"That I should have come to a hospital the last time this happened."
My eyes widen. "You've passed out before from having your period?"
"It's not really a period. I'm not ovulating, not regularly anyway. I never have. But since the . . . baby . . . this is what a period looks like, for me. The doctor did an ultrasound. She said I have a fluffy endometrial stripe."
I blink at her. "Is that good?"
"No. I need a D & C." Zoe's eyes fill with tears. "It's like a bad flashback."
I sit down on the edge of the bed. "It's completely different," I say, "and you're going to be fine."
It is different--not just because a stillborn isn't involved. The last time Zoe had a health crisis her husband and her mother were at her side. Now, all she's got nearby is me--and what do I know about taking care of someone other than myself? I don't have a dog anymore. I don't even have a goldfish. I killed the orchid my principal bought me for Christmas.
"Vanessa?" she asks. "Can you give me the phone so I can call my mom?"
I nod and take her cell phone out of her purse just as two nurses come in to prep Zoe for her surgery. "I'll call her for you," I promise as Zoe is wheeled down the hallway. After a moment I flip open her cell phone.
I can't help it. It's a little like being invited to someone's home for dinner and you go to the bathroom and peek in the medicine cabinet--I scroll through her contacts to see if I can get a better picture of Zoe from the people she knows. Most of the people listed I have never heard of, predictably. Then there are the old staples: AAA, the local pizza place, the numbers of the hospitals and schools where she is contracted.
I find myself wondering, though. Who's Jane? Alice? Are they friends of hers from college, or professional colleagues? Has she ever mentioned them to me?
Has she ever mentioned me to them?
Max is still listed. I wonder if I should call him. I wonder if Zoe would want me to.
Well, that's not what she asked. Scrolling up, I find Dara listed, predictably, under MOM.
I dial, but it rolls right into voice mail, and I hang up. I just don't think it's right to leave an alarmist message on someone's phone when she's three thousand miles away and can't really do anything to help Zoe right now. I'll keep trying.
An hour and a half after Zoe is wheeled into surgery, she is brought back to the room. "She'll be groggy for a while," the nurse tells me. "But she's going to be fine."
I nod and watch the nurse close the door behind her. "Zoe?" I whisper.
She's fast asleep, drugged, with her eyelashes casting blue shadows on her cheeks. Her hand lies uncurled on top of the cotton blanket, as if she is offering me something I cannot see. Another pint of blood hangs on an IV pole to her left, its contents snaking through the crazy straw tubing into the crook of her elbow.
The last time I was in a hospital, my mother was dying by degrees. Pancreatic cancer was the diagnosis, but it was no secret that her morphine doses grew higher and higher, until the sleep permanently outdistanced the pain. I know Zoe is not my mother, does not have the same illness, and yet there's something about the way she is lying so still and silent in this bed that makes me feel like I'm living my life over again, reading a chapter that I wish had never been printed.
"Vanessa," Zoe says, and I jump. She licks her lips, dry and white.
I reach for her hand. It's the first time I've held Zoe's hand, which feels small, birdlike. There are calluses on the tips of her fingers, from her guitar strings. "I tried your mother. I haven't been able to reach her. I can leave a message, but I thought maybe--"
"I can't . . . ," Zoe murmurs, interrupting.
"You can't what?" I whisper, leaning closer, straining to hear.
"I can't believe . . ."
There are so many things I can't believe. That people deserve what they get, both bad and good. That one day I'll live in a world where people are judged by what they do instead of who they are. That happy endings don't have contingencies and conditions.
"I can't believe," Zoe repeats, her voice small enough to slip into my pocket, "that we wasted money on a hotel room . . ."
I look down at her, to see if she is kidding, but Zoe has already drifted back to sleep.
We've come a long way from the days when being gay and being an educator were incompatible, but there's still a don't-ask-don't-tell policy in place at my high school. I don't actively hide my sexual orientation from my colleagues, but I don't go out of my way to broadcast it, either. I am one of the two adult advisers for the students' Rainbow Alliance, but the other one--Jack Kumanis--is as straight as they come. He's got five kids, competes in triathlons, is prone to quoting Fight Club--and he happened to be raised by two moms.
