Wildwood

by Drusilla Campbell

  “I wonder what it was that made my parents buy such a big house in the first place,” Liz said. “They never intended to have a family. If they told me once I was an accident, they told me a hundred times. I’m so used to thinking of them as totally a-parental, but this house . . . I mean it’s such a . . . grandmotherly house. You know what I mean, Hannah? Maybe there was a time when . . .”

  Or maybe the big house made it easier to pretend she wasn’t there.

  Beyond Manzanita and Greenwood and Oak Streets, Casabella Road leveled out again and followed the shoulder of the hill for a quarter mile then dropped abruptly into a shadowy canyon and a hairpin curve across a bridge over Bluegang Creek. When it rose again, Liz saw a sign, a discreet bronze rectangle: HILLTOP SCHOOL, ONE QUARTER MILE.

  Hannah said, “Low keyed and very high priced these days.”

  At the end of a long driveway Hannah and Dan Tarwater’s white country farmhouse sprawled in the shade of half a dozen California live oaks. Hannah stopped at the mailbox and leaned out the car window to open it. She riffled through the bundle of envelopes, advertising flyers, and catalogs. She held a large overnight mail envelope, reading the return address. “This is for you,” she said and handed it to Liz, eyebrows raised. “It’s from a doctor. In Miami.”

  Friday

  Dr. Reed Wallace was young. His diplomas hung on the wall, but Roman numerals confused Liz and besides, she didn’t really want to know exactly how young. Under the circumstances, age made no difference anyway. The lab in Miami had provided his name in San Jose and no other.

  He entered the examining room, her chart in hand, a few strands of dark brown hair engagingly drooped across his forehead, and leaned against the wall smiling and comfortable as a neighbor chatting over a fence. Easy for you. You’re not going to be east-west in the stirrups, gaping like a Bekins box. She perched on the end of the examining table and answered his routine questions—her age (advanced), her general health (perimenopausal), childhood ailments (emotional neglect), allergies (good-looking young ob-gyns; they made her blush).

  He was tall and slender with excellent teeth and probably wearing contact lenses. Clean fingernails, a discreet yin/yang tattoo on his wrist.

  Wallace left her alone in the examining room to strip and don a paper hospital gown. His nurse—a petite Asian woman with a name tag saying Marilu—came in. She weighed Liz, took her temperature and then her blood pressure. Her smile never dimmed from incandescent.

  “You can get up on the table now.”

  Knees up, feet in the stirrups, scoot down, a little farther, a little farther, always a little farther.

  Bad as this was, always was and would be because there was no way of doing a pelvic that was not humiliating, physically uncomfortable and emotionally tense, her first exam had been the worst.

  She had expected condemnation for wanting birth control pills at a time when the sexual revolution had barely entered the guerrilla skirmish stage. But her lover, Willy, had assured her that in France clinic doctors were worldly and approved of sex. The exam had been carried out in an ill-heated, badly lighted examining room with a speculum the size of a tire jack; and her prescription had come in an ordinary glass bottle, twenty-five at a time. In those days, there weren’t even safety caps to struggle with.

  On the way home from the dispensing chemist Liz had purchased a little plastic tray divided into seven lidded sections. As she was writing the days of the week on the lids using a laundry pen, she had suddenly remembered Billy Phillips and Hannah’s underpants and the mystery of their disappearance. That’s how the memory of Bluegang was, a sleeping infection like herpes that awoke unexpectedly and made her miserable for a while.

  The last thing she had ever wanted was a baby and for years she could no more begin a day without her birth control pill than she could walk out the door without her underpants although occasionally, she did that on purpose, just because she liked the feel of the air and the slightly risky sensation. She always took her pill, but she never quite trusted it to work. Looking back, she saw her adult life patterned by twenty-eight-day cycles of panic and relief.

  After fifteen years the pill had become like a credit card she used impulsively, unwisely. She switched to a diaphragm and though occasionally inconvenient, she liked the system better. But the diaphragm made her panic cycle worse. Just to make sure she never got lulled into thinking sex was healthy or fun or even perfectly normal for an adult woman with a thriving body, she obsessed over microscopic holes and visions of deteriorating rubber. Even when she bled she fretted and remembered stories of women who continued to menstruate into their fifth and sixth months of pregnancy, the poor souls who arrived at the hospital complaining of gas pains and delivered healthy twins moments later.

