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.