had been so much more sure—of everything—a couple of years ago, a couple of months ago. Lying on the bed now, attached to this plastic tube, I thought about how freedom came in different degrees. Maybe I'd read too much American history, for before I'd always thought of freedom as an absolute. In the land of the free, you determined your life. But it wasn't like that. You only got to choose among certain variables. Pregnancy or abortion, for instance. If I truly had choices, I'd have chosen not to be pregnant. In fact, that's what I thought I'd chosen when I got the IUD. I'd have chosen that Tom not be sent to Vietnam. It's not as if I woke up one day and said, I choose to have an abortion, like I want to take a vacation in Nova Scotia. Or even like, I want to get pregnant. As close as I could tell, I had a choice for or against my own survival. A choice I'd be compelled to make in different ways throughout my life. What do you think, Adele? Knowing I couldn't create the variables, I could only choose among them, lifted a burden. It also made life slightly less attractive and slightly more scary.

“You know, Katherine.”

I noticed I was developing an irrational fondness for Dacia.

“We are young and healthy.”

“Yes,” I said, encouraging both of us.

She continued pensively, “I was lucky to get you as my roommate. Very lucky.”

“Lucky. We
are
lucky, that's the way to see it.” I lay back again, trying to locate sleep. Instead, I wondered where Tom was, how he was. I worried Dacia might be right about us being sterile. It happened sometimes. I worried about how I was going to pay for this antiseptic resort. I had the feeling my academic life had abruptly ended. I'd never keep up with the dorm, tuition and books and these damn medical bills. It was so unfair. But what was fair? Dacia working ten hours a day in a sweatshop? Lucky. Dad always told me I never appreciated how lucky I was.

Chapter Twelve

Adele

Wednesday Morning / Mono Pass

IN A FEW HOURS
,
this clear, blue day would burn blistering hot. As Kath drove us east from the campground toward Tioga Pass, I fantasized about the place during winter, when snowy roads were impassable: the longer night, the whiteness, the cold. It saddened me to think this was a land I would only know in summer, that I was a temporary visitor here, another tourist with illusions, and I was shivering although the temperature was sixty going on eighty degrees. Kath had found a parking spot in the shade.

Breathing in the sequoias' sweet-sour scent, I turned away from the road, toward the shady trailhead, and pretended not to notice the glinting line of chrome vehicles to my right and left. Kath put her thumb against her forefinger, making a spyglass, creating a view that blocked everything except—I guessed—the branches at the beginning of our path.

Her approach to parking was scientific. She seemed to be calculating solar movement and tree height. This exercise brought back her maddeningly precise questions in school and the irritated glares from teachers. Later today, enjoying a comfortable ride up to Saddlebag Lake in our cool car, we would benefit from Kath's perfectionism. Glancing at the metallic blue Bronco parked in full sun, smack next to the trailhead, I felt kinship with the impetuous driver. In the heat of midday, he'd no doubt suffer a sweltering departure.

“Gorgeous morning.” I aimed for a light voice to disguise or dissolve the tension from last night. How could Kath blame me for going away to college? Still blame me! I knew her well enough not to deal with this head-on, but to let the knots appear—and unravel—in time.

“Beautiful day.” Kath was concentrating on our fanny pack, placing an orange at the bottom with the celery and carrots in order not to smash the bread, cheese and avocado. She tucked our ration of bittersweet chocolate toward the outside so it wouldn't melt against her body.

Lou had bought nonchemical sunscreen at the Harvard Coop, and now I lathered the wet, white substance over my face, neck and arms. I handed the red and blue tube to Kath, who wrinkled her nose.

“Smells like coconut and pineapple.”

I laughed.

“I don't fancy myself a fruit salad.”

I insisted the tube on my friend.

“Maybe I'll go natural today,” Kath grumbled. “I hate covering myself—you know, with umbrellas, shower caps, swimming goggles. Makes me feel disconnected somehow.”

Fascinating remark from someone who was so accomplished at hiding major biographical details: her job, her love life, the last twenty years.

I said, “Better sticky cream than melanoma.” I could hear Father and Lou saying this. “Better fruit salad than chemotherapy,” I continued, invoking Nancy.

Kath gave in.

We attached ourselves to our frivolous life-support systems: Kath wearing the fanny pack and me carrying the canteen. Within twenty yards of the trailhead, the engine noise and exhaust fumes had vanished. We were floating in a bright yellow meadow surrounded by mountains.