  A year ago when her periods had become irregular, and her doctor in Belize told her she was in early menopause, she had misplaced her sense of humor and slipped into a funk. She imagined her body’s depleted nest of eggs like last season’s potatoes growing mold at the bottom of the bin. One day, feeling a mixture of grief and glee, she cut her diaphragm in half with the kitchen shears and tossed the pieces in the trash.

  Dr. Reed Wallace came back into the examining room. As he slipped on rubber gloves, he said, “I’ve never been to Belize. I hear it’s beautiful.” He opened the front of her gown and began to palpate her breasts. As he performed this exercise, he didn’t look at Liz or her anatomy. He gazed up at the holiday pictures tacked to the acoustical ceiling over the examining table. The travel agent photos of turquoise water and sugar-cookie beaches were there as much for him as for her.

  “What do you do down there?”

  Same as you, Doc.

  “I own a bed and breakfast.”

  “You get lots of business?”

  In my time.

  “The rain forest and the Mayan ruins are a big draw.”

  “It’s not exactly Miami Beach though.”

  “Thank God.”

  He closed the front of her gown.

  “You’re okay.”

  Liz supposed that meant no suspicious lumps.

  He sat on a wheeled stool and took up his position directly in front of her, facing the tent of sheet over her gaping legs. He spoke to Marilu, and she handed him an instrument. He raised the sheet, and Liz couldn’t see him at all. The whole procedure was less intimate than a root canal.

  Reed Wallace said, “I was down in Panama with the Peace Corps.”

  Liz tensed as she felt the warmed speculum slide into place. She experienced an instinctive and irrational panic that he would split her in half.

  “Bocas del Toro. Miserable place.”

  Something scraped her insides, Torquemada’s clamp loosened and was withdrawn. Liz heard it clink onto a metal tray and the tension drained from her body.

  “Next time you might try breathing,” Reed Wallace said as he stripped off his gloves and tossed them into the trash. “It’s generally a good idea.” He had a broad, kid grin. “Get dressed and come across the hall.”

  He stood up when she entered his office a few minutes later. The old-fashioned gesture made him seem like a well-behaved boy being visited by his great aunt.

  “You told Marilu you had a period last month. Have you been regular all along?”

  “Pretty much.” She asked him the same question she had asked the doctor in Miami. “Isn’t this unusual?” Not to mention unfair, biology sneaking up on her just when she’d stopped worrying about it. “I never heard of a woman my age getting pregnant.”

  “Highly unusual, but we see it every now and then.” He glanced at her chart.

  For years she had guarded against this occurrence. Once on her way to Orly she realized she had forgotten to pack her pills and risked missing her flight to Copenhagen to drive home like a crazy woman, frightening even the French drivers. And now this, this joke of biology. She imagined her eggs conspiring over time, waiting for the moment when she let down her guard.

  “No symptoms at
all, huh?”

  “My breasts ached but I didn’t pay much attention. The man I live with noticed I was gaining weight.” She reached into her bag and handed him the envelope that had arrived for her at Hannah’s address. “I wanted an American doctor so I went to Miami. When she confirmed the pregnancy they did some tests.” She waited a moment, watching him scan the documents in the envelope. “The fetus is perfectly healthy. No genetic abnormalities.”

  “Good, good,” he said distractedly.

  “I want an abortion.”

  That got his attention. He studied her a moment, tipped back in his chair and swung it around a little so he half-faced the window over the parking lot. The tinted window turned the sky an improbable navy blue. “How’d you happen to come to me, Ms. Shepherd?”

  “I grew up in Rinconada. I still have good friends there.” Liz looked down at the freckles on the back of her hands and then at him. “Will you do it?”

  “I think we need to talk about it first.”

