The Hazards of Sleeping Alone (34 page)

T
he Feminist Health Collective looks less like a doctor's office than some kind of secondhand clothing store. It's another large, rambling house at the end of another woodsy, winding road. Apparently these are the qualifications for every house in New Hampshire, whether psychic, gynecologist, or alternative living arrangement. Were there no cinderblock office buildings at all in this state?

As Walter steers the station wagon down the gravel driveway, Charlotte registers the small circle of parked cars. Most look old and probably deliberately beleagured, their dented bumpers swaddled with brightly colored decals.
MEAN CORPORATIONS SUCK. MY OTHER CAR IS A BICYCLE. FIGHT TERRORISM—GO SOLAR!

He turns the car off and touches the back of Emily's neck. “Ready?” he says. Emily murmurs in reply. When he leans toward her, Charlotte turns to face the window, fixing her eyes on the back window of a rusty van that says
EVE WAS FRAMED.

“Come on, Mom,” Charlotte hears, and suddenly her door swings open. She grabs her purse—she hasn't managed to adopt the policy of wholehearted trust in New Hampshire—and as she
steps out, Emily hooks her arm. They crunch across the gravel toward the entrance, Walter following behind them. When Charlotte steps inside, she's expecting some approximation of a waiting room, but instead comes face to face with a policeman.

“Hey, Dan,” Emily greets him, unhooking Charlotte's arm.

Charlotte is frozen. The man looks nice enough, heavy-jowled, pink-faced. He could be a mailman or crossing guard if it weren't for the gun strapped to his waist.

“Feels like snow, huh?” says Walter, as he steps through what Charlotte realizes is a metal detector.

“A little early yet.”

“Soon enough. Be here before you know it.”

When it's Charlotte's turn, the machine doesn't make a chirp. But on the other side Policeman Dan extends a hand. Charlotte stares.

“Your bag, Mom,” Emily says. “He needs to check it.” There is no mistaking the apology in her voice.

Charlotte hands the policeman her purse, face burning. Why didn't Emily just tell her to leave it in the car? She didn't need it. She could have left it, and
would
have, if they all weren't so damned trusting. Policeman Dan is whistling as he nudges a thin flashlight around inside, searching for—what? guns? explosives? Which is worse, she wonders, the thought of what he's looking for or the prospect of what he'll find? An unraveling roll of peach-flavored Tums, wadded squares of used Kleenex, a plastic bag containing the last of the Canada mints.

“Looks suspicious, doesn't she?” Walter jokes.

Dan smiles, but mildly, as if to say,
You'd be surprised.
He clicks the clasp shut and hands the purse back to Charlotte.

“Thanks, man,” says Walter, heading toward a staircase. “See you on the flip side.”

Emily pokes him in the back. “Dork.”

As Charlotte follows, the implications of what she just saw register slowly. They must have incidents of protest here. Which means they must perform abortions here. She wants to ask Emily but figures now is exactly the wrong time. They're here for the sonogram: a
happy
thing. They're here for the
new baby.
She focuses on this as they reach the waiting room at the top of the stairs. It resembles, unnervingly, an unkempt den. Sagging couches, fish tank, mismatched lamps, rug with threadbare patches exposing the wood floor. It could be an extension of Walter and Emily's. Charlotte looks at the two other girls waiting and wonders what they're here for. Both look awfully young. But then, so must Emily. One is alone, scribbling in a notebook. She has the tousled bun and sloppy, baggy look of a college student on a Saturday. The other is wearing a sweatshirt that's much too big, as if trying to dilute what's underneath. She's sitting with what is probably her boyfriend. His face is long, blank, drained of color; in a city he might look dangerous, but here his edges are softened by a fuzzy winter hat with stripes. It must be hard to maintain a sense of “coolness” in New England, Charlotte thinks, the elements so harsh your basic human needs are helplessly exposed.

“Emily Warren?”

Emily steps toward the desk. “Yeah. Sorry we're late.”

Charlotte realizes she has no idea what time it is, and checks her watch: 11:45
A.M.
They hadn't mentioned running late. She wonders if the appointment was for 11:00 or 11:30.

“Just note any changes,” the receptionist is saying, handing Emily a clipboard with a sheaf of forms attached. She can't be more than eighteen, Charlotte thinks. Her hair is pulled back in a scrunchy.

