A Theory of Small Earthquakes Read online

  With its employees’ commutes and lives still disrupted, PMC was operating at half-speed. Luckily, Alison had a new Mother Jones assignment that kept her busy and kept her out of the bad neighborhood of her head.

  The story was a series of profiles of Loma Prieta’s unsung heroes, the West Oakland workers and residents who’d rushed to the fallen Cypress structure in the minutes and hours and days after it collapsed, risking their lives to save people trapped in their cars.

  Alison was spending her after-work hours in the neighborhood around Zoe’s studio interviewing young men who’d scaled cracked pillars and pulled survivors out through narrow spaces, and Pacific Pipe workers who’d driven heavy lift equipment from their factory to the Cypress to raise chunks of fallen freeway, and Oakland Public Works Agency employees who’d left the city yard where they worked to join the throngs of volunteers. The volunteers had started working around the clock on October 17 and hadn’t stopped until they were forced to on October 21, when President Bush and Governor Deukmejian descended on the site to milk a media moment from the tragedy.

  Their stories of sacrifice restored Alison’s respect for the human race at a time when her self-respect was at an all-time low. She teared up when a factory worker told her, “Within a few minutes of the quake, a police officer came by, and we asked were they going to send help, and she said, ‘There is no help to send now. You guys are on your own.’”

  She tried not to compare her own moral fiber to that of the guy who said, “A company right across the street had some extension ladders. We went over there, climbed the fence, got some ladders, threw them back over the fence, and that’s how we got up on top of the freeway.”

  When she called Mark to give him an update on the piece, his tone was professional and distant. Alison hung up wondering if he’d lost interest in her, telling herself it would be best for everyone if he had.

  On Halloween morning, Alison awoke from restless dreams and found her thighs smeared with blood.

  An ache began in the region of her heart and spread. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think, This is it. The end. Instinctively, she turned to Zoe to tell her, to be held and comforted by her. But no. Not anymore. This is the end of us.

  Alison lay on her side and watched Zoe sleeping, her hair nearly invisible against the white pillowcase, her lush mouth curved into a smile. Beautiful Zoe. Amazing Zoe. If Zoe’s dreaming about our baby, Alison thought, it’s for the last time.

  Rosy morning light trickled through the swirls and curlicues of their lace curtains, shadows lighting the vase of pink tea roses from their front yard. Velvety, fragrant petals littered the butterscotch oak floor. Alison lay still, memorizing the moment.

  Zoe opened her eyes. She saw the look on Alison’s face and burst into tears.

  Zoe pulled Alison into her arms and they wept together. How many times had Zoe comforted Alison, loved her, taken care of her? How could Alison give up such good love?

  Tell her. “Zoe, I—”

  “I know things haven’t been great between us lately,” Zoe interrupted her. She pulled a wad of tissues from the box on her nightstand and blew her nose. “But I’m doing better. We’re doing better. By the time the baby comes, we’ll have our magic back. I know we will.”

  Zoe’s desperation had once seemed pathetic. Now it broke Alison’s heart. Tell her.

  “Promise me we can try again next month,” Zoe begged her.

  I can’t tell her now. I just can’t. “I’m so sad,” Alison wept.

  Alison mailed her Cypress Heroes story to Mark with a note thanking him for the great assignment. A few days later, he called her at work. “The piece is really good,” he said. “We’ve scheduled it for the March issue. But it needs work. Let’s have a drink and go over my notes.”

  “Mark. I—”

  “Hey, I’m your editor. Drinks with you is part of the deal. I’ll see you here at six tomorrow.”

  SO MUCH has changed so fast, Alison thought, riding the creaking elevator up to the Mother Jones office again, checking out her reflection again. The brass walls had been polished, providing an unobstructed view of a scattering of tiny pimples across Alison’s forehead. As a teenager, she hadn’t broken out. But everything was screwy now. Even her period had been a two-day dribble instead of her usual five-day flow.

  “I’ll tell Mark you’re here,” the receptionist said.

  Alison perched on the edge of a stiff pleather couch, leafing through a back issue of the magazine she’d read a year before. Back when she was still hoping that someday she’d write for Mother Jones. Back when she was still pitching stories to local newspapers. Back when she was still Zoe’s.

  “There you are.” Mark smiled down at Alison. She’d forgotten how handsome he was. He took her arm and led her to the elevator. She’d been hoping to be over her attraction to him, but she wanted to lean into him. She wanted to throw him down and fuck him. They descended to the lobby shoulder-to-shoulder in electric silence.