  That word need, it cropped up everywhere in American speech these days. Had Americans grown uncomfortable in their luxury and choices, a little ashamed? Did needing make them feel less guilty and more like the rest of the world? I need a four dollar latte. Well, she wanted an abortion and Reed Wallace obviously wanted to talk her out of it and she wanted him to shut up.

  “I’m not going to change my mind.” She decided she didn’t like him after all. He was only a boy but already he had the medical attitude that announced he knew more and better about her body than she did. Just because he’d taken a look at her clear up to her tonsils didn’t give him special rights. “I know what I want and I know what’s good for me.”

  “I’m not trying to change your mind, Ms. Shepherd.” He put his hands out, palm forward: whoa. “Let’s just go slow here, okay? I make it a rule to discuss every surgical procedure with my patients beforehand.”

  Liz sagged a little. “Go ahead and tell me how it has eyes and ears and already loves rock and roll.”

  “Maybe reggae.”

  “Maybe John Philip Sousa. Frankly, I don’t care.” Liz leaned across the desk. “Let me see if I can make you understand, Doctor Reed Wallace. I’m fifty years old and my health is excellent. My lover and I have been living monogamously for more than seven years. I know that if I’m careful, I could probably have a relatively untroubled pregnancy and deliver a healthy infant into the world in a few months. Hooray for you, me and modern medicine.” She stood up without thinking about it. “It isn’t giving birth that bothers me. And it’s not money either. Even if Gerard left me flat, I have plenty of money. What I don’t have,” she swallowed, “is any desire to be a mother. I’ve never wanted children. I wouldn’t know how to connect with a child.”

  “You’d be surprised how many women feel as you do at the beginning. You’d learn, Ms. Shepherd.”

  “I doubt it.” A good shake was what Reed Wallace needed. “Let me tell you, I am the only child of parents who never wanted me. Probably the best thing about dying was they were rid of me for good.”

  “Ms. Shepherd, I don’t think—”

  “Just let me say this. They weren’t bad parents. They were responsible people who did one irresponsible thing and I was the result. I got what I was supposed to get—haircuts and vaccinations and tennis lessons . . .” Lessons, opportunities, encouragement: she could go on for a long time listing all the good things her parents had given her because they knew in a bookish kind of way everything there was to understand about parenting. Braces and good clothes and shoes that supported her arches. They drilled table manners into her and sent her to camp where she learned how to ride and not humiliate herself on a tennis court.

  “But whatever you’re meant to do for a kid to make it feel loved and wanted and needed and respected and safe and all the rest?” She took a breath, realized she was standing up and gabbling, sat down. “Well, it never happened for me.”

  “That doesn’t mean . . .”

  “I’m not going to bring another accident into the world.” Liz took a deep breath. “Anyway, what kid wants a sixty- or seventy-year-old mother?”

  “Age isn’t so important anymore.”

  Spoken like a man on the smiling side of forty.

  “If you won’t abort this, I’ll find someone who will.”

  “Ms. Shepherd, I’m not trying to change your mind about the surgery. It’s your body and I respect your right to choose. But I need to make sure you’ve looked at every angle because there are few things as final and forever as a terminated pregnancy.”

  “No kidding.”

  “And at the risk of making you madder at me, I have to say that women who come on as strong as you do, are often the ones who suffer most afterwards.”

  “Often doesn’t mean always, doctor.” She waited a moment for his riposte. Nothing. “So, do we schedule the thing or do I go look for another doctor?”

  He flipped through his desk calendar. “Next Friday’s okay.”

  “Will I have to stay overnight?”

  “In the hospital? No. I’ll see you down at the Woman-care facility on San Antonio and Third. You’ll come in here to the office the day before so I can insert a microscopic dilator. The procedure doesn’t take long, but you might feel a little uncomfortable for a day or two afterwards. Every woman’s different.”

  “Pain?”

  “I’ll see you get a sedative and a local. Unless you’re super-sensitive, that should be adequate.”

  “And afterwards? Can I fly home that weekend?”

  “To be on the safe side, I’d prefer you wait a couple of days.” He spoke into his telephone and a moment later the Asian nurse appeared beaming in his doorway. “Marilu’ll do the scheduling, Ms. Shepherd.” He shook her hand. “Just remember you can cancel. Up to the last minute and it’s okay.”