“Hey, Charlotte,” Walter says. “Have a seat.”

Reluctantly, she looks to where Walter is sitting, a sagging sofa with claw marks at the corners. She perches on one end, leaving an empty cushion between them. On the end table beside her is some kind of book, felt-covered with a pen attached by purple yarn. “A Journal for Sharing,” says the cover, in friendly block letters. “Treat this book as you would a friend! It's a place to talk freely about your thoughts and feelings, to share your own experiences and read about the experiences of others …”

As if on cue, Emily drops down in the middle of the couch. She smells like a blend of warmth and winter, the cinnamon coffee Walter made that morning mingling with the frosty air that lingers in her scarf. As the scarf is unwound, static crackling, Charlotte spots the forms on Emily's lap. Contact Information. Confidentiality Agreement. Medical History. A long list of illnesses and symptoms and afflictions.

“Did you remember to put down Grandpa's cancer?” Charlotte whispers.

Emily points her pen cap at the tiny blue checkmark on the line next to
Cancer.

“And Grandma's heart?”

She slides the pen to the bottom of the page. Next to
Heart Disease,
she's crossed out
Disease
and written
ATTACK.

“Emily?” A woman appears from behind a wood-paneled door beside the reception desk. She's wearing a nametag and white lab coat, which is reassuring. Underneath it she has on a fisherman's sweater and jeans.

The woman crosses the room, holding out a hand. “You must be Emily's mom.”

“Charlotte Warren,” Emily supplies, as they all stand.

“Joyce,” the doctor says. No last name. Not even a “Dr.” She grasps Charlotte's hand, smiles, then turns toward Emily and Walter. “All set, you two?”

“Yeah,” Emily says. “Be back soon, Mom.” She flashes Charlotte a smile. Then the three of them vanish behind the softly clicking den door, Joyce's hand guiding the small of Emily's back.

Charlotte glances around the room. She feels suddenly self-conscious. The fish tank is burbling. The college girl still has her head down, scribbling. When her gaze snags on that of the blank-faced boy, she looks away. He's probably wondering what she's doing here.
That young woman was my daughter,
she wants to tell him.
She's having a baby.
As if in response, the boy's sneakers shift, one toe rising like a skeptical eyebrow.
Believe me,
Charlotte asserts,
she wants me to be here.
The toe stays put.

Charlotte looks down at her lap. She wishes she could tell someone how, though today she might seem peripheral, she used to be integral at doctor's appointments.
Those wisdom teeth are going to need to come out,
said the dentist.
Looks like she'll need braces,
said the orthodontist.
It's not necessarily dangerous,
said the pediatric nutritionist, when Emily began refusing to eat meat,
just be sure she's getting enough protein.
He'd handed Charlotte a brochure with a peanut tap-dancing on the cover. She wants to tell someone how, for the longest time, Emily couldn't swallow pills and Charlotte disguised them in blueberry yogurt, her favorite kind. How every time Emily got her braces tightened, Charlotte treated her to a cherry-mixed-with-rootbeer-flavored Slurpee from 7-Eleven on the way home.

Now, the doctor is a woman in blue jeans. What kind of experience does this “Joyce” really have? Charlotte suspects that Emily chose this place for its liberal leanings, not for the quality
of the care. She looks up, suddenly distracted by a faint humming sound coming from the direction of the desk. There on the floor is a Dream Machine, looking exactly like the one in her bedroom. But why would they need one here? To conceal screams? Cries? The churning of machines?

Blinking hard, she scans the magazines on the coffee table, hunting for something fluffy, friendly. But everything has an edge.
Vanity Fair. Jane. Self. Spin.
At her gynecologist, Dr. Barr's, the waiting room is stocked with things like
Parenting
and
Reader's Digest.
The entire office has a positive, life-affirming quality; even if you're only there for an annual checkup, you feel included in the happiness of the pregnant couples who sit waiting for their names to be called. The cover of
Oprah Magazine
beams mantras like “Believe in Yourself!” and “Love Your Life!” The walls are peppered with Anne Geddes babies in frames.

