by Nancy Rue
“Baloney. If I didn’t see God pulling you through all this, I wouldn’t be giving my cigarette money to the church.”
I blinked. “You quit smoking?”
“Where you been?” Aunt Pete said, and then she waved me off with a “Never mind.”
Ed chewed a mouthful of chili and looked hopelessly at the soaked napkin in his hand.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Hazel said. She went to the sink and tossed him a sponge. He dragged it across his oozing forehead without taking his eyes off of me.
“No matter what you hear, whether it’s from God or anybody else, please tell me. Even if you don’t think it’s important, if it has to do with Tristan, I need to know.” He set the sponge on the table and put his hand on it, gentle as any mother. “Call me anytime, day or night. Deal?”
When I came back from walking him to the door, Hazel was moving restlessly in the kitchen, picking up forks and salt shakers and putting them back down again.
“You’re worse than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs,” Aunt Pete said. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I just feel like we should be doing something.”
“Don’t you ever go to work?” Aunt Pete said.
“I work nights at home after the kids are in bed. I got a couple of good contracts that keep me going—logos, newsletters, stuff like that.”
“I’ve never even asked you where you worked,” I said.
“Yeah, well, don’t go off on a guilt trip about it. You’ve had a few other things on your mind.”
“So if you work all night,” Aunt Pete said, “and you’re here all day helping us, when do you sleep?”
Hazel grunted. “I don’t think I’ve slept more than four hours at a stretch since Reagan was in the White House. You need me here, so I’m here.”
The phone rang, and I answered, still gazing at her.
“This is Mrs. Soltani?” The female voice was heavily accented in Spanish.
“Yes?” I said. “How can I help you?”
“Maybe I can help you.”
“You know, I really don’t—”
“Your daughter, she is Tris-tan Sol-tan-i?” She sounded as if she was reading from something.
I squeezed the phone. “Yes.”
“There is a paper. I see it just today. I saw her. Here.”
The room spun. “Where is ‘here’?”
“North Avenue Motel,” she said. “Is where I work—as maid. This paper, it was under other things on the wall, but today I see it. I talked to this Tristan.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay …”
I lurched toward the counter for paper and pencil, scattering a stack of Aunt Pete’s coupons and knocking over the jar of chili powder. Hazel put a pad and pen in front of me and sat me on a stool.
“Okay,” I said again. “What is your name?”
“Anita,” she said. “Anita Juarez.”
“Anita Juarez,” I repeated.
Hazel took the pen from me and wrote it down.
“When did you talk to her?” I said.
“This night it say here. August three.”
“August third. What did she say?”
I heard a male voice in the background, followed by a muffled rustle, as if Anita had stuck the phone in a bag.
“Anita?” I whispered.
“I hurry,” Anita whispered back. “I am not suppose to use the phones in the rooms.”
“Please tell me what she said!”
“She was very sad. I find her crying on the steps.”
“What else?”
The male voice grew louder and more familiar. I could almost smell the approaching cigarette smoke.
“She said she was going to WCC. I feel so bad for her.”
“WCC?” I said. “What’s that?”
“I have to go,” she said. There was a click.
“Give me that,” Hazel said and took the phone from me.
“You calling Malone?” Aunt Pete said.
Hazel nodded, punched in the number, and handed it back to me. Ed was on the line in an instant, listening and assuring me that he would find out about this WCC and get back to me. Twenty minutes later I was still clinging to the phone as if it might wriggle out of my hands when Ed’s Jeep pulled into the driveway. I met him on the front porch.
“What?” I said. “It’s not good, is it?”
“It’s cold out here. Why don’t we go inside?”
“Just tell me.”
Ed pulled his leather jacket tighter around him. “WCC,” he said, “stands for Women’s Care Center.”
I mouthed the words, still not comprehending.
“Serena, it’s an abortion clinic.”
I searched his face for any crack in his statement, anything that would render it untrue. The sadness in his eyes told me I wasn’t going to find it.
“Why would she go to an abortion clinic?” I said stupidly.
I could see him swallowing hard. “They wouldn’t tell me anything, of course. Confidentiality laws.”
“They have to tell me! I’m her mother!”
“At sixteen she’s a consenting adult in Maryland, remember?”
“But, Ed, an abortion?”
Though none of it was registering yet, I could feel my face collapsing. Before the rest of me could go down with it, Ed opened the front door and pushed me gently into Aunt Pete’s arms. She and Hazel were, of course, right there in the foyer. From someplace faraway I heard him explain to them.
“That Mexican woman was full of soup,” Aunt Pete said. “Our Tristan was no more pregnant than I am.”
Pregnant.
I hadn’t been able to form the word in my mind. Now that I’d heard it, I could hear everything else that went with it.
Spider saying he took her to his trailer when we thought she was at work.
Anita Juarez telling me Tristan was very sad—crying on the steps.
That dank, miserable street where she looked for the building.
I pulled away from Aunt Pete and turned to Ed.
“Do you have the address?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, “and I’m off-duty.”
