Story 10: The Gathering

Ashley was watching Lydia’s intense conversation with her husband when both of them turned toward her. Ashley retreated into the long, narrow kitchen and wiped her face on the inside of one of the cupboards, then hoped her tears wouldn’t spot the glasses.

“If the punch bowl were a drain,” Lydia said drily as she came into the kitchen, “our in-laws would be going down it.”

Another fencing move by Lydia. What to do when your sister-in-law always drew back after just a touch but wouldn’t let you leave the field? Ashley waited. Sometimes she ferreted out Lydia’s motives so that she could laugh at them, but it was Christmastime, and her mother would no doubt say at least once before the day itself: “Let’s all be nice to each other.” But could they comfort each other? Lydia was waiting too.

Ashley decided to begin a conversation that had been weighing on her for months. “There’s something I’m afraid of,” she told her sister-in-law.

Lydia leaned against the counter, her suit and pumps and hair all the same shade of black. “What’s that?”

“That we’ll start to go our separate ways now that Tom is gone.” Lydia frowned, and for a moment Ashley’s stomach knotted, but she kept talking. “He just seemed to have radar. He could tell when people were about to fight. I used to watch him when we were in college. He could always smooth things over.”

“No one in this family fights,” Lydia pointed out.

“I suppose you’re right,” Ashley said. “When one person in this family gets angry, all the others go off on tangents or bring up the past instead of sticking to the issue. Teddy says that’s why nothing gets resolved.”

“Oh, Teddy,” Lydia shot back. “God knows how long resolving Teddy would take.”

They laughed, but Ashley could sense an undercurrent of anger in Lydia’s voice. “If we do drift apart,” Lydia said, taking a small black leather notebook out of her jacket pocket, “it won’t be because of fights.” She handed the book to Ashley, who opened it wonderingly. It had Tom’s name on the first page and was dated more than twenty years ago.

“Think of it as my late husband’s last gift to you.” Lydia turned abruptly and strode out of the kitchen.

Ashley paged through the book, deciphering Tom’s scrawl about pre-med classes and college activities, especially anything that Teddy, Tom’s big brother, had been involved in. Then she came to a page that had her name on it. As she read, she began to cry again. She put the book down and sobbed softly, hoping no one in the living room would hear. Finally she wiped her face, hid the book in the placemats drawer, and left the kitchen in search of Lydia. She found her talking to Teddy again. The highlights in Lydia’s hair gleamed in the lights from the Christmas tree. When she smiled, all Ashley could see was dark red lipstick stretching. Maybe she’d had too much punch, but the bowl was still half full.

“Tom was the one driving the boat that day,” Lydia said. “That was the day Natalie learned to slalom.”

“That’s right,” Teddy laughed. “Nothing like a snake in the water to help you learn to stand up on a ski.”

“And then that night we roasted marshmallows in the fireplace, and you told ghost stories,” Lydia said. “Between the snakes and the ghosts, Natalie couldn’t sleep and came into our bedroom ’cause it was closer.”

“That’s right, she did. Do you remember, Ash?”

She nodded at his old nickname for her. The shadows the tree cast on the walls mesmerized her. She’d rented a sprayer and applied the orange peel texture when nobody else had wanted to, the first summer they’d spent here. The curtains were also her handiwork. Ashley could go through the house and remember the last few years by what she had sewn and reconstructed and hung on the walls. Everyone else in her family had markers outside, on a road or in a body of water. But she put hers inside, where they kept better.

Teddy kissed her. “You were swaying,” he said, looking at her quizzically. “Are you all right?”

“Just tired. I think I’ll go sit on the dock where it’s cooler.” She turned to Lydia. “Will you come with me?”

Lydia nodded. Teddy fetched their coats, and they went outside, through the porch where all the cousins, Natalie included, had squeezed in and around the glider. They didn’t notice them, too busy with their plans for Christmas break. “Will we have a white Christmas?” someone asked, the eternal Kansas City question, but when Ashley looked back she couldn’t tell who was speaking from the mass of red and gold and green sweaters and wool skirts and pants at the other end of the room. It was cold on the dock but quiet, with just a murmur of voices coming from the porch. Once she heard the glider squeak. She sat on the ladder and leaned against the railing, closing her eyes. Lydia sat down behind her, on a bench.

“It was just a kiss,” Ashley said. “That was all.”

**

A kiss. From Tom, one afternoon more than twenty years ago. Before she was engaged to Teddy, before she’d put anything on the walls in this house. She and Teddy had been about to graduate from the University of Missouri, in May in the heat of Columbia. Even now, only a matter of days before Christmas and years distant, the thought of Missouri heat could keep her warm.

Tom was only a freshman and Teddy’s little brother, but he knew more people than she did at school. People greeted him wherever he went. He was at Teddy’s apartment, helping her prepare for a graduation party. They were the entertainers. Teddy had gone out, talking about politics. She and Tom had made everything they could; no one would arrive for two hours. They were sitting on the apartment patio, on a scruffy couch that only students could love, and he said, “There’s something I want to ask you.”

“What?” she said, turning toward him.

He took her face in his hands and kissed her until she pushed him away so that she could breathe, but his hands still framed her face. She even stopped worrying about bugs in the couch.

“You seem to be immune to the heat,” he said, but his hands on her were not sweaty, just warm and soft. They smelled of avocado and bread. His eyes were a darker brown than Teddy’s, but his hair was lighter, and his face always looked a little hollow.

“It’s because I’m so pale,” she told him. One thing she admired about Teddy’s family was how they could stand in the sun for a moment or two and get a tan. Like flowers that absorbed sunlight and turned it into something colorful and full of life. She could never tolerate the sun for more than half an hour at a time.

“Perhaps,” he said, taking her hands and turning them this way and that to look at her skin.

“What did you want to know?”

He smiled a little ruefully. “Whether you think you’ve been with Teddy long enough.”

A question on the minds of everyone, apparently: she and Teddy, her friends, their parents—though the parents were considerably more subtle about it than the friends. And she and Teddy thought about it often, but they pretended that graduation was all that mattered.

She didn’t want to answer any of them, so she kissed him again, let him maneuver her closer, and stayed there for a while. Only when they stood up and he brushed couch fuzz off her dress did she feel sweat trickling down her back. People would be arriving soon.

“Let me know,” he said to her as they went inside.

And she had decided two weeks later, when Teddy asked her a question, she could never remember exactly what, and offered a ring. For a moment she had stood immobile at the Rose Garden fountain in Loose Park, but then she had begun to reach—for him and a lifetime of more than warmth and softness, for the energy he possessed. Once the ring was on, he tipped them both into the fountain, where they lay shrieking and laughing. Amazing, how many different ways there are to ask.

**

“Just one?” Lydia asked. Her voice was ragged.

Ashley opened her eyes and turned her head. It was so dark on the dock that Lydia’s red lipstick looked black, although her dangling earrings sparkled a little as she shivered.

“Yes, just that one afternoon.”

“You didn’t love him?”

“No,” Ashley said, “I did love him.”

“Then why did you marry Teddy?”

Why? Ashley asked herself now, with icy water lapping at her red holiday shoes, the brilliance of stars in the dark water. Why did I say yes to Teddy and not Tom?

“I think I must have been afraid of too much quiet,” she told Lydia. “Of being bored by comfort.”

For a moment she amused herself by switching lives, putting Lydia in her place. She began to giggle and wanted some more punch. Lydia could never have handled Teddy. He would have worn her out. She must be made of stronger stuff than anyone imagined because after two decades of marriage, he could still surprise her just by coming into a room. She must be as strong as the wall between the lake and the house.

“Tom’s not boring,” Lydia said.

“No, he wasn’t,” Ashley agreed. “But the two of us together—that would have been boring.”

Up at the house, the screen door banged, and shoes came scratching down the path.

Natalie and Lydia’s youngest daughter ventured onto the dock. “You two have been out here a while.”

“Just talking about Tom,” Ashley told them.

Natalie handed her a rum ball. “Don’t stay out here all night, Mom. It’s already below freezing.” Shivering, she raced back to the porch, calling, “She’s on the dock.”

Ashley didn’t know why that should be a revelation to anyone. They’d walked past the entire party to leave the house. After she’d spent the whole day preparing, couldn’t they allow her a little peace, a little conversation?

Lydia’s daughter held out her hand, and slowly Lydia took it and stood up. They walked up the path together. Ignoring them, Ashley turned back to the water.

She and Tom had talked about it at the engagement party his parents had thrown. Needing quiet then as she did now, she had escaped the party to sit outside for a moment, and he had followed her.

“I should have asked sooner,” he said.

“It wouldn’t have made a difference,” Ashley told him.

He put his hand up to her face, and she didn’t move away. “But we’re so comfortable together.”

“Exactly,” she said. “No passion.”

“And you think Teddy can give you that?” he asked doubtfully.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m certain of it.”

That conversation had never really ended. At parties, at family gatherings, they had relived their short moment in looks, in the way he almost kissed her on the mouth in front of their spouses, in the way she would stroke his arm sometimes in passing. Some days she had hoped Teddy or Lydia would notice, but no one had ever said anything. Until now.

When she finally opened the door to the porch, the cousins were still there, wanting to know what she had been thinking about so long. Sometimes the voices of children reminded her of Charlie Brown’s teacher, all sound and no sense. What did they think she could possibly tell them?

