“For Parents and Male Partners and Friends: After Her Abortion.”
“What Is HPV?”
There was also a Sharpie marker. Wren hiked her knee up and, with the marker, began to drawn stars on the sole of her Converse sneaker. One star, two. A constellation—Virgo. Just for the sheer sarcasm.
She knew that her aunt wasn’t as calm as she was making herself out to be. Aunt Bex had told Wren repeatedly that she didn’t feel comfortable coming inside, and would drop her off and wait in the parking lot. Until they’d gotten here, that is, and had seen the row of protesters. Then Aunt Bex had said there was no way in hell she was sending her girl in solo.
Last week in Aunt Bex’s studio she had heard something awesome on NPR: for the first time ever scientists had watched two neutron stars collide over a hundred million light-years away. It was called a kilonova, and it was such an enormous crash that gravitational waves were created, and light was released. The dude being interviewed said that it took a collision of forces that giant to create the particles that made up gold and platinum. Wren thought that was something her dad would love: to know that the most precious materials came from the clashes of titans.
She had to remember to tell him that. So she inked a tiny star on the crescent of skin between her left thumb and index finger. At dinner, he’d see it and say,You’re probably going to die of ink poisoning, you know,which would remind Wren to tell him about the kilonova. She’d conveniently omit the part about where she was when she’d drawn it on herself.
That’s what you did for people you loved, right? You protected them from what they didn’t want to know.
—
AFTER OLIVE’S APPOINTMENT, she had walked into the waiting room. Staggered, really. She didn’t know how she had gotten from the examination room to here. One minute she had been sitting with Harriet, the nurse practitioner she’d been seeing for years for her checkups, and trying to absorb what she had been told. Then just like that, her brain had hit its overload capacity. Somehow she had said goodbye, stood up, walked down the hall, and stood in front of the reception desk, her features blank.
Vonita, the lovely woman who ran the Center, had come from her desk and wrapped her massive arms tight around Olive. “Miss Olive,” she said. “How you holding up?”
How could she answer that?
Vonita steered her toward a seat in the waiting room, near a young girl who was tapping her foot anxiously. “You don’t have to leave yet,” Vonita said. “You just sit here, get your bearings.”
Olive nodded. It wasn’t her bearings that needed readjusting. Her brain, about which she knew more than the vast majority of people on this planet, was just fine. It was the rest of her body that felt foreign to her.
She had been betrayed by it before, but in a much different way. It had been ten years ago, when she was still living with a woman who, like a tide, was wearing her away at the edges. She pretended she was happy, but what she really meant was that she was settled. That this was easier than wondering, again, if there would ever be anyone for her.
Then she had gone to a faculty mixer at the university to celebrate the start of the new year. Her partner didn’t come—she hated these things, where no one seemed to ask the right questions about her and her career designing, as she called them, workable kitchens (but weren’t they all?). So Olive had attended alone, planning to stay just long enough to be seen by the head of the department, and then go home and indulge in a glass of wine or maybe a bottle. But then she noticed a woman at the bar with long hair, so long that it was unfashionable, like a seventies flashback. Like Lady Godiva, Olive thought, as she watched the woman throw back three shots of bourbon and ask the bartender for a fourth.
You okay?Olive asked her.
Yes.On the other hand,Peg replied,the dean of the engineering school is a misogynistic dick.
Olive didn’t answer. She, who had never cheated and had never wanted to, was watching Peg’s lips form the words, mesmerized.
Oh fuck,Peg said.You’re his wife, aren’t you?
Um, nope. Not even close. She moved closed and rested her elbow on the bar.Did you know that drinking doesn’t actually make you forget anything? When you’re blackout drunk, the brain just temporarily loses its ability to make memories.
Does that line ever work?Peg asked.
Don’t know. I’m road testing it.
Peg laughed.So. If I keep up this pace, I might not remember meeting you?
That’s about right.
She pushed away that last shot glass, and held out her hand to introduce herself.
Now, Olive buried her face in her hands. Oh, Jesus. Peg. How would she tell her?
The thought chased itself around and around in her mind, like a squirrel in the eaves. Olive could feel panic closing in on her. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes and tried to remind herself that what she was feeling was perfectly normal. The brain could only hold so much; it took roughly ninety minutes to clear its proverbial cache.
On the heels of that came another tidbit of knowledge, one she had often quoted when she handed back the first multiple-choice exam to groans of disappointment. Studies have shown that when presented with a list, the default of the brain is to pick whatever is first.
The same holds true for voting, and ballots.
But sometimes thereareno choices, Olive realized.