  “Hungry?” Mark asked, as they walked into the misty night.

  Alison remembered their hunger. The memory made her want to lie down. This time she couldn’t blame the wine.

  Slut, her mother’s voice said. Can’t wait to get your hooks into someone new? Can’t be bothered to tell the truth to the one you’ve got?

  “Not really,” Alison said.

  “The M&M Bar okay?” Mark asked. “It’s kind of a dive. But it’s got great atmosphere.”

  Hanging out at the M&M was high on Alison’s career wish list. It was San Francisco’s legendary newspaper bar, the last of its kind. It had been the watering hole of reporters, editors, pressmen, and delivery truck drivers since the 1934 General Strike. It was a place Alison had always wanted to go, and this was exactly the way she’d wanted to go there, as a journalist having a drink with her editor.

  Alison’s heart, so heavy for so long, skidded hopefully. It’s starting, she thought, my new life.

  But Mark wasn’t just her editor. And she had to put an end to the life she had before she could start this part of her new one.

  “Let’s just have coffee,” Alison said. “I’ve got to get home early.”

  Mark looked at her. “Are you and your boyfriend on again?”

  “I’d rather not talk about that.”

  Mark frowned but didn’t press her. They went to the coffee shop in the Pickwick Hotel, where Dashiell Hammett set The Maltese Falcon. They took care of their business, crisply, professionally. And then Alison went home to take care of hers.

  Alison stood in the entryway of the cottage, gathering her courage, amazed by the seemingly endless excuses her mind was able to concoct. She knew it wouldn’t be any easier to do this the next day, the next week, or the next year. Yet now felt like the worst possible time.

  “Babe?” Zoe called from the bedroom.

  Alison put her briefcase down and walked down the hall. She stopped in front of Zoe’s Mammary Lane paintings, traced a whorl of red paint with her finger. I missed you before I knew you, she told Zoe silently. I’ll miss you for the rest of my life.

  She found Zoe in bed with a book propped open in her lap. Her oversized Dyke March sleep shirt was sprinkled with black cookie crumbs. A half-empty sleeve of Oreos topped the stack of fertility books on her nightstand.

  “How did we not know that black cohosh improves mucous quality?” Zoe asked without looking up. “That explains so much. We’ll try it this month.”

  “Zoe, I—”

  “I know what you’re going to say. But don’t worry about the smell. It comes in pill form.”

  “Can we go sit in the living room? I need to talk to you.”

  Zoe closed the book. “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t do this in here.” Alison walked to the living room. It seemed even more of a betrayal, somehow, to have this conversation on their funky, beloved couch. So she sank into the itchy orange wool armchair that Zoe had found at some outlet store. Alison had always hated the thing.
/>   “Do what? You’re scaring me.” Zoe sat on the couch.

  Alison had rehearsed this conversation. But now she felt sick to her stomach and completely unprepared.

  “I slept with someone.” Alison’s voice sounded tinny to her, as if it were coming from far away.

  Zoe’s jaw dropped.

  “I had sex with someone. I wish I hadn’t. But I did.”

  “When?” The color drained from Zoe’s face. “Who?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me.”

  “No one you know,” Alison said. “A guy.”

  “A man?” Zoe’s eyes widened. And then awareness washed across her face. “The night of the Mother Jones party. That’s why you got home so late.”

  Alison nodded.

  “That was two weeks ago. You’re just telling me now?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Zoe stood up and started pacing the living room floor. “Okay. You fucked a guy. It happens,” she said in a pinched voice. “We’ll get through it.”

  “No,” Alison said. “We won’t.”

  Zoe ignored her. “I hope he used a condom at least.”

  Alison was shocked to realize that he hadn’t. She hadn’t even thought about it until that moment. Not having to use birth control was—had been—one of the benefits of being with Zoe. Not having to worry about AIDS was another.

  “He didn’t. I can see it on your face.” A blue vein throbbed in Zoe’s neck. “Now we’re both going to have to get tested.”

  Alison shook her head.

  “You’re overtired,” Zoe said. “We’ll talk about this when you’ve had some rest.” She forced a tremulous smile. “You know how you get when you’re exhausted.”

  All this time I thought she was taking care of me, Alison thought. And she’s actually been taking care of herself. “I love you, Zoe,” Alison said. “I probably always will. But this isn’t working.”