“It’s a secret,” she replied very seriously. They were all desperate for more of Tom, but she had nothing to add. “A deep, dark secret for a cold night.”

Her in-laws were sitting down in the living room, conversing in soft tones. She stood there in the doorway for a few seconds, listening to them weave the tapestry of reminiscence. It was nearly ten o’clock, and people began to stir and stretch. A yawn or two. She wanted them to stay longer, have a slumber party. She wanted the distraction of company, just not intense scrutiny. Ashley walked to the punch bowl, filled a glass full enough for her to get tipsy again, and tapped the crystal ladle against the bowl.

“It’s not over yet,” she said. “We haven’t watched The Grinch or A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

“Is that a family tradition?” Lydia asked brightly, even though she was slumped down in the middle of the couch, next to Teddy. He looked up at Ashley and smiled.

“I think it should be,” he said and called out to the porch. “Kids! Come in here!” All the cousins slouched resentfully into the living room. From the lake, a welcome breeze blew in the sounds of branches scratching each other’s backs.

“What?”

“We’re going to watch Christmas shows,” Teddy informed them.

“You mean home movies?”

“No way, man, It’s a Wonderful Life.”

“Noooo, not that again!”

Teddy was a big, graceful man. Without bumping the many bodies heating up the living room, he got up and seated Ashley next to Lydia on the couch, smiling at both in turn. “If you’re tired,” he said to the younger ones, “we have pillows. You can sleep on the floor.” In a few minutes he returned with armfuls of pillows and blankets, and the cousins camped around Teddy on the floor. Natalie put in the tape of The Grinch that Ashley had recorded earlier that week.

The adults had their patterns, Ashley thought. No doubt Tom’s death would change things, but they wouldn’t notice except in those moments of revelation that were always immediately followed by dismissal. Or in the middle of the night when some fading noise awoke them while their partners and children slept hoarsely and seemed to whisper directions in their sleep.

When The Grinch was over, Natalie wanted to watch Charlie Brown, but Lydia’s youngest daughter voted for Frosty the Snowman. Teddy sat up between the girls and suggested sleep: “It’s late. We should all go to bed.”

“No way,” Ashley said, laughing. “We’re watching Charlie Brown, and you’re all sleeping over.” She stood up to get more punch.

“Aunt Lydia can sleep in my room,” Natalie suggested. “That way she won’t have to sleep in the single bed in the office.”

“The kids can sleep down here,” Teddy said quickly, glancing at Lydia. “All six of you on the floor.”

Lydia’s son muttered, “Whatever.”

“Just stay away from me,” his sister said. She had just turned fourteen.

Natalie said, “It’ll be cozy!”

“I want to sleep with you, Mommy,” Lydia’s youngest said. She sat down on her mother’s lap.

And so it went, everyone claiming a place. Ashley would have watched Charlie Brown ten times or more, but the cousins began to mock it during the first showing, so she and Teddy went upstairs. As she was taking off her jewelry, he stepped up behind her and enclosed her in his arms, throwing her off balance a little. The punch was still circulating in her blood, making her feel flushed.

“What were you and Lydia talking about for so long?”

“About Tom,” she said.

Teddy kissed the back of her neck. “She found out that he loved you.”

Ashley felt suddenly afraid. “What makes you think that?” she asked him.

“Because he told me,” he said, gently turning her to face him and kissing her for a long time. “He told me the night of the engagement party.”

She looked up at him with wonder. “You never mentioned it.”

Teddy shook his head. “Why should I? I knew you loved me more.”

“Yes,” Ashley said, feeling how that statement remained true after so many years.

“I’ll talk to Lydia again tomorrow,” he said.

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“Yes,” he said, “because I can tell her that she was the love of my brother’s life.” He smiled down at her. “And I don’t think he told me that later just to save face. He truly meant it. She inspired him.”

“And you inspire me,” she told him, pressing up against him and wrapping her arms around his neck.

Even though they made love well into the morning, Ashley awoke before dawn and climbed up to the attic, where she had put in stairs underneath the small hexagonal window. She could perch on the top stair and look out—the closest thing this house had to a window seat. A few ducks foraged around the edges of the lake, which was otherwise undisturbed. Ashley sat there and dreamed she was a sailor who had to reach harbor before the sun rose. Before the spirits that hovered where land met sea were burned up by the sun.

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The Abortion Conversation Project

When I read that this organization was founded in 2000 by the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, I thought, Hmmm. How much of a conversation can this site really spark with the pro-life folks?

But then I read this on the "Starting the Conversation" portion of the site:


3. "WHAT ARE YOU SAYING AND HOW ARE YOU SAYING IT?"
Is our own language polarizing and judgmental? Are we demonizing the anti-abortion side at the expense of understanding the issue? Are our words "battle bound" and warlike? For example: "Our side is under attack and we have to fight back." "Those anti's are crazy." The "abortion war" has impacted us all and keeps us in an us/them conflict-driven mode which obscures what abortion is really about. Taking responsibility for our own language is a first step to self-awareness on this issue.


I thought that was quite generous. And it really goes to the heart of what I wanted to accomplish with this site--getting away from language that gets people's backs up.

Here's another quote from the site that I liked. You can find the entire story here:


I've been particularly frustrated with the image of abortion providers in the past 10 years. We have been depicted as money-hungry, unethical, and murderous outcasts in the world of medicine. How could we expect the public to know who we really are when our antagonists the anti-abortion folks--were the only ones talking about us? The wrong people have been telling our story for too many years. And, because of very real security issues, most abortion providers have avoided high-profile situations in their communities. Ultimately the only people telling our stories were the people who disagree with us--or worse, actually hate us. I decided that part of my job is to speak up and speak out about our work in this honorable profession.


***

On another note, if you're looking for funding for an abortion, look here.

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Story 9: Deirdre, in Xeriscape: Two Groups

This is Christmas with my parents: several presents from each to each, always beautiful, always something that the receiver mentioned months ago and the giver remembered. Reminding me why they’re such good doctors. Long ago I decided not to be one, ’cause who could compete with these two?

This is the meal I help prepare and clean up, like a good only daughter: Cornish hens, twice-baked potatoes, sweet potatoes with melted marshmallows, crescent rolls, green beans with bits of bacon, key lime pie. It’s our favorite. This is the aftermath of our early dinner: a little music, maybe a collection of arias. Me, lying on the floor, looking up at my parents in their chairs, chatting about college and friends, watching them read the paper. Almost completely quiet, except for footsteps crunching in the snow.

But this year, I think of another night. Two weeks ago. I convinced Josh and Jodi and Natalie to come to Evergreen with me to look at the lights. Lots of people put up lights, of course, but I just think they’re prettier in Evergreen. And this way my friends get to see my house, which is very impressive.

Muffled from head to toe, one hand cold and the other burned by hot cider, we wandered around my neighborhood. It was a long walk because the houses are spread out on the side of a hill, with mine at the top. Natalie surged from me and Jodi, arm in arm, to Josh, like a pool ball trying to escape the rack. And about that brightly dressed too. She began bouncing up and down ahead of us, sputtering, and just then trees netted in turquoise lights appeared around a curve in the road, framing her. For the first and only time, Natalie reminded me of a poem: “She floated, a blue blossom, over the street.” Jodi and I stopped to take it all in.

Usually Natalie inspires other emotions in me than poetry. But Christmas of our junior year will bring Natalie this: family, in the Midwest. Probably no snow. This year, a period of mourning for her uncle. Here, my family is quiet and triangular, balanced just as our house balances on the ridge. There, warmth, loud voices competing, and a door open, a window ajar, a cool absence. At moments like these, something like affection for another only child, but not what you’d call the spirit of the season.

Note: The quote is from "Sappho," by James Wright.

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How forgetful of me

When I posted "Cradle" (Story 7) a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised to find that I'd revised it--in fact, that I'd combined it with "Talks with Janie," the story that used to precede it. I had completely forgotten.

The genesis for the revision was a workshop I took with Viet Dinh at Lighthouse Writers in Denver. It was supposed to be an intermediate-level workshop and was, unlike most I've taken, almost all men. It was also one of the worst I've ever had, partly because of the instructor and partly because some of the people in it had no writing experience to speak of.

I'd wanted to workshop two stories together (Cradle and One Summer in Missouri) to see if they should be combined. But Viet didn't want to do that; he wanted to make sure each story "stood alone." Of course, that was the reason I wanted to workshop them at once, because I thought the first might just be background for the second and I wanted other writers to tell me if they agreed. So I was already pissed about that ...

Warning: Rant coming!

while I was sitting in my workshop listening to my characters getting called a "tramp" and a "cad." I don't believe I've ever heard anyone do that before, to me or anyone else. Viet then gives me his opinion of the story, which was helpful, and then runs to the bathroom to pee, so I didn't get a chance to ask questions. In the workshop for the next victim, Viet did something so weird I hardly know how to describe it. He said to the guy, "Angry face on," and then proceeded to critique his story. Then he said "Angry face off," and I truly believe he thought he had done something clever. It's a good thing he didn't do that to me; I would've gone ballistic. WTF!

But that wasn't even...

Warning: Rant keeps going!

the worst of it.

The next week, we workshopped a piece about a bunch of Vietnam vets going to prostitutes in Thailand, I think it was, and nobody called them tramps. I was too much of a wimp to do so, and none of the men in attendance commented about guys fucking women they'd just hired, even though one of the guys in the class thought there was something wrong with my female character sleeping with a new boyfriend after three weeks.