Still, I'm careful. Although most school counselors would think nothing of closing their office doors for a private session with a student, I never do. My door is always just the tiniest bit ajar, so that there can't be any doubt that whatever is happening is completely legitimate and interruptible.
My job runs the gamut from listening to students who just need to be heard through networking with admissions counselors at colleges so that they put our school on their virtual maps and supporting the kid too shy to find her own voice to logistically juggling the schedules of three hundred students who all want their first-choice English electives. Today I have on my couch Michaela Berrywick's mother--parent of a ninth grader who just received a B plus in her social studies class. "Mrs. Berrywick," I say, "this isn't the end of the world."
"I don't think you understand, Ms. Shaw. Michaela has been dying to go to Harvard since she was tiny."
Somehow I doubt that. No child comes out of the womb planning her high school resume; that comes courtesy of zealous parenting. When I was in school, the term helicopter parent didn't even exist. Now parents hover so much that their kids forget how to be kids.
"She can't let a history teacher with a grudge against her make a permanent blot on her record," Mrs. Berrywick stresses. "Michaela is more than willing to do any extra credit necessary to get Mr. Levine to reconsider his grading policy . . ."
"Harvard doesn't care if Michaela got a B plus in social studies. Harvard wants to know that she spent her freshman year learning more about who she really is. Finding something that she liked doing."
"Exactly," Mrs. Berrywick says. "Which is why she joined the SAT study prep class."
Michaela will not be taking the SATs for another two years. I sigh. "I'll talk to Mr. Levine," I say, "but I can't make any promises."
Mrs. Berrywick opens her purse and takes out a fifty-dollar bill. "I appreciate you seeing my side of things."
"I can't take your money. You can't buy a better grade for Michaela--"
"I'm not," the woman interrupts, smiling tightly. "Michaela earned the grade. I'm just . . . offering my gratitude."
"Thanks," I say, pressing the bill back at her. "But I truly can't accept this."
She looks me up and down. "No offense," she whispers, conspiratorial, "but you could use a little wardrobe update."
I'm thinking of going to Alec Levine and asking him to lower Michaela Berrywick's grade when I hear someone crying in the outer office. "Excuse me," I say, certain that it's the tenth grader I saw an hour ago who was twelve days late for her period, and whose boyfriend had dumped her after they had sex. I grab my box of tissues--school counselors ought to do product endorsements for Kleenex--and walk out.
It's not the tenth grader, though. It's Zoe.
"Hey," she says, and she tries to smile but fails miserably.
It's been three days since our disastrous trip to Boston. After Zoe's D & C, I finally got in touch with her mother, who flew home from her conference and met me at Zoe's place. I'd called Zoe multiple times since then to see how she was feeling, until she finally told me that if I called again and asked her how she was feeling she'd hang up on me. In fact, today she was supposed to go back to work.
"What's wrong?" I ask, as I lead her into my office.
r />
And close the door.
She wipes her eyes with a tissue. "I don't get it. I'm not a bad person," Zoe says, her mouth twisting. "I try to be nice and I compost and I give money to homeless people. I say please and thank you and I floss every day and I volunteer in a soup kitchen at Thanksgiving. I work with people who have Alzheimer's and depression and who are scarred and I try to give them something good in their day, one little thing to take with them." She looks up at me. "And what do I get? Infertility. Miscarriages. A stillborn. A goddamned embolism. A divorce."
"It's not fair," I say simply.
"Well, neither's the phone call I got today. The doctor--the one from Brigham and Women's? She said they did some tests." Zoe shakes her head. "I have cancer. Endometrial cancer. And wait--I'm not finished yet--it's a good thing. They caught it early enough, so I can have a little hysterectomy, and I'll be just fine and dandy. Isn't that just fabulous? Shouldn't I be thanking my lucky stars? I mean, what's next? An anvil falling on my head from the second story? My landlord evicting me?" She stands up, whirling in a circle. "You can come out now," she shouts to the walls, the floor, the ceiling. "Whatever shitty version of Candid Camera this is; whoever decided I was this year's Job--I'm done. I'm done. I'm--"
I stand up and hug her tight, cutting off whatever she was about to say. Zoe freezes for a moment, and then she starts sobbing against my silk blouse. "Zoe," I say. "I'm--"
"Don't you dare," Zoe interrupts. "Don't you dare tell me you're sorry."