Chapter Seventeen
Even with Ed driving me, in a Jeep that felt like it could plow right through the boarded-up windows on North Howard Street, I was almost paralyzed when we pulled to the curb. I stared across the road at a crumbling brick building I’d passed myself, right before the cab driver screamed at me. The entire front was covered by a larger-than-life garage door that told us under no uncertain terms that we weren’t welcome.
“That’s it?” I said.
“I think so.” Ed put his hand on my arm. “Why don’t you stay here while I check it out?”
I had no problem with him being the one to step out into the street—until I was in the car alone. I huddled and watched frosty air puff from Ed as he rounded the corner of the building into the alley. It had still been steamy summer when Tristan had taken the same walk.
In that frozen moment, somehow I knew that she had. It was as deep a thing as I had ever known.
Ed jogged back across the street and slid into the Jeep beside me. His face was stiff, whether from cold or concern, I couldn’t tell.
“This is it,” he said. “The entrance is in the alley.”
I shivered. “They do abortions in that place?”
“I’m sure it’s not as bad on the inside. These clinics are pretty closely monitored.”
“I want to see.”
Ed rubbed his hands together, ruddy from the November raw air. “You realize they aren’t going to tell you anything about Tristan.”
“I know. I just want to be where she was.” My voice shuddered. “Maybe I’ll be able to feel something. I guess that’s not very … detective-ish.”
Ed’s face softened. “I’ve solved a lot of cases by following a hunch.” He bent his head toward me. “If I go in with you, I might as well hold up my badge. In this neighborhood they can
smell a cop a mile away.”
“Will you be right outside?”
“You bet. I doubt very seriously anything’s going to happen to you in there. In fact, I’m going to make a suggestion.”
“Please.”
“If you just want to get a feel for the place, don’t tell them you’re Tristan’s mom. Tell them you have a niece or something, some sixteen-year-old girl who wants an abortion and doesn’t want her parents to know.”
“You mean, pretend I’m going to bring someone here?”
“Just ask what’s involved. Who knows? You might see a clue.”
“Is this like undercover?” I said weakly.
Ed gave me a small grin. “Sure. Don’t even try to hide the fact that you’re upset.”
“About my ‘niece.’ ”
“Play on their sympathies.”
I hoped they had some.
In spite of what I imagined as I crossed to the alley, nothing forbade me to go in. When I followed the directions on the heavy metal door and rang the bell, a stocky Hispanic girl wearing teal scrubs opened it, looked me over, and in a soft voice I didn’t expect asked me if I needed help.
For an uncanny moment, I was Tristan, looking into eyes accustomed to terrified young girls. It was a feeling that didn’t leave me as I nodded and followed her into a narrow room. She pointed to a row of blue plastic chairs along one wall and said she’d get someone.
No one else was in the waiting area, and I couldn’t see anybody behind the thick glass that separated me from the reception section at the far end. There was no opening in the window to speak through anyway. It was like a fortress. Even the walls on either side of the glass were covered in thick Plexiglas.
I perched on the edge of a dingy white faux leather couch along the opposite wall from the chairs and took in what I could through Tristan’s eyes. The Plexiglas was plastered with signs, each printed in felt-tip marker:
Rides Must Show Driver’s License
Your Appointment Will Take 5 to 7 Hours
Payment May Be Made by Cash, Check, Money Order, Debit or Credit Card
I thought of Tristan’s empty savings account, imagined her pulling a stack of bills from the pink wallet I’d bought her for Valentine’s Day. The first real money she’d ever earned, recorded meticulously in her bankbook.
On the wall above the row of chairs, someone had made an attempt at cheer with butterflies cut from construction paper. They were so faded and dusty Tristan had probably seen them too, three months before. I was sure they hadn’t improved her mood any more than they did mine.
I craned my neck to see into the reception area. There was still no one there. Another sign said “Please Be Seated. Someone Will Be Right with You.”
If Ricky had been telling the truth, there was no one with Tristan when she sat here, waiting. According to him, she was gone when he woke up the morning of August 4.
But he had also told us Tristan just wanted to get away from home, that he didn’t know where they were headed when they left Bethany Beach. Did he know she was carrying his child?
My grandchild?
I closed my eyes. This was another life we were talking about. I couldn’t put the idea in any reasonable place, and yet I could put my arms around it and cradle it.
Please God, I prayed.
That was as far as I got. The Hispanic girl came in carrying a can of Sprite and, without a word to me, tried unsuccessfully to reach someone on an intercom beside the interior door. As she left again, I had the eerie sensation that there never had been anyone here. That I had walked into a nightmare everyone else had abandoned.
But she returned with a large African American woman in mismatched sweats and boots. The fur-lined denim jacket on her arm and a canvas bag on her shoulder suggested she’d been on her way out. She took one look at me and pulled a chair up to the couch.
“We’re just about to close for the day,” she said. “But how can I help you?”
Her voice, like the other girl’s, was quiet and unhurried. I wondered if she was the one Tristan had talked to. I wished she’d told her to go home to her parents.