Whatever.

OK. The rant is over. I stayed in that workshop for 3 weeks, I think, and then gave up on feeling comfortable in it. Viet no longer teaches for Lighthouse, which I think is a good thing, because he obviously didn't read the memo on being positive (which has its own drawbacks, of course).

But I realized after reading the comments from that workshop that I had two stories in a row doing essentially the same thing, and they weren't the two stories I thought they were. Both "Talks with Janie" and "Cradle" had to do with Natalie letting go of the past and moving on, but they also had to do with her breaking silence in various ways. (So the title of the book's not subtle; what can I say?) I added Janie as a frame to "Cradle" and took out the long scene in an older version of "Cradle" in which Natalie and Chris meet. So now that meeting is only referenced in a later story; it never takes place on camera.

I like "Cradle" better now that it's been revised. I got to write about a real person in my life (a woman I met at Lake Tapawingo, which is a real place outside Kansas City). But she didn't really need her own story. She's more a kind of local color than even a minor character in her own right.

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Story 8: One Summer in Missouri

They started coming to Lake Tapawingo every summer the year Natalie turned sixteen, and for three months each year they lived suspended—in warmth, water, the voices of families drifting down the shore. This summer, the second she spent with Chris, the suspension broke, and there was a fall.

Natalie was frightened when her father put down the telephone and took her mother in his arms. She waited until he said into her mother’s hair: “Tom was in an accident.” Then he started to shake. Natalie stepped closer to them and then stood still until they noticed her again.

**

Natalie’s uncle had left the lake right after dinner that night in late June because he had to meet a patient early the next day at his clinic in Kansas City, and Aunt Lydia and their five children had not left until nearly ten o’clock. On their way home, they found his car, which had rolled into a deep ditch barely a mile from home and crashed there.

“They pulled alongside his car,” her father told Natalie at the wake. He looked pale, more like Tom than she had ever noticed, not ruddy and lively as he usually did. He had put on too much aftershave and smelled sharp. “The right end was smashed way in where it had gone off the road and hit the side of the ditch, but the lights on the left side were still on and the radio was playing Fleetwood Mac. The engine wasn’t running. Lydia said she pried open the door on the left side and tried to find his pulse. There was blood down one side of his face and splattered across the windshield.”

Natalie wished her father hadn’t told her that last detail. The night of the accident, he had said that Tom fell asleep and hit his head on the steering wheel. That was a clean way to die. But now she had visions of Tom, brown eyes staring through blood-streaked brownish hair, mouth open, and reddish spittle coming out. All in front of Lydia and their five kids. At the wake, of course, he was dry; in fact, he felt as rubbery and cool as a Ken doll did after a night out in the yard. Just like her great-uncle Theo five years ago. She wondered if funeral directors would ever figure out how to make bodies feel natural. Or would that be too upsetting?

There were other details that remained with Natalie: the Frankenstein scar on the side of his head, where his skin had split as it met the wheel; the slight smile he was said to have had on his face, as if he were pleased that he didn’t have to see any more patients; how one arm rested on the bottom curve of the steering wheel, palm open. And she had questions: How fast had he been going to die this way? Had he been trying to outrun sleep?

The morning after the wake, Chris appeared at their door, arms stacked with casserole dishes. Natalie’s father was still in bed at 10 o’clock, but her mother thanked him and took the food to the kitchen, while Chris pulled Natalie out to the screened porch. They sat on the glider, arms intertwined, listening to a robin fluting in the distance and waves slapping softly against the wall between the yard and the lake.

“I keep thinking about Memorial Day this year,” he said suddenly.

“Why?” she asked him. Across the lake, several women were setting out brunch on their dock.

“That was the first time I felt really comfortable with your family.”

“Really? It took you ’til this year?”

He put his hand on her knee and played with the hairs she always missed while shaving. “Yeah. I liked them all, but I didn’t feel like one of the gang until this summer. Then your uncle stopped needling me, and everyone else could relax.”

“He was possessive of me when you were around.” Natalie started to laugh and rocked the glider violently for a few seconds. It produced an impressive metallic clang. “Checking on me by picking on you. Even more so than my father. My father gets things out, but with Tom, it’s more of a slow burn.”

Chris took her reaction to be grief and pulled her closer. She put her head on his shoulder and watched boats tow their skiers, creating rings in the lake water. Phrases went through her head: Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to weep.

Only a month since Memorial Day. Her uncle had joined them on the dock that afternoon and quizzed Chris about school, while Natalie had watched people eating and swimming across the lake, as she was doing now. Every time someone had dived off a dock into the water, Natalie had felt colder, so she had placed a towel over her legs to keep goosebumps from rising. She wanted to believe the chill had been a warning, but five summers at the lake had taught her how unpredictable Memorial Day weather could be. It had been nothing more than a cool day in late spring.

“Earth to Natalie,” Chris said.

She stiffened a little and then turned to face him, staring at his brown hair and eyes, feeling relieved that he didn’t have her uncle’s light hair or long face or smell of medical chemicals. He smiled at her, and the patches of sunburn on his round cheeks and across his nose became more visible. “Thanks for coming over,” she said flatly.

“You want me to leave?” he asked, startled. She nodded. He got up slowly and left, glancing back at her from the stairs, but Natalie wasn’t looking. She curled up on her side in the glider, pushing her bangs out of her eyes, but couldn’t get comfortable. There was a pillow on top of the storage box next to the glider, and when she lifted it, she saw the Ken doll underneath. Just his head was visible, as if he were rising out of a sea of toys and stuffed animals that filled the box. Natalie lay down, head on the pillow, and watched the family having brunch across the lake. Every so often a boat towing a skier sliced her view in half.

When she heard her father’s voice in the kitchen, she rolled off the glider onto her knees and then stood up stiffly. He and her mother were marveling over the food Chris had brought: brisket, shredded chicken with Arthur Bryant’s BBQ sauce, deviled eggs, macaroni and cheese with green and red peppers, and green beans in mushroom sauce. Chris and his parents were excellent cooks, skilled at making common foods seem rich and exotic. Natalie found a spoon and sampled the macaroni, which smelled like parmesan cheese and felt silky on her tongue; then her father took the spoon and did the same. Any other day, her mother would have taken away the spoon and dished up their own servings, but she remained still, watching, a grave expression on her face.

The first week after her uncle died, Chris came over every day, at different times, trying to find an hour of the day when she was willing to talk for more than a few minutes. Once he arrived at the front door when Natalie was sitting in the living room, daydreaming, and stared at her through the screen until she noticed him. She walked to the door but didn’t open it.

Chris pressed his nose against the screen and said, “My parents are at a teachers’ conference in Kansas City all day today. Want to come over?” She nodded, and he opened the door and led her outside, down the street, and into his house. Last summer at about this time, they had made love for the first time in the TV room downstairs. Now Natalie followed him blindly, running her hands down his back as soon as they got in the house. They tripped over furniture and the edges of stairs, found the floor, and moved just enough clothing out of the way. All afternoon they were inside in the dark while the lake caught reflections outside. Finally, they turned on a light, and the clock read 5. They got dressed and straightened the room.

As they walked upstairs, Natalie’s eyes watered. She had never noticed how bright Chris’s kitchen and dining room could be. She closed her eyes for a moment and saw Tom’s eyes closing and then flaring open as he pressed the gas pedal harder, trying to get home before sleep claimed him.

“Natalie?” Chris asked, tracing the curve of her eyelashes. She opened her eyes and blinked at him.

“Do you want to stay for dinner?”

She shook her head. She wanted to get home, eat something small, and go to bed.

“I’m exhausted,” she told him.

“I wore you out?” he asked, smiling a little.

Natalie shrugged, feeling irritated. She kissed him goodbye as nicely as she could and left, unable to think of anything to say that would comfort herself or reassure him.

In her room, she drank a glass of milk, ate some of the green bean casserole, and listened to Fleetwood Mac. No one could remember which song had been playing when Lydia found Tom’s car. So Natalie played all their albums and rubbed her eyes. Her tear ducts seem to have tightened, and the pressure built from her chest all the way to her eyes until, when she finally started to cry, it actually hurt for the first few seconds.

After Natalie found sleep, she dreamed that she and Chris were in a softly painted room with Tom, who was shouting, “Your last name is Burnet? You’re a salad green!” Chris’s mouth was moving, but whether from hunger or speech, she couldn’t tell, and bright green burnet leaves began to sprout from his belly and along his hips. Then Tom was gone, and when she turned back to Chris he had changed into Ben, her first boyfriend, though he had never been much of a friend, and she wouldn’t dignify him with the title of lover.

Chris’s parents attended the conference in Kansas City the next day as well, and again, she and Chris lay naked in the TV room during the afternoon. But this time, she told him about the dream.

“That comment about my name was one of the first things your uncle said to me last summer, right after I shook his hand,” Chris said. “I was really embarrassed.”

Natalie laughed harshly. “You thought he was an idiot, didn’t you?”

“He seemed a little hostile at first,” Chris admitted.

“And then he called you ‘Green’ and you were mad ’cause nobody had called you that since high school. I was afraid I’d never see you again.”

Chris traced a line down her nose. “Well, I got over it.”

Natalie curled up closer to him, learning her forehead against his. “It bothers me that you turned into Ben. The two of you have never been together in a dream before.”