"I'm not," I say, straight-faced. "I mean, if you look at sheer probability--the fact that all these things are happening to you means it's much more likely I'm safe. I'm positively charmed, in fact. You're good luck for me."
Zoe blinks, stunned, and then a laugh barks out of her. "I can't believe you said that."
"I can't believe I made you laugh, when you clearly ought to be railing against the heavens or renouncing God or something. Let me tell you, Zoe, you make a lousy cancer sufferer."
Another laugh. "I have cancer," she says, incredulous. "I actually have cancer."
"Maybe you can get gangrene, too, before sunset."
"I wouldn't want to be greedy," Zoe answers. "I mean, surely someone else needs a plague of locusts or the swine flu--"
"Termites!" I add. "Dry rot!"
"Gingivitis . . ."
"A leaky muffler," I say.
Zoe pauses. "Metaphorically," she points out, "that was the problem in the first place."
This makes us laugh even harder, so much so that the guidance department secretary pokes her head in to make sure we're all right. By then, my eyes are tearing, my abdominal muscles actually ache. "I need a hysterectomy," Zoe says, bent over to catch her breath, "and I can't stop laughing. What's wrong with me?"
I stare at her as soberly as I can. "Well . . . I believe you have cancer," I say.
When I came out to Teddy, my college boyfriend, at the Matthew Shepard vigil, the most remarkable thing happened: he came out to me, too. There we were, two gays who had tried to act as straight as possible for the rest of the college community--and now, happily, were coming clean. We still cuddled and hugged but with the utter relief of knowing that we no longer had to try (unsuccessfully) to arouse each other, or to fake attraction. (When I've told heterosexual people in the past that I had a boyfriend in college, slept with him, the whole nine yards, they are always surprised. But just because I'm gay doesn't mean I can't have sex with a guy--only that it's not at the top of my to-do list.) In the wake of our newfound same-sexual awakening, Teddy and I went to Provincetown over Memorial Day weekend. We ogled drag queens racing down Commercial Street in high heels and bronze-oiled men in butt floss walking the beach. We went to a tea dance at the Boatslip and afterward went to the PiedBar--where I'd never seen so many lesbians in one room in my life. That weekend, it was as if the world had been turned upside down, and straight folks were the anomaly rather than the norm. And yet, I didn't feel like I fit in there, either. I have never been one of those gay people who hangs out exclusively with gay people, or parties all the time, or lives a wild and decadent lifestyle. I'm not butch. I wouldn't know how to ride a motorcycle if my life depended on it. No, I'm much more likely to be in my pajamas by 8:00 P.M., watching reruns of House on the USA network. Which means that the women I run across most of the time are more likely to be straight than to be lesbian.
Everyone who's gay has had the unfortunate circumstance of falling for someone who's not. The first time it happens, you think: I can change her. I know her better than she knows herself. And invariably, you are left with a broken relationship and an even more broken heart. The straight equivalent, in a way, is the woman who's sure that the guy she loves--the one who beats her every night--will eventually stop. The bottom line in both cases is that people don't change; that no matter how charming you are and how fiercely you love, you cannot turn a person into someone she's not.
I had crushes on straight girls my whole childhood, even if I couldn't put a name to the feeling--but my first grown-up mistake was Janine Durfee, who played first base on a college intramural softball team. I knew she had a boyfriend--one who was continuously cheating on her. One night when she came to my dorm room in tears because she'd walked in on him with someone else, I invited her inside while she calmed down. Somehow listening to her cry morphed into me kissing her and ten phenomenal days as a couple before she went back to the guy who treated her like dirt. It was fun, Vanessa, she said apologetically. It's just not me.
