“If you’re so into the baby, how come you didn’t make her go to the doctor?”
In response to this the boy flushed darkly. He was a weird kid, by turns watchful and wary, and often he seemed more like Hilary’s servant than her boyfriend. He’d flare with anger and dip into sulks, and there were days when he didn’t speak at all. Yet Anne saw clearly how her question pained him, how bad he felt, how confused and unprepared. How determined to do what was right. How helpless to do it.
He did take the day off, but Anne insisted on going too, feeling they needed adult supervision. So the three of them got on the subway together, Alan finding Hilary a seat and standing in front of her like a bodyguard. In the waiting room, Anne gathered up every available pamphlet and stuffed them in her purse. The clinic was run by a women’s health organization and staffed by earnest young college graduates wearing handwoven sweaters and political buttons. On the walls were peeling posters that seemed to have been there since the seventies. Yo amo la leche, said a happy, smiling baby. Most of the patients sat with their hands folded in their laps, staring down at their bodies as if expecting them to explain how they’d gotten into this mess.
When the nurse called Hilary’s name Anne and Alan jumped to attention, but she barely looked up, just nodded sleepily and slowly got to her feet.
They were shepherded into the tiny examination room, which was painted a dingy color between tea and coffee and didn’t seem especially clean. Anne felt a pang of panic. What if something terrible happened? What would she do? The answer came to her instantly, from her darkest, truest recesses: Run.
Alan stood next to Hilary, who was lying on the table, and held her hand. Anne knew he wouldn’t run. He might not know what to do, but he wouldn’t run. She pushed aside some dog-eared copies of Good Housekeeping and Redbook, magazines no teenage mother would want to read, and sat down in a chair.
The doctor came in and said cheerfully, “Little crowded in here!” She looked about Anne’s age, a crunchy type with a pencil in her hair, wearing clogs.
“Can we all stay?” Anne said.
“Why don’t we ask the pregnant lady?” the doctor said. Hilary nodded her assent. “Okay, then! Let’s get started.”
It was the kind of place where they didn’t scold you for not having come in sooner; they were more about making sure you came back. So Hilary was lavished with praise for being so healthy, for making the appointment, practically for brushing her teeth and eating ice cream. She didn’t say much in response, just submitted to the examination with her legs open and her eyes focused on a spot on the wall. The doctor peeled off her latex gloves with an audible snap and said, “Looks great!” and then set up the ultrasound. And there it was, a black-and-white shadow puppet swimming in its dark pool. “Organs look good. Fingers and toes all there,” the doctor reported. “Do you want to know the sex of the baby?”
“Yes,” Hilary said.
“It’s a little girl.”
Anne, who was still gazing at the screen, heard a strange sound and saw that Hilary was crying. “I wanted a girl,” she said.
That night, there was an appreciative crowd at the small theater in Long Island City, holding its breath, taut with attention. Anne’s dialogue and gestures had by now become a part of her, as deep in her body as her muscles and bones. She had moved beyond conscious thought, beyond having to remember lines, toward a state of pure energy and flow. She was Mariska, and there was no boundary between where she left off and her character began. It didn’t feel like acting, more like being. It was the happiest she’d ever felt, those two hours in front of the audience, but after it was over she was deflated. It was like having a dream about flying that seems so true and possible, then waking up to understand it wasn’t real and never would be.
The subway trip home was long, but she didn’t want to waste money on cabs or car services. She had started saving money for the baby, wanting to give her something she could rely on later, when and if other people let her down. Back at the apartment, she undressed in the dark with a minimum of noise or fuss and crawled between blankets on the couch. The place smelled of leftover pizza. She sighed. Sometime soon this phase would be over, and she would understand what it was all about, how Hilary and Alan fit into the story of her life.
Lying there strangely keyed up, she heard a moaning sound and sat up to listen. Another moan, the bed creaking, Alan making a choking sound. She squashed the pillow over her head, trying not to hear them, the runaways, the interlopers, the children about to become parents. Making love in her bed.
A month passed, and the summer grew brutal and steaming. Anne’s play closed and she was temping again, trying to put aside more money. Out of all the offers that had coursed around her during the run of the play, only a few had distilled to anything concrete. She picked the one with a well-regarded experimental director whose trademark was deadpan dialogue and sacklike clothing, the actors’ bodies virtually irrelevant in his productions. She hoped the play would stretch her capacities and prove her artistic mettle. So she stood on stage in scratchy burlap and muttered lines she didn’t understand to an audience of bored hipsters in a church basement. Without her body to work with, she had no idea what to do. Too afraid to admit she didn’t understand the aesthetic agenda, she bumbled her part, alienated the director, and got terrible reviews. Just like that, she felt like she was back to where she started.
“You’re a pretty girl,” the agent she had decided on said over a drink. “Let me get you into commercials. There’s a detergent call that would be perfect for you.”
“I don’t want to do commercials,” Anne told her.
The agent shrugged. “I guess I can try for Law & Order.”
“Okay, but I also want something serious. Something important.”
The agent raised her eyebrows. “You’re a pretty girl,” she repeated. “Work with your strengths.”
A week later, the agent called to say she’d gotten her into summer theater in Southampton. “It isn’t Williamstown, but you can hit the beach.”
The play was okay. The people who came to see it were a little buzzed, on vacation, ready to be entertained, complimenting Anne extravagantly and buying her drinks afterward in the bar. She had rented a room from a group of hard-partying young lawyers and slept wearing earplugs. Early in the mornings she ran on the beach and saw herself, in these moments, as if from a great distance: a beautiful young woman, hair streaming behind her, the Atlantic crashing its gentle, gray waves. She enjoyed imagining herself like this, from the point of view of some infinitely knowledgeable and enamored stranger, someone who could tell even from afar just how special she was.
On a sweltering Sunday afternoon in July she returned to the city and found the apartment surprisingly cool; air-conditioning units had been installed in both rooms. The shades were drawn and the lights were off. “Hello?” she said, dropping her bags. “You guys home?”
No one was in the bedroom, and the food in the refrigerator was spoiling. There was an air of dust and abandonment that somehow felt new.
Then a key turned in the lock, and a middle-aged man she’d never seen before walked in.
“Get out of here,” she said instinctively. “I’m calling the police.”
Holding his hands up in deference, he looked afraid, even though he was well built and no doubt stronger than she was. He was wearing khaki pants and a short-sleeved plaid shirt. “Hey, now,” he said. “You must be Anne.”