Closer now, he saw that the clinic’s parking spaces were blocked from the rest of the lot by thin wire mesh. Two men in leather coats guarded an opening in the fence. They waved him through, past a small, shouting crowd. “What’s all this?” Henry asked.
Kate pointed to two young women thrusting their fists at the car. Their faces were red. “They call themselves the CALL Girls,” Kate said. ‘“Collegians Activated to Liberate Life.’ And that guy over there, see him? He’s always here. I swear, he never rests.” She nodded at a sallow man in a black turtle-neck sweater. “He’s down from Dallas, with the Advocates for Life Ministries. They’ve lectured me every time I’ve been here, though I’ve told them they’ve got the wrong girl.”
Henry didn’t get it.
“Abortions, Henry.”
“Oh.” His fingers tingled on the steering wheel.
One of the leather-coated men escorted them from the car to a door marked “Women’s Health Services” while his partner stood firm in front of the shouters. “Harlot!” Turtleneck screamed at Kate. “Murderess!”
One of the women yelled, “Sister, stop, please! Abortions cause breast cancer! Turn back! It’s not too late!”
Turtleneck rushed, and shook, the mesh. Kate grabbed Henry’s arm. “Don’t look their way. You’ll just encourage them.” He stumbled after her into a bright beige hallway with glass doors at the end. “Katie, why do you come here?” he asked, breathless. “Aren’t there safer places?”
“I was referred to Dr. Beston once years ago, when she worked in the Medical Center, and I built a real trust with her,” Kate said calmly. “Last year she left her HMO. They’d adopted an anti-abortion policy — didn’t want the kind of trouble you just saw.”
The glass doors opened and they moved into another drab space with white-tiled floors. “Dr. Beston partnered with some other doctors here. I followed her because I like her.”
They turned a corner into a large, impersonal waiting room. Kate approached a receptionist sitting behind thick glass. The names of four gynecologists hung, on plastic strips, on the wall behind her. “Kate Moore for Dr. Beston,” she said. “I think she wants to do another ultrasound?”
Henry sat in a hard chair by a table piled with magazines. Ladies’ Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Architectural Digest. A woman in an apron, hugged around the neck by a gap-toothed little girl, smiled at him from one of the shiny covers. A coffeemaker sat on another table nearby. Torn packets of Sweet ‘n Low lay crumpled around it, pink as his rent check envelopes.
He wasn’t the only male in the room. A teenage boy sat on the edge of a couch holding a shaking young woman. “Laura, it’s all right. Laura,” he whispered. “Shhh.” Though they had their arms around each other, there was a space between them on the couch, as if, when this awful afternoon was over, they’d shove off instantly, away from each other. It probably all began with them in a hamburger joint, Henry thought, when a booth seat spilled them together.
He looked away, embarrassed, at the posters on the walls: cutaway drawings of naked women, revealing intimate details of the uterus.
“—you’d like?” Kate was saying.
“Hm?”
“Saturday night. Your belated birthday celebration. What do you want to do?”
“Oh, stay in with you.”
Two black women at the far end of the couch were trying to cheer themselves up. “So I says to him, I says, ‘God may have gave you sperm, stud britches, but he sure as hell didn’t give you no sense.’” They cracked up.
The receptionist motioned to Kate. “Back in a flash,” Kate said, and squeezed his hand. She disappeared down another long hall.
No one in this room can afford to purchase a CD player or a pair of ski boots, Henry thought sadly, checking their clothing and looks.
“Laura, Dr. Simpson’s ready for you now,” the receptionist said. Laura jumped up, and straightened her blouse.
Henry leafed through Good Housekeeping. A recipe for key lime pie, mascara comparison charts. He was aware of a man’s voice, from a room down the hall. “—nausea?”
“A little,” a woman answered.
“All right, I’m going to wipe this off. Breathe in for me now. Good.”
Henry glanced at the teenage boy. He was rocking on the couch, gripping his head in his hands. Once, Meg had sat this way on the queen-sized bed she’d shared with Henry. He remembered the woolly heat of their room, the green recliner in the corner, the rotoring of crickets outside.
“—slightly numb. Breathe out. No, keep yourself loose, that’s it.”
“What’s happening?” Henry had asked. “What’s the matter?” Meg hadn’t answered.
How to Decorate Your Kitchen. Ten Ways to Rekindle Your Marriage. Savings Tips.
The black women laughed together.
Henry’s spine went cold.
“Big stretch. You may cramp a little. Okay.”
A low, metallic hum. Suction.
Then Kate was in the room, fishing a Blue Cross card from her purse. She handed it to the receptionist past the glass partition, turned and smiled at Henry. Down the hall, the sucking stopped.
“Kate!” A man had rushed into the clinic. He fast-walked past the couch. Henry tensed. He thought it was Turtleneck. Before he could rise from his chair, the man had grasped Kate’s arm. “Why didn’t you return my calls?”
Kate blushed. “Jesus, Ben — ”
Henry, mid-motion, somewhere between sitting and standing, didn’t move.
“What are you doing here?” Kate said.
“What am I —? What do you think? The other night, when you told me you had an appointment, I figured you’d want — ” He followed Kate’s eyes to Henry, crouched by the coffeemaker. “Who’s he?” Ben asked.
He was tall, slightly balding, ruddy and athletic. He wore a black, V-necked sweater. The Bastard, Henry thought.
Kate was arguing with him now in raspy, urgent whispers. She looked angry and embarrassed. The black women pointed and laughed. Ben just seemed confused. “But is the baby all right?” he kept saying, and, “Who the hell is he?”
Kate broke away from him, toward the examining rooms. Ben lanced Henry with a glance, then followed. “—is this bullshit?” he yelled.
The receptionist appeared to have vanished. The boy still rocked on the couch. Henry pushed by him. “Kate?” he called. The hallway was deserted.
He poked his head into a room — a cubicle, really. Empty, except for a paper-covered table with stirrups. Henry caught his breath, backed away quickly.
Someone called after him. “Sir? Excuse me, sir —?”
“Kate?” Another empty room. “Kate, are you — ” In this one, next to the waiting room, the young woman, Laura, sat on a table staring at a stainless steel tray on a cabinet. She didn’t seem to notice him. Her cotton blouse was wrinkled, her hair pulled back. The overhead light hummed, harsh. Henry stared at the tray. In it, a white fluid membrane, bright with blood.
He felt a hand on his arm. “Sir, please, you have to wait out front.”
A foot floated in the tray, no bigger than an eyelash.
“Sir. Please.”
Laura looked up at him, pale and ill.
“I’m sorry,” he said. The receptionist led him away.
Meg lived now on Swarthmore Street, on a weedy block in an otherwise fashionable area. Soon after kicking Henry out of their apartment, she’d moved. She’d cut her hours at the ad agency to take a part-time media consulting job.
She’d bobbed her hair, lost a little weight, seemed, to Henry, a bit more bosomy now.