As I tiptoed across the small stream, my spirits lifted. Each day in the High Country was, in some sense, a new start, strenuous enough and lasting long enough in the late summer sun to make you forget the day before. I regretted getting so angry at Kath, but there didn't seem to be any point in fretting, for she was cheerful this morning, too, as reluctant as I, perhaps, to continue talking about our estrangement. What a melodramatic word. Try
interlude, intermission, break
…

The words afforded refreshing, temporary shadow, a grace note for the journey ahead. We were alone, in the forest. The blue Bronco driver was probably miles ahead. Judging from the multiple footprints, he had along one or two of his kids.

One of my favorite childhood expeditions was taking the bus to downtown Oakland with Kath. We never did much except window-shop and drink Cokes at Newberrys, and I loved it when Kath agreed to visit her mother, who worked at Capwell's purse department. Mrs. Peterson was always delighted to see us. Of course she took care of her customers first, but when we were alone, she would show us the new stock of wallets and bags. She told us to guess what was made from pigs' leather and what from calves' leather. Was this why Kath had become a vegetarian? I loved the oily smells and the satiny soft textures. Although Mrs. Peterson was constantly busy—either working at Capwell's or cooking or cleaning at home—she always made time for us. She asked about the day at school, told us jokes, argued politics. Actually, she was the one who had interested Kath in the JFK campaign, and Kath, in turn, had enlisted me to hand out leaflets and wear election buttons to school. I had to take off the propaganda before going home because my parents were set against a Papist in the White House. But they didn't seem to worry about what I thought. Unlike Kath's mother, they didn't ask but rather assumed they knew.

Departing the woods, we discovered another sunny field, this one chorusing with the season's last, late purple lupine.

“It's fun to identify these flowers,” Kath said. “You know when I was a kid, I only knew roses, daisies, azaleas. And geraniums. They smelled so bad, I figured they must really be a vegetable rather than a flower.”

I grinned at the memory of tutoring Kath with my sketches of Sierra wildflowers. The lupine dipped from side to side in a faint breeze. The aroma of a few remaining wild onions lingered in the morning air.

Suddenly a doe stepped from shadows of pine and fir. Lightly, I touched Kath's arm, finding it still moist from sunscreen, for surely it was too early for sweat.

Kath nodded, smiling with closed lips as if the glare of her teeth might startle the animal. The doe slowly lifted her head, ears fanning.

I wondered why it was so thrilling to discover deer in the wild. Because they were docile creatures? Simply because they were pleasant to behold? Because such a moment of truce, no matter how brief, no matter how one-sided, brought hope for interspecies detente? As always, there was the feeling of disappointment, of misrepresentation, as the catch of our scents or the sound of our breathing caused the deer to scamper toward safety.

Kath's smile broadened at the brief communion, and her eyes held a trace of solace.

Side by side, we ambled through the wide meadow.

“Misunderstood giants, that's what we are,” I joked. “Meaning no harm to deer or vole or beaver as we pad along the trail in our soft-soled shoes.”

“More like the barons of death!” Kath laughed. “Paving the mountain passes, spewing car exhaust, draining water to the cities.”

“Hmmm.” I laughed with her, knowing Kath was right, but also recognizing her old resistance to ambiguity. Right or wrong. Black or white. Commitment to dichotomy was one of Kath's most endearing, infuriating qualities.

I changed the topic. “Oh, the smell of this dirt, mixed with pine needles. But I wish we had eucalyptus trees up here like we do in Oakland. God, in Massachusetts I miss that pungent, homelike smell. In Australia …”

“Australia!” Kath declared. “When were you in Australia?”

“Two years ago. I had a sabbatical and Lou had a visiting appointment at Sydney Uni.” Did I sound pretentious? I could have said “temporary job” instead of “visiting appointment.” I continued, “Anyway, the Australians call them ‘gum trees,' but I prefer ‘eucalyptus.' The word is long and complicated, like the aroma.”

“Yes.” Kath said the syllables slowly, as if she were beginning a haiku, “Eucalyptus tree.”

The meadow ended in a fork. “Down there's the fishing lake I always promise to visit.” Kath spoke wistfully. “You know, I never do. This pass always draws me
up
.”

Once again we headed toward the pass. We could have gone both places, if only we had more time. I wondered if Heaven were the place with more time.

The hike felt more refreshing than the previous day's walk. As I padded along the trail ahead of Kath, I realized I was more comfortable in the lead and Kath didn't seem to mind this. I enjoyed the exhilarating strain of climbing up. Why did I prefer vistas to valleys? Mr. Blue Bronco was probably fishing down below with the kids. Just as well we didn't take that path. He and Kath wouldn't have gotten on.

One day, I resolved, I'd return here with Taylor and Simon and Lou. Did all mothers feel guilty about pleasures outside the family and then did we all resolve to share those pleasures with our kids some other time as atonement, as recompense?

