Chapter Fifteen
I was worried about Moth, why he’d left so abruptly, where he’d gone. I checked my phone but no missed calls, no voicemail, no texts.
I was worried about the way having answers means doctors stop asking questions.
I was worried about slipping on wet grass, on slick sidewalks, on littered candy wrappers on the walk home. On pumpkins carved too early, oozing now to rot. Never mind the inexplicable and preternatural, there was so much that could take you down with no mystery at all.
But I arrived at my front door without incident, and, better still, leaning against it I found Lola. She was wearing a light blue sheet like a toga and a green baseball cap.
“Caesar salad,” I guessed.
“Croutons,” she said.
“You’re dressed as a crouton?”
“Oh. No. I thought we were doing word association.” She fished out of her bag a bouquet of pencils corralled with packing tape. “Now do you know what I am?”
“The SATs?”
“The Statue of Liberty.”
“The Statue of Liberty doesn’t wear a baseball hat. Or carry pencils.”
“This was the only green headpiece I could find. And they won’t let you bring a flame to school. Also, I’m not really the Statue of Liberty.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
“No, I mean I’m the Statue of Liberty, but Lucas is the other half of the costume.”
“The Staten Island Ferry,” I guessed.
“We’re free and clear.”
“Of what?”
“That’s the costume,” she clarified. “We’re dressed as free and clear. I’m free.”
“What’s Lucas dressed as?”
“Himself but in a roll of plastic wrap.”
I was grateful she had come alone.
“Anyway, I’m here because I miss you,” she said, by way of explanation for her presence, which needed no explanation, but it was nice to hear anyway, “and I need help.”
“Help with what?”
“Hamlet.”
“How wonderful!” I said.
She checked to see if I was being sarcastic, but honestly, what’s better than Hamlet?
“Is it cheating if you help me with my essay?” She came inside and shed her hat, pencil torch, and sheet like she was molting.
“Of course not.” I went and changed out of my still-damp clothes, then used the sex-toy jar opener on some of Max’s snacks.
“Could it be cheating?”
“I’m not finishing your essay for you, if that’s what you’re asking. But I can help you with it.”
“By writing it? Outlining it, maybe? Remember you need two outside sources. Grandmothers don’t count. I asked.”
“I should count.” This wasn’t the point, but I felt compelled to make it anyway. “I am an expert.”
“Until this week, I thought Hamlet was about a little town.”
In my shock, I dribbled pickle juice on my blouse. “It’s like we’re not even related.”
“Why do they keep assigning this stupid play anyway?”
“Hey.” I pointed a kosher dill at her. “Hamlet is not a stupid play. If you think it is, read it again.”
“It’s so old.”
“Me too.”
“And so boring. You’re not boring. You’re the only pregnant grandmother I know.”
“I’m the only grandmother you know, period.” Darcy’s father-in-law was the rare person accurately encapsulated by the term “coot,” but his wife had died before the girls were born. “Read me the prompt.”
“Discuss what Hamlet means when he says, ‘There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.’”
“Okay, good. What do you have so far?”
Lola cleared her throat and read, “Male sparrows are smooth, colorful, and loud. Female sparrows are dull and puffy, plus smaller and quieter than the guys. In some cultures, people keep sparrows as pets. In others, they eat them. Lots of sparrows carry parasites and diseases, and even though sparrows are monogamous, they often mate with someone besides their partner. This is sick, which Hamlet would agree because of his mom, and everyone in the animal kingdom, including humans and birds, is sexist and gross, which Hamlet would also agree.”
I regarded my granddaughter. “None of that is right.”
“It is,” Lola insisted. “I googled it.”
“Hamlet didn’t have the internet.”
“But, like, symbolism.”
“Not even symbolism.”
“But he does think humans are gross, and his mom’s too old to be having sex and definitely not with his uncle, and sexism?”
“That’s sort of true,” I admitted.
“So no notes? I can just turn it in as is?”
“The fall-of-a-sparrow speech is about fate, destiny, determinism”—I could hear my grandmotherly timbre firm into my teaching voice—“knowing what you can control and what you can’t, what’s up to you and what’s up to you to deal with even though it’s not up to you.
How to live when, no matter what, it’s all only a matter of time. ”
Lola was quiet for a minute, contemplating the existential intractability of death and a world that spins in only one direction. “What does that have to do with birds?”
“Not a goddamn thing,” I said.
Moth didn’t come down to dinner. He didn’t answer when I rang his doorbell or called his phone. He didn’t reply to my texts. Just before bed, I knocked gently on the wall over my headboard, on the other side of which was the wall over his. He knocked gently back. So at least I knew he was alive.
The next morning Alice called a meeting (well, Alice’s assistant, but presumably at Alice’s behest).
Even though it was a Saturday and Halloween, she was at the office, so we had to Zoom.
From my little square, I relayed to my children as well as I could what Dr. Kim had explained about SERMs and DNA therapy, the wide-as-whales vagaries of side effects, and the inherent unpredictability of drug trials, even ones that save your life.
“Unbelievable,” said Darcy.
“Incredible,” said Max.
“I don’t care,” said Alice. “It doesn’t matter why.
Why is crying over spilt milk. That ship has sailed.
It is what it is. Pick your cliché, but the answer’s the same.
We can’t rely on a miscarriage being either timely or safe.
We need an abortion. We can’t get it here.
So we have to go elsewhere. I’m thinking Chicago. ”
“Chicago!” I yelped. “That’s a long way to go.”
“It’s a two-and-a-half-hour flight,” Alice said, though the flight’s duration was not precisely my concern.