“You feel unprotected,” Chris told her. “Because Tom is gone.”

“He was the one who told my parents to talk to me, that something was wrong,” she said. “He was the only one who could see Ben inside me.”

She couldn’t see Chris’s face very well, but his voice became precise and slow. “He was only there once, Natalie.”

“Physically, yes, But even that seemed to go on forever.”

Chris stroked her neck. “And your uncle got rid of him.”

“Sort of,” Natalie said, tilting her head to take advantage of the caress. “I think Ben was my ghost for a while, and Tom made other people see him.”

“That gives me the creeps,” Chris said. “As if he’s watching us.”

“Ben’s gone now. He’s been gone for a long time.”

“When did that happen?”

“A year ago,” Natalie said, smiling in the dark. “The first time we were alone in this room.”

That night he convinced her to stay for dinner. But when she saw the variety of food he took from the refrigerator and the cabinet, it made her tired. She walked over to him and closed the cabinet.

“Please,” she told him, “just something simple. I don’t want anything complicated.” She looked down at the packages on the counter and picked up a few, which she handed to him.

“Carrots, Uncle Ben’s Long Grain and Wild Rice, and cheese?”

“That sounds good,” she said. “Vegetable, grains, and dairy. Who needs meat? It’s too hard to digest.”

He smiled at her, a little confused. She knew he wanted to hug her, but his arms were full of processed food packages. “Do you want them all mixed together?”

“No. I want cheese on crackers and carrots on the side, raw and sliced.” She went into the dining room and sat at the oak table, holding up the front page of the Kansas City Star in a way that seemed familiar. Then she remembered—her father had sat at their table this morning, pretending to read the paper in just this position, but with none of his usual grunts or laughter. Natalie could feel that the information wasn’t getting over the wall he had built around himself.

Chris’s parents arrived just as he was setting down their plates. His mother stood and looked at their dinner.

“That is … spare,” Beryl said.

“And orange,” Joe added.

“It was what Natalie wanted,” Chris said.

“You always find the right word,” Natalie told her. Beryl smiled. She and Chris’s father went into the kitchen and made coffee for everyone. They returned with brimming cups. Natalie noticed that hers was just as she liked it, beige with sugar, but when she looked at the others’ cups, she was surprised that Beryl and Joe took coffee black and that Chris’s coffee was not as pale as hers. Was she forgetting things, or had she failed to notice in the past year?

“How are you, Natalie?” Beryl asked.

“OK,” Natalie said, without smiling. She had noticed that Beryl seldom grinned or laughed out loud.

“Is there anything we can do to help?”

Stop asking me questions you should know the answer to, Natalie thought, but she doubted that Beryl wanted that much honesty from her. “It was really nice of you to send the food,” Natalie said instead.

“Do you need anything else?” Clearly, Beryl was on a mission. Natalie wished she could use the Kansas City Star as a barrier, the way her father had.

“No, I don’t think so. Mom seems to have taken up cooking with a vengeance. All I want to do is sit around.”

Beryl nodded.

“Oh, and we need to return your dishes.”

“It’s not important,” Chris said. “How was the conference?”

Their voices faded as Natalie sipped her coffee. Why was theirs always better than her parents’? Surely her mother bought gourmet coffee? But theirs was less strong, more flavorful. She surveyed their house. All their furniture was clean, worn, and cushy, unlike her grandparents’ house, with its sense of style and arrangement imparted by her mother. Some of the items were clearly heirlooms, others Chris’s childhood favorites. They had been in this house for only a year, but it had more family history than her grandparents’ house that had been in the family for decades.

Natalie finished her coffee and said, “I should go home.” She realized she had interrupted them, but she had no desire to make conversation anyway, except for the murmurs she and Chris made alone in the dark. She kissed Chris on the cheek and thanked his parents for dinner. When she got home, she went down to the dock, where her parents rocked slowly in the iron chairs, and slipped between them to sit on the bench. None of them said anything. Natalie wanted only to sit and let the day’s remaining heat sink into her and the slight breeze take off the edge. And sleep with Chris. When they were together, grief fed the physical sensations and then tapered off as they did. But as soon as Chris wanted to talk, she became desperate to leave. What was so bad about silence between a couple? It could be full of all sorts of subjects that needed to rest and ripen between them.

After a few yawns, her father got up and trudged to the house, saying “’Night.” Her mother looked her over as if she were just now recognizing her.

“I don’t think I’ve really talked to you for days,” she told Natalie. “How are you?”

“OK. How’s Dad?”

“I think he’s lost ten pounds since Tom died. I don’t know what to do.”

Natalie got up and sat in the chair her father had just vacated. Iron didn’t hold a person’s body heat the way fabric and vinyl could, but the metal was still slightly warmed. Her mother was wearing a yellow linen dress that glowed in the twilight and darkened her auburn hair. Natalie placed her hand on her mother’s arm for just a second.

“Remember how at birthdays, sometimes, Dad would tell funny stories about the person having the birthday?”

Her mother smiled slowly. “Once he told my women’s group about the time we were at the Renaissance festival and a little boy ran up to me and grabbed my skirt. It was an elastic waistband, so down it came in front of hundreds of people. I haven’t worn one since.”

Natalie continued. “Why don’t we ask Dad to tell us stories about Tom? Maybe that will ease things for him.”

“I should know how to make him feel better after all these years,” her mother said, fiddling with the round neckline of her dress, “but I don’t.”

The sun had gone behind the trees across the lake. “I’m going to talk to Dad,” Natalie said to her mother, who nodded but otherwise stayed put. As she reached the yard, she heard her mother murmur, “But who will ease things for me?”

Upstairs, her parents’ room was illuminated only by the orange sunset high up in the windows. Her father lay on his back and stared at it without acknowledging Natalie. He did look thin underneath the quilt and seemed hardly to breathe, until he sighed out of the corner of his mouth and blew hair off his face. He had needed a haircut when Tom died, and now clumps of reddish-brown hair stuck out in every direction. She sat down next to him on the wide bed and said, “I want you to tell me a story about Tom, something that happened before I can remember.”

For a while her father paid attention to the light moving down the window panes. Then he laughed and looked at her. “When Tom was in medical school, I bugged him to let me see a cadaver that had been worked on. You know how people say, ‘He had some nerve?’ Well, I wanted to see nerves. So he snuck me in one night after the last class.”

“That must have been spooky.”

“It was OK when the lights were on and he was nearby. But at one point he went to the bathroom, and I was left alone with a roomful of dead bodies with their nerves hanging out. Tom had stretched a few out with clamps so I could see which one was which. I swore I could hear them jangling.” He stopped talking.

“Did you get caught?” Natalie asked, wanting the conversation to continue.

“Tom never got caught.” He turned back to face the windows, which were mostly dark now. “Ever since then, whenever I’m stressed out, I dream about those bodies, as if they were violins, and the nerves were their strings. I’ve been having that dream all week.”

She leaned over him and kissed his cheek. “But you won’t have it tonight.”

“I won’t?”

“No, not since you’ve told me.”

“Good.”

After midnight, Natalie was still awake, thinking of her father’s dream of Tom and the cadavers—the dead among the dead. It was probably too much to call it a prophecy, what her father had dreamed for years. And then there was her dream of Tom and Chris and Ben, three men connected only by her or by what she had said of one to the other. She hoped the dead would not invade her dreams. A dream could not be taken as a sign of love, for dreams were markers of invasion and experience, of the events and people life placed in one’s way rather than those one truly chose. Dreams were a reminder of what could have been, of what might happen to those who were not careful. And, Natalie had to admit, at times she could have been more careful with men.

When she went down to breakfast the next morning, her father was reading the paper, snorting at Reagan’s latest announcement about the defense budget, looking rested and more like himself. He told her, “You were right. I didn’t have that dream.”

**

After the fireworks on the Fourth, July offered nothing but endless, muggy heat. On the water or off it, the sun was as close and bright as a bathroom mirror first thing in the morning. A few minutes ago, Natalie and Chris had been rocking the largest inner tube either of them had ever seen, brought home by her father the week before. She had taught him the trick last summer: place your feet on either side of the legs of the person opposite you and lock your knees. Then rock. Her feet just barely reached the other side of the innertube, but his knees were bent slightly. Their hands clasped each other’s wrists, and they pulled away from each other, elbows locked straight, as the tube pushed the lake down and then rose up. When Chris closed his eyes, Natalie lifted up her feet and tumbled backward into the water.

Chris came up snorting and grabbed her as she tried to climb onto the tube. “Are you trying to drown me?” Water ran down through white patches of sunscreen on his ears and nose. He pressed a finger to her shoulder and watched the white impression turn brown again.

“You’re so brown,” he said, smiling. He pulled her away from the tube and kissed her. They started to sink. Natalie put her legs around his waist, and he began treading water. The inner tube drifted toward the dock.

“Are you still sad, Natalie?” he asked.

She nodded. Her chin barely cleared the water.

“You haven’t said anything recently.”

“I miss my uncle,” she said. “What’s there to say?”

“I thought I could take away your grief,” he said, breathing hard.

“Do you know why I fell in love with you?” she asked.

“Why?”

“Because you trusted me when you knew I had lied to someone else. I want you to trust me again.”

“To do what?”

“To take as long as I need,” Natalie said. “One month isn’t long enough to grieve Tom. He deserves more than that.”