Our climb grew steep in yet another woods. This sylvan coolness made me realize how hot I'd been. I turned to check on Kath, who was close behind, and noticed the circles of perspiration under the arms of her blue cotton work shirt.

Suddenly overcome with a need to talk about the boys, I noticed my resentment that she didn't ask more about them. A little defiantly, I said, “Taylor and Simon would be yards ahead of us now, scrambling up this trail like mountain goats.”

“You must miss them.”

“Yes. Not that I would want them to be here with us, now, but I guess I'd like to be
there
,
momentarily, to see how they're doing.” I inhaled sharply. Silly to start a conversation going uphill.

“I'm sure Lou's doing fine with them.”

“Oh, of course.” My defensiveness mounted. “I meant that I miss their spirits. I don't know, it doesn't really make sense.”

“Tell me about their spirits.”

“Well, Taylor is restless, aggrieved, passionate. When he's around, I always feel as if I need a break from him. But the truth is, he provides a kind of creative disruption.”

“You think he'll be an artist?”

“A musician. Of the Philip Glass school—asynchronic, provocative.”

Kath grinned. “Well, it's better than becoming a serial killer.”

I laughed out loud.

“And Simon, what does he want to do when he grows up?” She showed no signs of losing breath.

“Architecture. He's always loved to build and design. He has a very conceptual mind. Lou thinks he'll go into medicine like my father. But he's too imaginative for that.”

I waited for Kath to ask another question. When she didn't, I wondered if she were jealous of my family or if she simply didn't know what to ask. Of course, what did I know of her life, of lovers, past and present? I shouldn't be so intimidated by her reserve. Taking a long breath, I said, “You used to want kids. I remember. Six.”

“Yeah.”

“And then you changed your mind?”

“Kinda.”

“Why?”

“I don't know,” she answered irritably. “I changed my mind about a lot of things. I once wanted to play electric guitar. Now I realize I would have been hopeless at music
and
at raising kids.”

That was it. End of conversation. I wanted to know how her body hadn't yearned to have children. Why was I the norm? I mean, she could as well have asked why I
wanted
to have children. If Kath were an asker of questions. Sometimes I thought that the most profound division between women wasn't ethnic or economic or national but the division between mothers and nonmothers. It had come as a gradual series of shocks to learn that not all women had the urge to reproduce or to nurture, that not all women even
liked
kids.

Concentrate on your surroundings, I told myself, and remembered that Kath had said the Indians used to take this Mono Pass route rather than Tioga Pass when they crossed the Sierra. Our canteen bumped against my denim hip as I stretched up, up the path. The dampness was rich in the smell of ripe mushroom, moss and decaying tree trunks. I loved the nurse logs, lying in the refuse of cones, needles, leaves, shit and dirt—like ancient grandmothers with seventeen tits feeding new generations of laurel and lichen.

Sophomore year of high school could have marked the end of us. We were headed in different directions even then. There I was, going steady with Kip Houseman, basketball star, senior, son of a Mills College professor, and boring Kath out of her mind about our dates. I liked to think she made friends with Donna, the super-weirdo, in self-defense. Actually, in time, I came to love Donna, too, despite and because of her aggressively beat black wardrobe and her bad bongo music. What was Kath going to do? Kip wanted to double-date with his older friends. Kath was still too much of a tomboy for that. Even after school we were separated by my piano and flute lessons and Kath's baby-sitting. When I broke up with Kip, Kath was there for me, holding my hand through long evenings of weeping and railing. And the next year we became a fivesome with Donna's friends Paula and Nancy—going to movies and cruising the strip on Saturday nights. Sometimes I worried about losing Kath in that group of smart girls, but deep down I knew—rather believed—we would always be the best of friends.

As we ascended, I concentrated on the pressure in my lower back, imagining pleasurably loose muscles at day's end. I could feel my thighs stretch, even my sturdy calves. We should stop for water soon.

“You know, when I work this hard on a hike,” Kath was saying, “I sometimes imagine my family's reaction. I mean, I think about my father greasy and twisted under a Honda at the shop. His mother cutting peat in Hamer. My mother's mother herding eight kids to the public baths in Montreal. And they're all staring at me wide-eyed, wondering what the hell I'm doing. Even my friends at work admire these ‘strenuous' vacations. Maybe I make this trip out of some kind of genetic attraction to labor.”

Puffing hard, I marveled at Kath's ability to talk and walk, at the rush of words. She had been like that as a girl, too, taciturn and monosyllabic for days and then
whoosh,
an outpouring of reactions, ideas.

“Or whether it's the opposite,” she continued, oblivious to my awe, “an obstinate subversion of the family plan.”