The woman watched me with visible patience. It was hard to lie to her, but I looked down at my lap and told her I had a niece who wanted an abortion. My voice fell over the word and cracked. The woman just waited.
“Anyway,” I said, “she’s scared, and I told her I would come in and ask some questions for her,”
“Sure,” she said.
I clenched my hands together. “She’s only sixteen.”
“Not a problem,” she said.
“She doesn’t want her parents to know.”
“Everything here is strictly confidential. She’s protected by law.”
I squeezed my hands so hard I was certain my fingertips were purple. My eyes were now riveted on her.
“How much will it cost?” I said.
“How far along is she?”
Another piece of my heart chipped off. “She’s not showing yet.”
“Up to twelve weeks it’s $360. Twelve to thirteen it’s $550, thirteen to fourteen $600—”
“Okay,” I said.
“We don’t do the procedure after eighteen weeks.”
The procedure. I could no longer feel my hands.
“Does she just walk in and … have it done?” I said.
“She’ll need to schedule an appointment.” The woman pulled a pink sheet out of the bag. “These are the days she can choose from.”
I took the paper, but I didn’t look at it. “So she’d have to call in advance.”
Would Tristan have known that? Did she do that, or just walk in as I had, into a world we had no reason to know anything about?
“It won’t be necessary for us to do an exam or a pregnancy test if she brings her own results,” the woman said. “It’s actually five dollars off if she does that. You’re sure she’s pregnant?”
I nodded. Tristan must have spent agonizing weeks knowing that she was. The question was, how could I not have seen it? I couldn’t even begin to sort out what the days before August 3 were like for her.
“Now, if she’s sixteen weeks or more, we suggest she have a sonogram. We don’t do them here, but if there’s anything wrong with the pregnancy, she might choose to wait and abort spontaneously rather than go through the procedure.”
The pregnancy. Not a baby. Just the pregnancy.
“Like I said,” the woman went on, “we don’t take them over eighteen weeks. The further along they are, the more risk.”
“Risk of what?” I said.
For the first time, she shifted slightly in the chair. “Of rupturing the uterus,” she said. “We never had that happen here, but if it did, the hospital is right down the block.”
“Isn’t there a doctor here?”
“A doctor does the procedures in the morning, but he doesn’t stay all day. All our staff are certified health care professionals—”
“Did your ‘professionals’ tell her about the risks? Did they even ask her if she wanted to have her baby taken out of her?” I stood up, looking down at her startled face.
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not here to ask questions about your niece, are you, ma’am?”
“I just want to know if my daughter was here,” I said. I was breathing like a freight train, and if there had been anything to throw, I’d have grabbed it and started hurling. “Tristan Soltani. August 4. Did you let her have an abortion?”
The woman didn’t stir from the chair. She just shook her head as she watched me clutch mine with both hands. “I can’t tell you anything about any of the women we see.”
“She’s not a woman. She’s a baby!”
“Then she’s a baby with rights. I’m sorry.”
I gazed now in horror at the useless butterflies and the list of payment methods that made it easy for any child to make a decision even an adult should never have to make.
“I can’t believe she ever came here,” I said. But as I made m
y way blindly to the door, I knew she had.
Ed caught me as I stumbled into the alley and kept his hands on my shoulders.
“They won’t tell me,” I said at least five times.
Ed didn’t remind me that he’d warned me about that. When we were in the Jeep with the heater blasting, he said, “We could get a subpoena to try to get them to turn over the records. They’d probably say, ‘Fine, get one,’ but if they have a good lawyer, we’d never see them.”
His words were not encouraging, but the gentle, even way he said them stopped me from shaking. He let me collect the scattered pieces of Tristan and me until we were almost to Ocean View.
“You okay?” he said.
“I’m not going off the deep end, if that’s what you mean,” I said.
“Hey, Serena?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t try for a career as an undercover agent.”
I just looked at him. “Okay,” I said. “But what do we do next?”
Ed offered to call Nick, but as tempting as the idea was, I knew Tristan’s father needed to hear it from me.
Max, on the other hand, didn’t need to hear it from anybody. After swearing Aunt Pete and Hazel to secrecy, I waited until I was sure she was sound asleep before I went up to the third floor with the phone.
“I was just about to call you,” Nick said. He sounded exhausted.
“Things going okay there?” I said.
The weariness disappeared. “What’s going on? Come on, Serena. I can hear it in your voice. What’s happened?”
Stepping carefully from word to word, I told him. And then I let him grope in silence down the alleys my mind had been up and down all evening. As dark and brooding as that silence was, I wished I were with him. It was too much even for Nick Soltani to navigate alone.
“All right,” he said. “In the first place, we don’t know if this Juanita Juarez is telling the truth.”
“Anita,” I said. “And why would she lie?”
“Maybe she thinks there’s a reward.”
“Nicky—”
“The clinic wouldn’t say one way or the other whether Tristan was even there.”
“They can’t.”
“Yeah, well, that’s a law that’s got to be changed. Don’t any of these people have kids? I’d like to see some senator when his daughter goes off to a clinic …”