As she swam after the innertube and climbed up, Natalie thought, A month since Tom died. A month until my junior year of college. During the first month, time had expanded and contracted like an accordion, but the way time was speeding by her lately, she was quite certain that the second would go far too quickly.

Chris lay down beside her and was quiet.

**

Natalie took her favorite letter from Chris, a trash bag, and scissors with her to the overflowing front garden down the road from her house. This summer, her fifth one spent at the lake, she had finally met the gardener, who liked to explain the mysteries of her plantings. Natalie had fallen into the habit of talking to her once a week. Chris had come with her once and impressed the gardener by naming the different varieties of sage he recognized, but then he and his parents were fond of cooking with fresh herbs they grew in the garden that wrapped around their house. This week, her last at the lake until Christmas vacation, she had been tending the flowers while the gardener had gone to visit her family in New York. A few more flowers needed deadheading, and then she would be done. She clipped calendula and California poppy seedheads and plucked out the blooms of petunias. This woman liked the flat blooms of various kinds of daisies, “platforms for butterflies,” she called them. She insisted that Natalie let the coneflowers go to seed so that the birds could have something to eat in a few months.

Now the garden was as neat as it would ever get. Natalie liked to compare its bright chaos to her mother’s rose bushes in Boulder, which were pruned each spring until they bloomed out of desperation. In this garden, flowers grew exuberantly wherever they could, spilling over walls and creeping into the spaces between flagstone steps. A sparrow or two hopped among the plants, and dozens of bees clung to the pale orange poppies and the Missouri evening primrose, whose yellow blooms spent the nights open and the days shriveling. Natalie sat down on the cement wall guarding the opposite house’s front door and imagined her grief for her uncle drying up in the next few months, subsiding into the earth as the garden went to sleep. Then by next March, tulips would be rising among the dry seedheads, and summer flowers would have begun sprouting new growth.

Last summer, she and Chris had often walked past this garden late at night, meeting secretly after everyone else had gone to bed, after the summer heat had subsided a little. She had told herself then that he was merely a summer romance. Months later, he had written her this letter, the day he arrived back at college after their first Christmas together:

“I hadn’t imagined that Lake Tapawingo could hold so many different experiences. First impression: a small, limited place, wholly manufactured. No real life of a city or even a small town. I asked myself, is this the way everyone will live in the future? In communities that try to resurrect a sense of togetherness that we once were able to build? Just withdrawing into a summer life of swimming and BBQs and waterskiing. It seems so easy—too easy. But in winter, now, what do these people do? Mourn the loss of open water? Do they think the lake is sleeping, resting from all the activity on its surface in the summer? Cleaning up oil and dead skin and dog hair—and other, more personal things—deposited in it? We are 75 percent water—after several summers, are we 75 percent Lake Tapawingo? And what percentage of you and me is in the lake? Just think what that water might contain.”

They had exchanged letters for months, but that one was the first love letter he had sent her: less like the newspaper articles he mailed copies of, more intimate in its musings. Perhaps he had felt more sure of her after a summer and a winter vacation spent together. She returned the letter to its envelope and the envelope to the side pocket of her shorts. She wanted it to stay crisp and folded no matter how many times she moved. There was a history of her embedded in the flowers and soil here and carried along in the lake water. A history of her and Chris that she had never really understood. He had left three days ago, going the short distance south to the University of Missouri; she would leave tomorrow for the Rocky Mountains and the University of Colorado. Would distance make them easier with each other or eager to find someone else?

Several seedpods she had missed caught Natalie’s eye. She got up and cut them; her trash bag was pretty full. She knew she should go home, but she wanted to linger here. When she turned to go home, she saw Chris’s mother coming toward her. Natalie waited as Beryl walked up and held out a pair of her earrings. As usual, she was wearing a wide-brimmed hat to shield her face from the sun. The shade it cast darkened her brown eyes.

“You left these at the house,” she said. She didn’t say where.

Eager to get rid of every trace of me? Natalie thought, blushing, but she took the earrings and thanked her.

Beryl turned toward the garden. “Chris told me about this garden. I’ve been meaning to come and take a good look at what she had.”

For a moment they stood searching the garden as if it could offer conversation tips, with the hot silence of August enveloping them.

Beryl noticed the envelope sticking out of Natalie’s pocket. “What have you got there?” she asked.

“An old letter from Chris,” Natalie said, feeling shy.

Beryl’s expression became a little sad. “He really does love you.”

“How can you be so sure?” Natalie asked.

Beryl stared at her for a moment. “I hope you won’t give up because of your uncle’s death,” she said.

Natalie shrugged. “Chris thinks I’ve given up.”

“I talked to him about that.”

Their conversation reminded Natalie of the slow climb up the first hill on a roller-coaster, the wait for the swoop down and up again. She asked, “What did you say?”

“I told him about my cousin’s death when I was in high school. No one is prepared when the first person they really love dies. I told him to be more patient.”

Natalie waited; she could feel Beryl working herself up to something. It occurred to her that Beryl might find her too quiet, even though most people did not. But she couldn’t help talking to Chris’s mother as if she were interviewing her, perhaps because his mother was tall and had a tendency to stare down at her. “How did you feel?”

“Oh, I tried just about everything,” Beryl said. “I withdrew into myself; then I got crazy and wild for a while. Finally I realized that I had to tell people what to do for me.”

“I talked to him about Tom,” Natalie blurted out. “But Chris just didn’t get it. He thought it was about him.”

“You have to give people specific instructions. I would say, ‘When I tell you I miss my cousin, say you’re sorry and hug me.’ At first I was angry that I had to explain, but then I saw that it worked.”

“Specific instructions,” Natalie repeated. They smiled at each other. Natalie put the scissors in her pocket and began walking home, dragging the bag behind her. She enjoyed the rasping sound. When they reached Beryl’s house, she turned to say goodbye, but Natalie stopped her with a question. “Did Chris ever tell you how we met?”

Beryl shook her head.

“I was out for a walk a week after your family moved here. As I went by your house, he said something to me from the doorway. I kept turning around, trying to see who was talking to me.”

Beryl laughed. “Chris always did like to surprise people.”

Natalie turned around and pointed out to Beryl where they had gone. “We walked toward that gate and stopped in front of the garden. Every time I see that garden, I think of Chris.”

Beryl studied the potholed road. Then she glanced over at Natalie and asked, “Does he still surprise you?”

Natalie didn’t immediately reply, so Beryl answered the question herself. “Because that’s all that really matters.”

Beryl went inside. Walking away, Natalie held onto the earrings Beryl had returned, as if she had given Chris to her, or back to her.

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Are Women Damaged by Abortion?

Not according to the Guttmacher Institute website, in its article "Facts on Induced Abortion in the United States," here.

But if you go to AbortionFacts.com and click on "Effects of Abortion" on the left, you find a long list of articles detailing abortion's negative effects on women. For example, the Guttmacher article states that fewer than 0.3% of women having abortions experience a complication requiring hospitalization. But "The Aftereffects of Abortion" by David Reardon of the Elliot Institute on AbortionFacts.com indicates that the rate is 10%.

It makes me wonder if apples and oranges are being compared. Are the abortions compared all safe and legal? Were abortions at different stages of pregnancy compared?

I did notice that a couple of the sources dated from the early 1970s, before the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, meaning that the articles were about women who had illegal abortions. That would definitely affect the safety rate and the psychological consequences for the woman. Also, the article uses the phrase "aborted women," which I find offensive, as if somehow they had the procedure done to them instead of choosing it for themselves. As if all that mattered about them afterward was that they'd had an abortion.

This subject is tremendously frustrating for me. I'm inclined to think AbortionFacts.com is full of shit, but I ought to take the time to actually check out the sources on at least one article and see if the author is cherry-picking.

If you'd like to read some stories by women who don't regret their abortions, try this site.

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Story 7: Cradle

As Natalie walked down the path to the dock, Janie greeted her from the picnic table, where lunch was being set up.

“Well, Natalie,” she said, pronouncing her words carefully, “how’s Michael?”

Natalie turned around and looked at her. Janie’s severely dyed hair was a hard dark red for summer. Her all-black swimsuit had a ruffle from the waist to the hips and covered as much of her flab as any one-piece could. “Fine,” Natalie said, and continued to the dock.

Janie called after her. “Now, Natalie,” she said, “don’t you swim out to the buoy.”

Natalie ignored her. She left her towel on a chair and positioned herself at the edge of the dock.

Lake Tapawingo had murky waters at best, and the rocks on the bottom underneath the ladder grew a thick coat of slimy lake plants. Occasionally a crawdad or fish would make contact. So Natalie’s preferred method of entry was diving off the dock as hard and straight and forward as possible or jumping off the boathouse, hugging her knees.

This time her body arced so perfectly that her hands sliced into the top of the water, and she skimmed for 10 feet just below the surface. She turned and looked back at the dock and the small figures at the table; Janie had not followed her down yet. Sidestroke suited her best, especially when she switched from one side to the other, exercising both sets of obliques. Natalie wasn’t a strong swimmer; she’d never swum laps or done much endurance swimming at all. Someday I’ll swim across, she thought. She reached the buoy and circled it a few times. She liked to float near it on her back and stare at it until it became abstract and her mind emptied. Then she was held in the lake’s undulating skin. The water rose slowly around her face; when it almost flowed into her nose and eyes she moved her hands and feet languidly to surface. When you’re in the water, does it still reflect the sun and make you more likely to sunburn? How big are the fish in this lake?