It's important to point out that I have plenty of straight friends, women I've never been attracted to but still like to meet for lunch, movies, whatever. But over the years there have been a few who made a tiny flame fan inside me, a what if. They are the ones I have to actively keep my distance from, because I'm not a masochist. There are only so many times you can hear: It's not you. It's me.
I am not a proving ground. I don't want to be the experiment. I have no interest in seeing if my personal charms can overpower the wiring of someone's brain.
I believe I was born the way I am, and so I have to believe that someone straight is born that way, too. But I also believe you fall in love with a person; it stands to reason sometimes that could be a guy, and sometimes that could be a girl. I've often asked myself what I'd do if the greatest love of my life turned out to be male. Are you attracted to someone because of who they are, or what they are?
I don't know. But I do know that I'm at the stage of my life where I want forever, not right now.
I know that the first person I kissed won't be nearly as important as the last person I kiss.
And I also know better than to dream about things that can't happen.
I am sitting at my desk getting nothing done.
Every two minutes I check the clock in the corner of the computer. It's 12:45, which means that Zoe should be long out of surgery.
Her mom is at the hospital. I thought about going there, too, but didn't know if that would seem weird. It's not like Zoe asked me to come, after all. And I didn't want to impose, if she just felt like being alone with her mom.
But I wonder if the reason she didn't ask is because she didn't want me to feel obligated to come.
Which I wouldn't have, at all.
12:46.
Last weekend Zoe and I had gone to the art museum at RISD. The current exhibition was an empty room, with cardboard boxes on the perimeter. I'd sat down on one and been shooed out by a museum guard before realizing that I was inadvertently making myself part of the art. "Maybe I'm a philistine," I had said, "but I like my art on canvas."
"Blame Duchamp," Zoe had answered. "The guy took a urinal, signed it, and put it on display in 1917 as a work of art called Fountain."
"You're kidding . . ."
"No," Zoe had said. "It was recently voted the most influential art by, like, five hundred experts."
"I suppose that's because you're supposed to realize anything can be art--like a urinal or a cardboard box--if you stick it i
n a museum?"
"Yes. Which is why," Zoe had said, straight-faced, "I'm donating my uterus to RISD."
"Make sure you have cardboard boxes, too. And a window. Then it can be called Womb with a View."
She had laughed, a little wistfully. "More like Empty Womb," Zoe said, and before she got tangled in her own thoughts, I had pulled her down the street to a place where they make the most amazing lattes, with foam designs on top that truly are art.
12:50.
I wonder if Dara will call me when Zoe's out of surgery. I mean, it's perfectly normal that I'd want to make sure she sailed through it. I tell myself that just because I haven't heard from her doesn't mean anything's wrong.
I am the kind of person who imagines the worst. When friends fly somewhere, I check the arrivals online, just to make sure there wasn't a crash. When I go out of town, I unplug all my appliances in case there is a power surge.
On my computer browser, I pull up the main page of the hospital where Zoe's having her surgery. I type in the words "laparoscopic hysterectomy" on Google and look on the tab for a list of possible complications.
When the phone rings I pounce on it. "Hello?"
But it's not Dara, and it's not Zoe. The voice is tiny, so faint that it's gone before it even registers. "Just calling to say good-bye," Lucy DuBois murmurs.
It's the girl--a junior--whom I mentioned to Zoe weeks ago, the one who has suffered from depression for some time now. This isn't the first time she's called me in the middle of a crisis.
But it's the first time she's sounded like this. Like she's underwater and sinking fast.
"Lucy?" I yell into the phone. "Where are you?" In the background, I hear a train whistle, and what sounds like church bells.
"Tell the world," Lucy slurs, "that I said fuck you."
I grab the daily attendance sheet, where, prophetically, Lucy DuBois has already been marked absent.
It's a pretty remarkable thing, to save someone's life.
Based on the train whistle and the bells I heard, the police were able to focus their search near an old wooden bridge that backs up against a specific Catholic church with a 1:00 P.M. Mass. Lucy was found lying under a trestle with a liter of Gatorade and an empty bottle of Tylenol beside her.