In this office, Charlotte realizes, there is no trace of pregnancy. Instead of babies nestled in walnut shells and flower petals, the walls emphasize women. Naked women, mostly. Abstract and painterly, random swirls of feminine curves. A few are photographs: one a woman peering backward over her bare shoulder, another stretched out on a kitchen counter like some kind of odalisque. Even the coffee table looks vaguely erotic, its wooden legs curved like a woman's calves. Charlotte's gaze alights on the bottom rungs of the table—where, in a different kind of house, one might find a glossy picture book on
Lighthouses of New England
or
Country Kitchens
—and finds herself confronted with a haggard copy of
The Joy of Sex.

Charlotte glances quickly at the boy. Girl. Receptionist. All are conveniently unaware of her existence. Her eyes crawl back to the book; it's the original edition, from the 1970s. Charlotte recognizes it because she, in fact, owns a copy. Joe brought it
home during their month-long bout of a sex life. When he first drew it from his briefcase she'd thought it was a cookbook (thanks to the deceptively innocent cover), then saw the explicit drawings of a hairy, hippie-looking couple inside. Joe all but followed her around the house with it, gleeful as a child with a new toy: leaving it splayed open on the kitchen table, laughing when the pictures made her squirm, lying with his feet up on the couch and paging through with excruciating nonchalance.

Then, once Charlotte got pregnant, the book—like their sex life in general—was something she felt unburdened of, relieved of dealing with. She'd pushed the negligees to the back of her dresser drawer and pushed the book to the back of the bookcase: out of sight, out of mind. It wasn't until more than two decades later, packing up Dunleavy Street, that she found it again. At first glance, like the first time, she thought it was a cookbook. And then she remembered. Holding that book was like coming face to face with a ghost, someone who knew you in a different life: a reminder of all your uncomfortable memories, insinuation of all your personal failings, evidence in the present of all you tried to leave in the past.

But sitting there in Charlotte's hands, twenty-odd years later, the problem the book posed was less emotional than logistical: she didn't know, practically speaking, what to do with it. She considered throwing it away, but was afraid of it being discovered in her garbage. (This was illogical, but no more illogical than her nighttime break-in scenarios. It was too easy to picture the lean, muscled men who clung to the back of the trash truck flinging her bag onto the pile, watching it rip as it landed, pointing at
The Joy of Sex
exposed among the wet tea bags and onion skins, then braying to each other every time they passed her house on Monday mornings.) She knew she'd only feel comfortable
if she knew exactly where the book was. Which raised the issue of where to pack it. It seemed wrong to include it in the box labeled
BOOKS—EMILY
or, worse,
BOOKS—DAD,
these being her father's old philosophy texts that she'd never opened but would linger on, guilt-heavy, in the basement storage area of Sunset Heights. She'd finally decided to create a new box called
BOOKS—OTHER
and placed
The Joy of Sex
in the bottom, along with
Easy East Coast Day Trips, Big Book of Crosswords,
and
Where Babies Come From,
then topped it off with a few vases (she never used) and two pillows (she'd never liked) and surrounded it all with a moat of newspaper so the movers wouldn't find it.

Charlotte glances again at the young couple, convinced they can somehow read her thoughts. But they are whispering quietly, heads bent, their four hands clutched in an awkward bouquet. Charlotte's heart goes out to them. She wonders if their parents know they're here, if they ever talked to them about sex, if it might have avoided whatever predicament they're in now—not that it worked for Emily. Charlotte has a flash of the pink-covered
Where Babies Come From
still stashed in the bottom of
BOOKS—OTHER,
the version of sex she'd presented when they had “the talk.”

Emily was ten at the time, which seemed the right age to Charlotte: old enough to at least grasp the concept, not so old that she was picking up misinformation from other places. Charlotte felt some urgency about getting to her before others did—“others” being Gretchen Myers (Emily's best friend and cohort in palm-reading) and Valerie (whose existence in Joe's life Charlotte had just begun to pick up on). Charlotte had planned her approach carefully, spending nearly twenty minutes weighing her options in B. Dalton.
Where Babies Come From
did the
job best, she felt, relaying the necessary information without being overly explicit. The pictures combined medical renderings of the reproductive systems with drawings of a couple engaging in the act. Unlike the hairy hippies in
The Joy of Sex,
this couple was rendered pink-tinged and slightly fuzzy, as if behind a gauze curtain, which suggested a subtlety and privacy Charlotte could appreciate.