She turned on her stomach and looked but saw only sunlight through greenish water filled with floating specks. The water made her eyes feel full of grit. Wonder what’s in this lake water. Voices reached her from both shores, and a boat drove by, rocking her, getting water up her nose. Maybe floating was her only strength: lying down in water’s vehicle and letting it move her where it wanted. A rescuer would certainly come by eventually, though she hoped it would be someone younger and more male than Janie. Perhaps Han Solo, but then she reminded herself that he had been frozen in The Empire Strikes Back. Natalie certainly didn’t want to wait for rescue until the next episode of Star Wars came out. But then she flailed at the water, kicking droplets as high as she could. What was she doing out here, stopped by the buoy separating her from the boats and held by the water that Janie feared? And Michael would be coming down the road in a few weeks. Natalie didn’t want either of them near her, but she didn’t know how to keep them at bay. Everything at the lake this summer was conspiring to keep her in place.

Last night she had said to Michael, “I’ve never kept anything from you before,” and he had agreed. She had expected him to point out that she hadn’t been honest with him for months, but instead he had said “True” and then waited for her to respond. She had nothing new to say. She had confessed that she’d had an abortion before she told him she was pregnant, and now she wanted the entire situation to be over.

Natalie sighed and ended her buoy ritual by swimming in on her back, frog-style, orienting herself by staring at the house across the lake. She forced herself not to look directly behind her—she wanted to navigate by something other than sight, by the slant of sunlight or shapes in her peripheral vision. She almost ran into the boathouse—not too far off—and turned around to face Janie standing at the point where the path met the retaining wall. Natalie could have climbed up the ladder to the dock, but she liked finishing her swim by picking her way over rocks in the shallows. It reminded her of how decisions can be made too quickly, like her impulse to sleep with Michael last Thanksgiving without using birth control. Back here, she could see everything ahead of her. As she teetered on one slimy, unstable rock after another between the dock and the boathouse, Janie had plenty of time to comment on her love of danger, and she didn’t restrain herself. Natalie tried to ignore her, get past, but then she tripped and hit her knee on a rock just as Janie reached her peak.

“You scare me, Natalie, you really do! I’m not strong enough to swim out after you!”

Natalie’s knee bled a little, which made her speculate again on the composition of the lake water. She stopped on the path next to Janie, dripping, and said loudly enough for those at the table to hear, “Then go home where you don’t have to see it. Go home and sleep it off!”

Natalie retrieved her towel and trotted back to the table, wrapping it around her waist, over her plaid bikini. Janie followed her but kept walking, through the yard and across the street.

“Where is she going?” Natalie’s mother asked.

“Home. And I hope she stays there.” Natalie combed her hair back with her fingers so that it would drip down her back, not in her face. She felt embarrassed but relieved.

“She’s our neighbor and our guest, Natalie,” her mother scolded, shaking her head. “I’d rather she didn’t leave hungry and angry.”

Natalie smiled at Chris, who had just moved to Lake Tapawingo last week, and at his parents, who introduced themselves as Joe and Beryl Burnet. She squeezed in next to her mother. The white picnic table barely accommodated Chris and his parents, Natalie and her parents, her aunt and uncle, and their five children, who tended to act and speak as if they were a unit.

“I was just talking about my job with Janie,” Chris said, “but she seemed a little too drunk to understand.”

“I didn’t think she was drunk,” Natalie’s mother said. Chris let a little smile hover around his lips, which, Natalie noticed, were very red. His tan cheeks rounded even more when he smiled.

“What job?” Natalie asked.

“Actually, it’s an internship at the weekly in Lee’s Summit. Three days a week, but I don’t need to show up until 10.”

“We’re both working at weeklies!” Natalie said. “I work for the paper at the lake.”

“I didn’t know you were a journalism major,” Chris said.

By now their parents were listening intently. “No, English. I want to work for a book publisher, but there aren’t any around here.”

“You could start your own,” her uncle suggested. He handed her a plate with an undressed burger and macaroni salad. Condiments arrived from various corners of the table, and Tom arranged an onion-and-pickle-relish stick person on top of her hamburger.

“If you give me the money,” Natalie laughed, digging into the macaroni. Then she noticed the relish. “Uncle Tom, you know I don’t like pickles!” He laughed at her and smashed her bun down onto the burger.

Chris hadn’t finished his thought. “Well, I’m a journalism major. At MU.”

“Good place for it,” Tom said.

“I write a column for the student paper, under the pseudonym ‘Green,’” Chris said.

“Green,” Tom said, drawing out the word. There was a pause in the conversation. Then he laughed. “Oh, I get it. Your name is Burnet, which is a salad green, and your nickname is Green. Very clever.”

“Is it now?” Chris asked softly. His parents whispered something to each other.

“You write such inflammatory stuff you need a fake name?” Tom asked.

“According to some guys.” Chris looked more and more nettled.

But Tom was not quite done. “A salad with burnet is like love without a woman,” he said. He raised an eyebrow at Natalie, as if to ask, “Who is this person?”

Natalie decided to change the subject. “Well, I don’t write anything for the paper. I just catch other people’s mistakes. They told me last week I was the best proofer they’ve ever had.”

“I’m sure you are,” her father said, smiling. “Chris, why don’t you write an article about moving here? Then Natalie can proof it.”

“My articles don’t need checking. They’re perfect,” Chris said, laughing.

Natalie’s parents exchanged a glance. “That sounds like a challenge,” her father said.

“I think it is,” Natalie said, turning to Chris. “I’ll take you up on it.”

“For that, you need hotdogs,” Tom said, getting up and circling the table until he found them and taking them to the grill. Natalie laughed out loud. He returned with twelve of them, cooked and impaled on a metal skewer. To Natalie he seemed to come and go magically in his orange swim trunks and ratty white tank top, each time bringing more food. One by one, they plucked off the hotdogs. Natalie’s father passed the buns down the table, then the mustard.

“I want ketchup,” Natalie said. “And cheese and chopped onions.”

Chris and his parents finished their burgers and said they had to get back home. Natalie walked them to the street, trying to ignore the feeling that each person at the table was critiquing them and her conversation with Chris. The three of them said goodbye to her as if from a great height, at least half a head above her. A curtain moved slightly in the front window of Janie’s home. But when she sat down, no one said anything. With an evil grin, Tom picked up a plate of brownies from the seat next to him, and the cousins went to fetch their ice cream from the refrigerator. Soon hot fudge sundaes were circling the table.

**

At noon on Tuesday, Natalie slumped over the desk at the Lake Tapawingo weekly, reading an article about boat engines for the third time because the author rewrote it obsessively. “Once or twice more and I’ll be an expert,” she muttered to herself. Just then the door opened.

“Talk to yourself a lot?” Chris asked.

“Only when I’m really bored.”

“Are you the only one here?”

“The editor went out to lunch with the production department and left me in charge.”

He sat down in a chair beside her black metal desk, turning the furniture in the room shabby next to his white t-shirt and blue chino shorts. Ironed, Natalie noticed, unlike most of the shorts she saw during the school year in Boulder. He was holding two sheets of paper in his hands, which he held out to her.

“Here’s my article on how weird Lake Tapawingo is.” He shrugged. “I tried to be diplomatic, but it’s still pretty blunt.”

“That’s what I would expect from you,” Natalie said. He nodded.

“That barbeque on Saturday,” he said. “Do you always get in fights with your neighbors?”

“That was a first,” Natalie said, resting her chin on her hands, proofing neglected for the moment. “Janie’s been after me as long as I can remember.”

Chris leaned toward her. “I could smell it too. She likes vodka.”

“Oh, don’t I know it.”

“To make up for it,” Chris said, “we’ll just have to be really nice to her from now on. Nice, but firm. And brief.”

Natalie laughed. “We?”

“She’s my neighbor too. But you’re my favorite neighbor so far,” Chris said, “though I hope that’s not all we’re destined to be.”

“You and I have a destiny?”

“Why not?” he asked.

She laughed and shook her head. “Well, I have a boyfriend,” she said. “He’s coming to visit in July.”

“You don’t seem very excited about the old home-town honey,” Chris observed.

Natalie had nothing to say to that. Michael was a topic too complicated to explain at work.

“You know,” Chris said, “if you went out with me—”

Natalie stared at him.

“—just for one night, just one night, you’d have a basis for comparison.”

“That’s true, I would,” Natalie said. Then she felt suspended, as if her ordinary life had suddenly fallen away, leaving her in midair.

After he left, she read his article. As he had said, its grammar and spelling were perfectly correct. One phrase stuck in her head all that day: “The cradle that is Lake Tapawingo.”


**

Chris took Natalie dancing at a country western bar off I-70, on Crackerneck Road. “I’m not really a fan of country,” he told her in the car, “but this bar is the closest and the band does play rock and blues.”

Where Michael was respectful, Chris was confident. When he took her in his arms on the dance floor, she followed him without hesitation. He spoke close to her ear, telling her he was going to be a journalist because he liked to ask people questions.

“I don’t,” Natalie said into his shoulder, raising her voice to be heard over the music. “I wait for them to tell me.”

“Tell you what?” She had to lean closer to him to hear. Their faces brushed against each other.

“Their histories,” she said, turning her head in what she hoped was a casual way.

“Afraid I was going to kiss you?” he asked, grinning.

“No!” Natalie said.