Which Darcy seemed to understand. “I know it feels like a lot, Mom. I know you’re overwhelmed. But this is what anyone would do. If I were pregnant, one of my friends, one of my girls, one of my girls’ friends, one of my enemies—”
“Make a point,” her sister interrupted.
“Any Texan who was pregnant and didn’t want to be would leave the state,” Darcy concluded.
“That argument is playing right into their hands.” From her little square, Alice waved a finger at, presumably, her sister.
“If you’re blaming people for not leaving, you’re not blaming lawmakers for passing the legislation that necessitates it.
You’re blaming people who can’t leave for not being able to do so. ”
“Any Texan who was pregnant and didn’t want to be and could,” Darcy conceded, “would leave the state and get an abortion.”
“That’s incredibly problematic,” Alice allowed, “but in this case, correct.”
If I was not going to miscarry in a judicious manner on an expedient timeline, my children concurred, we would just have to get on an airplane. Mind you, that’s the choice Hamlet makes—airplanes having not yet been invented, he hitchhikes with pirates—and look where it gets him.
“I don’t think Chicago, though,” Darcy said. “What if it snows and we miss our appointment?”
“Fine.” It’s not that Alice didn’t want to argue—Alice always wanted to argue—but she seemed to be doing so already with someone else in another window. “Seattle,” she said when she turned her attention back to us.
“It’s almost November,” said Darcy. “Dark and rainy in Seattle.”
“There’s an arm-wrestling convention in Vegas next week,” Max offered weakly.
His sisters shot him mirrored withering glares from their separate little boxes on my computer screen.
“We are not going to Las Vegas for an abortion,” Alice sneered at the same time Darcy sneered, “We are not going to Las Vegas for a family vacation.” Then she said, “I’ve got it! Disneyland!”
“Yes.” Alice took off her reading glasses and squeezed the bridge of her nose. “Because nothing says ‘happiest place on earth’ like an abortion.”
“I’m not saying we do the procedure on Space Mountain. I’m saying we do the procedure at Cedars-Sinai then go on Space Mountain while she recovers.”
“Why does this have to be a vacation?” Max interrupted, and I was glad he did because I had the same question.
“Plausible deniability,” Alice said at once.
At first I thought this was directed at whomever she was talking to in her other window, but then she went on, “Do you know how much trouble I could get in for sneaking Mom out of state for an abortion? I’m a named partner in the largest—and best—law firm in the city.
It has to be believable that I’m taking a vacation. ”
“It is not believable that you’re taking a vacation,” I pointed out.
Alice ignored this by pretending to be in her other meeting.
“Also because who’s going to drive Sari and supervise Lola if I’m off getting Mom an abortion?” Darcy added. “Edward? Please. So we have to go someplace the kids can come.”
“I am not prepared to cater to their demands.” We could hear Alice typing notes in her other meeting, so we waited again to see if she was talking to us. “They’re children. It’s like negotiating with terrorists.”
“What about me?” Max said. “I don’t have kids. I have plenty of vacation days saved.”
“Because neither of your jobs is real,” said Alice.
“Why don’t you two stay here,” he suggested, “and Mom and I go alone?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Alice, by which she meant I have control issues and must be in charge of everything.
“We’re just not sure you could manage, sweetie,” said Darcy, by which she meant Once the baby of the family, always the baby of the family as well as Boys are responsible for car repair and spider removal; girls are responsible for paperwork and gynecology.
“Plus he’s irresponsible, untrustworthy, hotheaded, and besides all that extremely stupid,” Alice said, which is how we knew she’d gone back to her other window. She would never say most of that about her baby brother.
“Who else are you meeting with right now?” Darcy liked all attention, but especially the undivided kind.
“Austin TDW. Texas Democratic Women.” Alice was back with us. “I’m doing a thing for them. Actually, I should combine these calls. Their interests and ours overlap on several key points, unfortunately. Anyway, that’s an ill-advised life lesson.”
“What is?” Darcy was still trying to follow along. Max and I had given up.
“You don’t want to link Disneyland with unprotected sex in the mind of a teenager.”
“I didn’t think of that.” Darcy’s brow creased. “I need somewhere that says, ‘Yay, you have choices and rights, but for God’s sake use a condom.’”
“New York,” said Alice.
The old Brooklynite in me was half-insulted, but going home would be a nice consolation prize.
Not to tourist Brooklyn. To old Brooklyn, my Brooklyn.
The diner where my father worked was long gone, but we could go to the craft-beer-and-cheese shop it had turned into.
We could see the facade that remained from the apartment building I’d grown up in, the park where I learned to roller-skate and ride a bike, the outside of my elementary school, whose bricks now walled luxury condominiums instead of chairs and desks and blackboards.
I hadn’t been home in years. Lola and Sari and the twins had never been.
Maybe some good could come of this mess.
Certainly it took a miracle of this magnitude to get Alice out of the office for a vacation.
I cleared my throat, sat up tall in my little window, and prepared to interrupt my children to share this vision and ask the questions whose answers might lead to my tentative support of their plan. I took a deep breath. “I guess it seems—”
“Done,” said Alice. “Flights booked. Hotel reserved. Clinic appointment scheduled. We leave one week from tomorrow.”
“A vacation!” Darcy cheered. “Does the hotel have a pool? Should we pack bathing suits?”
“Not a vacation,” Alice corrected. “A secret. A highly classified, extremely clandestine secret. Mom is a medical miracle. She’s seventy-seven and pregnant.
A lot of people would be very upset—very loudly—if they knew what we’re about to do, and I’m one of them because I cannot afford for anyone to find out.
Legally, medically, ethically we’d be right.
We just wouldn’t be comforted by that fact because we’d be completely buried in shit. Got it?”
Max nodded. Darcy nodded.
What could I do? I nodded too.