Three Weeks in Spring

Chapter 6

Sharon Taylor had to come and talk. “This is a terrible problem, Mrs. Parker. I can’t talk on the phone. I have to come tonight to see you. You don’t know what it’s like. This is so awful.” And Joan said, “All right, come over.” And went down to tell her husband. He’ll be bullshit, she thought. He hates intrusions like this.

“Don’t get mad at me,” she said. He was lying on the living-room floor, talking to the boys. “I’ve had a rough day and I’m exhausted. I’m begging you to let me do this without having a fit. I need to do this.”

He knew why she needed to do this. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay. I won’t be mad at you.” He thought. Why the Christ can’t she keep it separate? Why does she let the goddamned kids get at her? She’s their teacher. She didn’t hire on to be their goddamned mother. “I’m betting pregnancy,” he said. David at sixteen agreed. Dan at twelve thought it would be a school problem, and Joan agreed with Dan.

“The Dean’s been mean to her,” she said, “or she’s been kicked out, something like that.”

“Knocked up,” Ace said.

“Pregnant,” Dave said.

And they were right. Sharon Taylor arrived with four friends in a red-eyed flurry of anxiety and Joan took them upstairs to Dan’s bedroom because it was more secluded.

Christ, here we are, sitting on the bed, we girls, smoking — I shouldn’t be smoking — and talking about Sharon who’s knocked up. It’s like twenty years ago at Colby when we girls would sit on the bed in the dorm and smoke and talk about someone who was knocked up or thought she was.

Sharon wanted to abort the fetus. She had already decided that. In fact she had decided everything. She’d been to the pregnancy clinic; she’d made an appointment in Boston for an abortion Saturday morning. What she wanted from Joan was approval.

“We only did it once, Professor Parker. Just one time.”

Shit luck, kid. You and me both, we have shit luck.

“You said in class that ovulation takes place twelve to fourteen days after the last period is over. But it didn’t. We only did it once and it was just before my next period. You said it wasn’t supposed to happen then.”

“Don’t get mad at me, hon. You either had a hell of a long-living egg or he had a hell of a viable sperm. Or you counted wrong. The point is, you’re pregnant, whether you are supposed to be or not.”

“Yes.”

What is my function here? She’s already decided to do the abortion. I’m supposed to give an adult okay. To tell her that she’s still a good person even if she is pregnant. I’m supposed to say if I were she I’d abort. Well, I would.

“Have you talked with your mother?”

“Oh, God no, I couldn’t tell her.”

“Father?”

“They’re divorced. I couldn’t...” She shook her head. The other girls murmured and nodded. No one could tell one’s mother or father.

“And Mike?”

“He wants to have the baby, get married right off and have the baby.”

“You don’t want that?”

“I love him, but I want to finish school. I don’t want to get married yet. I don’t want a baby. I want to keep going to school for another year.”

Joan nodded. This is grotesque, she thought. No, not grotesque... Ludicrous. Here I am up here at eleven-thirty at night smoking away — which I shouldn’t, and the more I smoke the worse I feel — talking it over with the kids about pregnancy, and I’m walking around with breast cancer... Christ I’m almost ready to say it — breast cancer. I have said it. But I can’t think about it. I have to think about Sharon and her pregnancy and how to make her feel okay about whatever she wants to do.

“So,” Joan said. “You’re in a situation where there are no perfect solutions. But abortion seems the least imperfect to you.” Me and Carl Rogers. Restate for her.

“I know, but we only did it one time.” It was a litany. She wasn’t old enough yet to accept imperfect solutions and problems that didn’t solve, and she kept invoking her bad luck as if reminding the gods that her slip had been minor.

“But once was enough this time. It’s down to a reasonably clear choice.” Joan kept trying to refocus the discussion. The cigarette had gotten to her and she felt sick. For the first time since she discovered the lump she felt sick. It’s just the cigarettes. It’s not the... lump. It’s the smoking, it always makes everyone feel lousy when they’re not used to it. “You either marry Mike and have the baby, or don’t marry Mike and have the baby, or you abort.”

“But I don’t want to marry Mike, yet.”

“The baby won’t wait.”

“Oh, Professor Parker...”

It went on, mostly in a circle, until after one. Sharon left, committed to her abortion, and Joan stumbled into the bedroom exhausted. Dan was asleep on her side of the bed and she had to wake him and walk him, somnambulant, upstairs to his bedroom, which still reeked of cigarette smoke and anxiety. The exhaustion was valuable. She fell asleep at once and didn’t wake until morning.

Thursday, April 17

Mammogram day. What a sappy name for such an important occasion. Mammogram. Sounds like something you send on Mother’s Day. Hello, Ma am, here’s your mammogram. There was some tension in Ace’s eyes, but not bad. There’s no Oh-my-God look there, she thought. He’s okay.

She went to Huckleberry Hill to supervise. He went to Northeastern to write.

Her supervision was a blur. She told Ruth Lenrow that she had a doctor appointment that afternoon.

“Is it anything big?”

“Ruth, it may be something really big. And I’m really scared about it.”

“Oh, my God,” Ruth said. “I hope it isn’t bad.”

“I hope it isn’t, Ruth, but, Jesus, if it is bad, it’s really bad.”

What in hell am I doing? Why am I saying this? How can I say that and not tell her? It’s worse than telling her the facts. But she didn’t tell her, and Ruth’s face showed the strain of compassion and uncertainty for the rest of the morning as Joan supervised.

As Ace checked his mail in the English Department, Ivy Derosier asked him if anything was the matter.

“How come no singing and whistling?”

“I’m thinking,” he said. “It’s very hard for me.” It was a question he would hear and an answer he would give often that spring. It bothered him that it showed. If Ivy had noticed, how about Joan? Grace under pressure, he thought, as he rolled a blank sheet of paper into the typewriter. In the upper right-hand corner he typed Parker-Stakes-3. Me and Santiago. He had nowhere near her capacity for linear thought. His mind was always full of images and allusions. Pictures and scenes. But he was clearly aware of the surprise he felt that here in the crisis of his life he was thinking about Hemingway. Sonova bitch, he thought. Me and Santiago. Or Dilsey. They will endure. Faulkner and Hemingway and me. Amazing. He concentrated on the story he was writing.

The last time Joan had been to Union Hospital was when Daniel had an emergency appendectomy. That was also the last time she had seen Gladys Carter — in the waiting room as they waited for the diagnosis on Dan and found he’d have to have emergency surgery. Last December.

When Joan walked into the waiting room at X-ray to wait for her mammogram, Gladys Carter was there.