“Liar. I was thinking of it, but I could tell you were chicken.”

“I’m not afraid,” she said. “But why so eager? You hardly know me.”

“I saw you and I wanted to be with you,” he said.

At home that night, she made a list in her diary. She hadn’t written since January 30, the day before her abortion. She put his name at the top: Chris


is a journalism major (who, what, where, when, why, and how).

decided to become one sometime after a teacher told him he asked too many questions. Still can’t stop asking questions (who).

likes to talk. Obviously (who).

works hard in school because his parents are teachers and he’s an only child. I work hard because my father is a professor and I’m the only child (who and why).

hasn’t ever skied on snow, just on water (what!).

thinks Midwesterners are the strongest Americans (who).


She had challenged him on that, and he said: “Easterners act tough, and Westerners think the landscape makes them tough, but Midwesterners put down roots. Other people settled in the East or chased their dreams to the West, but we knew there was work to be done right here.”

That was another “why.” Or a “who.” Natalie forced herself to stay awake long enough to complete her list: Chris


doesn’t drool when he kisses (and how!).

wants to live in a big Midwestern city, like Chicago or St. Louis (where).

wants me to come over on Friday (when).


She’d said “yes” to the last item, but then she wondered what category her answer fell into. Did how she’d said it mean something? He’d parked the car at his parents’ house, gotten out and opened her door, and grasped her hand. The car, interior cold from the air conditioner, let the night air slip in as he pulled her close to him again. Natalie hadn’t thought about how their date might end, but apparently he had. He brushed her hair away from her face and kissed her. Then he asked, “My house on Friday? We’ll have it mostly to ourselves.” She nodded. “Was that a yes?” he asked, and kissed her again. “Yes,” she said, and put her arms around his neck. He pressed her against the car and kept her there for a long time before walking her home. As she lay in bed, sliding into sleep, Natalie could still feel the imprint of his body on hers.

**

It was dusk on Friday, and they were sitting on Chris’s dock, their fingers orange from the Cheetos they ate, one by one. Watching him, Natalie placed another one on her tongue and let it dissolve, her mouth open so he could see. Chris grew nervous.

“I feel like a mouse sitting next to a cat.”

“That’s what boys in high school called me. ‘The cat.’”

He looked at her oddly. “Why?”

“’Cause I never went out with anyone for very long until my senior year. That’s the way they thought I was with guys.”

“So let me see … you chased them, pounced on them, batted them around, and then dropped them dead at your parents’ feet?”

Natalie didn’t care for that description, but then she wondered if Michael would agree with Chris. “Well, the first two might be true, but not the second two.” She shifted away from him, toward the road. A light flickered on in Janie’s living room, and Natalie could see her moving around, straightening up.

“I must have hit a sore spot,” Chris said.

“Not really.” Natalie shrugged. “But I feel guilty about being here with you when I have a boyfriend.”

Chris was silent for a moment. Then he grinned. “How’s the comparison going?” he asked.

“It’s just until the Fourth of July,” Natalie informed him, a little resentfully. “Then he’ll be here.”

“Oh, a month is all I get?” His tone was rueful, making Natalie sad and frightened at once. She was revealing herself to him almost in spite of her intentions. Chris turned her face up to his. “I’m not sure that’s enough for me.”

“This is only our second date.”

“I know. But you’ve made a good impression.”

Then she wanted to cry. Wait ’til you hear the whole story, she thought, and it must have shown on her face.

“Aha!” he said. “You have more secrets. Tell me.”

She took off her shoes and dangled her feet in the water, which was still warm, and he sat down behind her, wrapping his arms and legs around her. “Now,” he said. “Let’s talk about boyfriends and girlfriends.”

Natalie didn’t say anything.

“You go first,” he said. “I have a feeling that your love life has been more eventful than mine.”

Half-forgotten rituals of Catholic confession came into Natalie’s head. Forgive me, for I have sinned … it has been … five years? After a few minutes he tightened his arms around her, just a little. Then she focused on a small light on a dock all the way across the lake. She had not expected that she would find this secret so hard to share. “This boyfriend?”

“Yeah?”

“I got pregnant last Thanksgiving and didn’t tell him until after I had an abortion.”

His chest tightened against her back, but he was quiet. She stared at the light without blinking until her eyes watered.

“You lied to him,” Chris said, finally breaking the silence. “Why?”

“I was afraid he’d want to marry me, and I knew I couldn’t.”

“You don’t love him?”

Natalie shook her head. “I did at first.” But after her last semester of high school, she had come to Lake Tapawingo without him, enjoying the simplicity of aloneness, of not having to do. She read books without analyzing them. She argued Reaganomics with her father without thinking it through. With Michael, she’d realized, she had constantly to reach for her best, and it was wearing her out. “And I wasn’t going to bear a child to a man I didn’t want to marry.”

“It’s not as if I’ve never had a pregnancy scare,” Chris said. “I know girls who’ve had abortions; you’re not the first. It’s the lie that bothers me. I wonder what you’ll tell me.”

“I told you what happened.”

“True.” He leaned against her, speaking close to her ear. “You know, I’ve been looking for an imperfect girl. You just might fit the bill.”

Natalie stiffened. “It’s your turn,” she said into his shoulder, wiggling a little, wondering whether her urge to confess had been sound.

“I think we’re a lot alike,” he said.

“In our imperfection, you mean?”

He laughed a little harshly. “Yes. Both of us have had one serious relationship. Both of us have played a little. I lost my virginity when I was fourteen. How old were you?”

“Sixteen.”

“That was your junior year. Tell me about him.”

“His name was Ben. I’ve spent enough time talking about him, I think.”

“OK!” His voice carried across the lake, Natalie thought, and woke up early sleepers who had their windows open. He asked her, “Was he the reason you got the rep as the cat?”

“No, that was before him. I’d go out with a guy for a month and get bored.”

“I had a serious girlfriend my senior year,” Chris said, stroking her arms. “We thought she was pregnant once. That freaked me out, so I slept with someone else, which kinda ruined things.”

“I can imagine,” Natalie said.

He sighed. “Everyone loved Susan, so the last three months of high school were hell. Luckily she decided not to go to MU at the last minute.”

“I think my guilt trip is a little worse than yours,” Natalie said.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I’m not shocked very often, but I’m shocked that you didn’t tell him right away.”

“I lied,” Natalie said. “I know. It’s practically all I think about.”

“You didn’t have to tell me about Michael,” Chris mused. “You get points for that.”

They were silent for a minute. Then Natalie turned around and asked. “Why are we still here?”

He pulled her back until they were lying down on the dock facing each other. Starlight reflected from the lake back up to the sky. “I’m here because you draw me. What about you?”

“The same,” Natalie said.

“Here’s the deal,” Chris said, with firmness in his voice. “You break up with Michael, and I’ll trust you.”

No boats were allowed after dark, and Chris’s parents had only dim lights in their back yard. “They’ve gone to bed,” he told her when she looked up at the house. He wrapped his arms and legs around her and kissed her for a long time. They stayed out on the dock until the spiders came up from their webs underneath and started biting. Then he walked her home.


One day in mid-June, Natalie came home from a walk with Chris to find her mother at the sewing machine on the screened porch, surrounded by yards of green madras. She turned and smiled at Natalie, who was distracted by the sight of Janie sitting in the glider.

“It’s a wrap skirt to match your suit,” her mother said, holding up the bikini bottom of Natalie’s blue-and-green-plaid swimsuit to the fabric. “I’ll have it finished today.”

Janie asked Natalie, without looking at her, “How’s Chris?”

Her mother was stretching out the seam, getting ready to sew again. She paused almost imperceptibly.

“Fine,” Natalie said.

“That’s what you said about Michael the other day.”

“They’re both fine,” Natalie repeated.

Janie turned to face her. “I know you think I’m a fat drunk,” she spat, her breath smelling of onions at the moment, “but I’ve never cheated on anyone. I’m too romantic for that.”

Then Janie got up and handed something to her mother, whispered in her ear. She left the screened porch without looking at Natalie. Natalie’s mother sighed, and her shoulders collapsed backward: she did these two things every time someone spoke to her in a way that presaged a fight. Natalie had watched animals approach each other the same way, one walking up aggressively and the other backing off subtly. Her mother seemed to get stuck in these situations an awful lot, except now the fight was over.

“Why can’t I complete a simple task without being asked to serve as referee?”

Natalie had no answer to that question.

Her mother continued. “I like to make clothes for a girl who doesn’t have any bulges or bumps. It reminds me of being young and taut…without so much history behind me. …”

Not that Natalie’s mother would have allowed a bulge to show if she had one—she would have dieted or girdled it into submission. She meant the scars on her stomach from a cesarean and a hysterectomy, both occasioned by her only daughter’s appearance in the world. Natalie had seen them only a few times. On the rare occasions when her mother dressed or undressed in front of people other than her husband, she exposed as little of her body as possible. And when she was sad, she would often slide down into a chair and rub her stomach, as if the incisions had awakened and needed to be soothed back to sleep. When Natalie occasionally dreamed of them, they served as evidence of her violent desire to get into the world.

During the abortion, Natalie remembered, she had thought her uterus would never stop contracting. She had wondered how many contractions it had taken to expel her 2-inch fetus and how much of the rest was just blood. She imagined the sensation of contractions around a full-term baby.