  Hannah dropped Liz at the doctor’s office and drove on to Resurrection House in the Alameda district, trying not to worry. Liz looked wonderful, not at all like a person with cancer. But she was being secretive and to Hannah, secrets meant trouble. The night before the three of them had sat up late in the kitchen drinking wine, snacking on multiflavor jelly beans, catching up—not important talk, that took a little time to get into. Liz had seemed distracted, as if there were something she wanted to say but was reluctant or apprehensive to do so. Hannah wanted to ask why she had to see a doctor but knew better than to push. Liz liked to reveal things in her own way, in her own time. Hannah had expected an explanation in the car this morning but instead Liz talked about scuba diving, as if Hannah gave a damn where the best reefs were. The longer Liz kept her secret, the worse it had to be. So if it wasn’t cancer? . . . AIDS? Hannah ran a stop sign across from the Swenson Building and a cop came up behind her, flashing his lights. Once she would have explained to the officer that she wasn’t actually a careless driver; but her smiling innocence wouldn’t get her anywhere now. As far as she could tell, the police academy made sure each girl and boy in blue—this one no more than twenty years old, a protoadult—hated their mothers and considered everyone a felon, even a middle-aged housewife driving a Volvo. She accepted the citation and drove on without saying good-bye.

  Mostly she was grateful to the police. Grateful for their willingness to do a nasty job. But she didn’t like that she lived in a world needing so much armed control. What would happen if there were fewer laws, fewer cops? Would crime and violence be so much worse? This was an experiment no one would ever be willing to try; but until someone did, how would they ever know if all the money spent on cops and prisons and weapons really made a difference? She thought what good all that cash could do caring for babies, building good houses, planting trees and helping people lead decent and productive lives.

  Was she weird for having these thoughts? Did anyone else her age ever consider the possibility that less—of everything—might be better? Jeanne said she was a closet anarchist. She meant it affectionately, but Hannah heard criticism.

  Until the l
ate 1950s, the Alameda district had been the enclave of San Jose’s rich and influential families. Many of the homes were in the Spanish colonial style, painted cantaloupe and salmon and terra cotta. The others were what Hannah called Iowa homes: built of wood and solid as the Constitution, two- and three-stories with bay and dormer windows, and all enclosed by wide verandas. When taxes and the flight to the suburbs impoverished the neighborhood, the houses had been converted to apartments, offices or group homes like Resurrection House. The district had subsided into gentle neglect. All this before San Jose became the capital city of Silicon Valley.

  As she locked the car, Hannah heard from somewhere out of sight the forbidden click-click-click of a rotating sprinkler. At the same time she wanted to knock on the owner’s door to deliver a lecture on drought, she wanted to fall into the sound and live in it forever.

  It would be nice if once in a while she could just think one uncomplicated thought.

  From Junipero Serra Elementary School around the corner, came the noise of children at recess. The clang of a tether ball chain against its hollow pole reminded her of sun-softened playground asphalt hot through the soles of her shoes, and the burn of rope on her wrist as she whipped the ball around the pole. Liz always beat her at the game. Liz was tough, determined as Jeanne in her own way.

  Please, God, not AIDS.

  A car sped past, stinking the air with exhaust fumes and boomy rap. Its horn blasted. Hannah jumped. Pulse hammering, she leaned against the hood of the Volvo for a long moment. She stood up straight and shook her head to clear it, and Angel moved in to occupy the vacated space. Hannah swung her straw bag over her shoulder and hurried up the sidewalk to Resurrection House.

  Set back from the street behind a plot of dusty yard, the style was Iowa, painted dark gray with peeling white trim. Wilty pink, white and cerise ivy geraniums hung in baskets and struggled out of oak barrels on the tired-looking veranda. The house was home to twelve drug-damaged children and their caretakers, residents by special arrangement with the courts and the departments of Welfare and Child Protective Services. Eventually it was hoped the young mothers would come into residence as well and learn to be responsible parents. Hannah believed in the goals of Resurrection House, but she doubted the bit about the mothers.