The seam was finished. Her mother called her over to try on the skirt. Natalie took off her shorts and slipped into it. There was a small silver picture frame resting in her mother’s lap. As she knelt down to pin the hem in one liquid motion, she placed the frame on the sewing machine. The girl in the picture had a heart-shaped face, dull blonde hair, and an engaging smile.

“Do you recognize her?” her mother said, her mouth full of pins.

“Janie?” Natalie guessed, squirming as the raw edge of the cotton fabric tickled her calf. Then she added, looking down on her mother’s dark red hair, “She’s dyeing her hair to match yours. She wants to be you.”

“Why don’t you return it to her later,” her mother said, but it wasn’t just a suggestion.

“Why?” It seemed everyone demanded something from her these days—Michael, their relationship as it once was; Chris, to break up with Michael; and her mother, friendship with Janie.

“So you can talk to her. It’s awkward, having to tiptoe around the two of you.”

“When she’s drinking, she won’t leave me alone.”

“Sometimes people act in annoying ways because they’re disappointed, Telie,” her mother mumbled, scooting a quarter of the way around her. “They think they see other people going the same way they went and want to warn them.”

“You think I’ll end up with badly dyed hair?” Her mother laughed, a couple of pins hanging from her lip, and then stopped abruptly. Natalie knew she felt guilty for mocking Janie.

“Did it ever occur to you simply to tell her to stop?”

“I guess I never thought she could act any other way.”

Her mother looked up at her with a smile that seemed a little too broad. “I know you think I’m not direct enough with people. But this is the way I do it. First I wait to see if people will stop annoying me on their own. Obviously Janie won’t. Then I try to give them a hint—which you did at the barbeque.” Natalie grinned to herself. Her mother wasn’t joking, wasn’t even being ironic. She simply thought Natalie had no tact. “Then I ask a question, as in, ‘Do you always act this way?’ Finally I ask them to stop.”

“Do you ever tell them?” Natalie inquired, pretty sure what the answer would be.

“Well, I did just now.” Natalie twisted around to look at her. Her mother was smiling again as she placed the last pin, tugged on the skirt to make sure the edges were even, and stepped back to look.

“What’s so funny?”

“Well, Natalie,” she said, directing her to turn slowly while she checked the hem, “I think you always wanted me to tell people. Not you. Now take that off and I’ll sew it up.”

**

That night, as she swam back and forth along the moonlight’s path in the lake, Natalie made a decision. She had been avoiding Michael, not returning his phone calls, out of guilt and reluctance to make a scene. Now was the time, she figured. Time to clear out her system, enjoy Chris for the rest of the summer, and return to school ready for a new start in her sophomore year of college. She called him the next day, right before lunch break.

“Don’t come visit,” she said, without preamble.

“I have to,” he insisted. “We need to work through this.”

She tried to tell him that the distance made it impossible. She explained that she was tired, but tiredness is not very compelling to someone who’s desperate.

“I know it’s a challenge. But that’s what I love about you. You’re not easy.” Natalie could hear coworkers chatting in the background. She wondered if he would cry in front of them or hide his tears.

“I want less work and more fun,” she said.

He was quiet for a few seconds, and then he asked, “Did you feel this way at Thanksgiving?”

“A little bit.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was hoping I could get back what we had.”

**

By the time Fourth of July weekend rolled around, Natalie and Chris had spent every possible moment together for several weeks. His parents were going to a big party in Kansas City, but Natalie’s family was gathering at her grandparents’ house, so Chris invited Natalie over. “If I can tear you away from your family,” he said, laughing.

Natalie came downstairs and tried to slip out the door, but she couldn’t get past her uncle quickly enough.

“Someone has a date, I see,” Tom laughed. “With Mr. Perfect Journalist.”

“And he’s the boy next door,” Aunt Lydia added.

“He’s more interesting than her family,” her father said.

“Bye!” All the cousins waved.

As Natalie turned to leave, Tom ejected himself from the couch and walked her to the door, where he took her wrist in his calloused, well-scrubbed doctor hand. “It hasn’t been a good year for you so far, has it?” he asked her softly. Behind them, the rest of her family laughed at her father’s latest story about an obnoxious student.

“No,” Natalie admitted, smiling up at him. He could always tell when she was troubled. He had concluded something was wrong after she’d stopped seeing Ben, after the rape and its unpleasant aftermath at school. Was a breakup always a signal, for her, that something was wrong? If that was the case, Natalie thought, then she’d never be without a man. She felt hemmed in.

“Chris seems to have brought back your sparkle,” Tom said. He kissed her hand and tossed it away, saying, “Off with you!”

Natalie scooted by Janie’s house as fast as she could, remembering the picture frame still sitting on her dresser. She could smell onions and wood smoke. Chris was grilling steaks. He had already heated rolls and made salad and put them on the table, along with red wine. They ate while a warm wind blew through the house and talked about what their families must be doing. Natalie said her mother would be trying not to argue with Tom’s wife. “There’s always a little tension between them.”

“My Mom would never let that go on,” Chris said. “She’d drag her upstairs for a serious discussion.”

“I believe it,” Natalie said. She had spent one or two evenings watching movies on TV with him while his parents were around. They had kept a keen eye on her. “Did you tell your parents anything about me?”

“Just basic stuff, where you’re from and where you go to school. Why?”

“Not about Michael.”

“Oh no,” he said. “They still don’t understand why Susan and I broke up. They thought I was really stupid to give her up.”

“Do you miss her?”

“No, I really don’t.”

“I don’t miss Michael either.”

“No, but you still feel guilty.” Natalie frowned at him, and he laughed. “Come on, you know you do.”

“Not really,” Natalie said, crushing the remaining croutons with her fork. Chris’s plate was clean; he’d used the last roll to mop up the juices from his steak. “It just that I feel I’ve gone from one man to another.”

“Well, we’ll be by ourselves all next semester,” Chris reminded her. “Take what you can get while you can get it.”

They laughed and clinked their glasses together.

“Michael sounds like the male equivalent of my girlfriend Susan,” Chris went on. “And people like that, I’ve discovered, will keep you feeling guilty to hold you close.”

He did the dishes, refusing to let her help. Then they went downstairs, where he had laid a blue-and-green star quilt on the floor and piled up bed pillows. “Are you always this prepared?” Natalie asked him, feeling a little managed.

“Tonight I’m taking care of you. Feel free to do the same for me sometime.”

As they lay close to each other on the quilt and watched the Fourth of July celebration on the Mall in DC, Natalie considered what he might mean. She’d always associated taking care of someone with martyrdom on the part of the caretaker and passive acceptance on the part of the receiver. But she was beginning to believe Chris intended a quite different thing.

Since the revelations about their romantic lives, they hadn’t done much more than kiss. All week she’d worried about this evening. She remembered the night on the dock, how since then he’d held himself a little distant from her. All without saying anything direct. If he had dismissed it, she would have worried more, but she hadn’t wanted to sue for forgiveness. She’d apologized to Michael for lying; that was enough. She had no such duty to Chris, and that freedom attracted her.

Natalie turned off the TV with her toe and pulled him closer.

He made love the same way he danced, with confidence. Briefly she wondered just how many girls this much experience required. And she had to laugh when he pulled a condom from underneath one of the pillows. “Good thing I didn’t rearrange them when I sat down,” she teased him.

“I wanted tonight to take away any doubts you have. Because I have none.”

When Natalie walked in her front door that night, Tom and Lydia and her parents were curled up on the couches, talking. The cousins lay sprawled on the floor, asleep. As Natalie picked her way over them to get to the stairs, Tom said softly, “Did you celebrate independence?” He was looking at her earnestly, while the rest of them, in the way they feigned indifference, magnified their concern. Just then Natalie realized how closely they followed her. This is what being an only child means, she thought, glad that she and Chris shared that trait.

“Yes,” she assured him, “we had a good Fourth.” On her way upstairs, she added under her breath, “And our own little celebration.”

**

Natalie didn’t go to bed right away. She waited until the house was quiet before putting Janie’s picture frame in her shorts pocket, where it fell heavily against her leg, and going across the street. All the windows were dark. She raised her hand to ring the doorbell, stopped, and looked at her watch. It was midnight. Natalie loved summer nights and always stayed awake as late as possible, especially on a night with a slow breeze. What didn’t Janie like about them? She considered coming back in the morning but then rang the bell three times anyway. When Janie came to the door, Natalie could tell she had woken her up, which gave her a certain satisfaction.

“Mom showed me your picture,” Natalie said, holding it out. “It’s pretty.” Then she turned around, walked down to the dock, and dove in, shorts and all. She hoped Janie was watching and that it kept her up with worry. At night, at least, with everyone indoors, no one would bother her about how far to swim.

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Banning Abortion Will Not Lower Rates

The Guttmacher Institute has lots of statistics on abortion (and other subjects). Here's a link to a page about the incidence of abortion worldwide.

Facts on Induced Abortion Worldwide

Near the top, the article states that abortion declined most in countries where it is legal.

Go to the third head, "Abortion Law," for the information below.

According to the article, abortion rates are about the same in Africa (29 per 1,000 women per year) and Europe (28 per 1,000 women per year).

But in Africa, abortion is generally illegal (and unsafe). In Europe, it's generally legal (and safe). Please note that the rate in Europe is somewhat skewed by the incidence of abortion in Eastern Europe, which has declined but is still high (because under the communists, abortion was contraception).

Thoughts???

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