  She looked at Zoe pleadingly. “You must see it, too. I just told you I had sex with someone else, and you’re telling me to get some rest. As if I’m your child.”

  Zoe was crying. She wiped her face with the hem of her T-shirt. Alison winced at the glimpse of her perfect belly, smooth thighs, the thatch of incongruosly dark hair between her legs. The first body she’d ever loved. She’d never love it again.

  “It’s not your fault. I wanted to be mothered as much as you wanted to mother me,” Alison said. “But I want to be a mother myself. I can’t do that and be with you.”

  “What are you talking about? It’s 1989, Alison. Of course you can.”

  Alison shook her head again.

  “I know I pushed you too hard about the inseminations. You wanted to take a break. I didn’t listen.” Zoe was panting shallowly. “We can take three months off if you want to. Four months. A year.”

  “It’s not—”

  “We bought a house together.” The words were Zoe words, but her voice was quavering, unsure. “We’re going to have a family together. We’re going to spend our whole lives together.” She looked at Alison through red, scared eyes. “Remember, Al? We said forever. That was the whole point of us.”

  “You can have the house. I’ll sign my share over to you. It’s yours anyway.”

  “I won’t barge in on you anymore when you’re writing. Or—” Zoe was gasping. “Or make you eat tofu.”

  Alison’s eyes darted around the room, remembering. The dhurrie rug they’d bought at the Berkeley flea market. The wooden PG&E spool they’d found on the street and rolled the ten blocks home, congratulating themselves about what a great coffee table it would make. They’d built the base together, laughing about their first construction project at Oberlin, the Miss America auction block.

  Now that she was leaving the things she and Zoe had found and bought and built and loved together—now that she was leaving Zoe, a thought that seemed to Alison, even in that moment of doing it, beyond belief—those treasures looked the same way their relationship felt. Sweet. Innocent. Outgrown.

  “Look at me, Alison,” Zoe begged through chattering teeth. “Every couple has down times. We can work this out.”

  Not for the first time in Alison’s life she wished she could disappear in a puff of smoke, never to be seen again.

  “You know how ambivalent I’ve been about the inseminations,” Alison said. “You know I haven’t been happy for a long time.”

  “It’s because I freaked out about the earthquake, isn’t it? Because you had to take care of me, for once,” Zoe said, angry now. “And you say I treat you like a child. You are a child, Alison. You had a shitty childhood, and now you’re almost thirty years old and you’re taking your shitty childhood out on me.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Alison said.

  Zoe looked panicked. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. You know I love you.” She started sobbing again. “You know we belong together.”

  Alison stared at a crack in the wall an inch above Zoe’s head. They’d been talking about fixing that crack, painting that wall, since they’d moved in five years before. They’d never been able to agree on a color, so the repair had gone undone. Time, earthquakes, and aftershocks had widened the fissure. Alison felt a fresh surge of remorse, leaving Zoe to solve the problem alone.

  Zoe stumbled into the bathroom. Alison heard her blowing her nose, running water in the sink. When she came back, she’d fluffed her matted hair and calmed her red, swollen face.

  “You know you act impulsively,” Zoe said. “Then you regret it later.”

  “You sound like my mother.”

  “If your mother had loved you the way I do, you wouldn’t be doing this.”

  Tears sprang to Alison’s eyes. Her throat was choked.

  “Whatever’s bothering you, we’ll work on it together.” Zoe was pleading again, her eyes latched onto Alison’s. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember us, babe. Our magic . . .” Zoe started sobbing convulsively, her head in her hands, her tears splashing onto the couch.

  The broken spell of Zoe’s blue eyes gave Alison the strength to pull herself out of the chair. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I’m going now.”

  Zoe curled into a fetal ball on the couch, sobbing. She stayed there, sobbing, while Alison stuffed clothes, books, and a toothbrush into the suitcase she’d bought for that purpose and hidden in Zoe’s backyard studio, knowing that Zoe never went in there anymore. Zoe kept sobbing while Alison emptied the file drawers from her desk into cardboard boxes she’d hidden in her office closet. She kept sobbing while Alison loaded the boxes, the suitcase, and her word processor into the Volvo. Zoe kept sobbing as Alison stood in front of her, as ready to go as she’d ever be.

  “I’m taking the car,” Alison said. “I’ll bring it back tomorrow morning. I’ll leave the keys under the mat.”

  “You planned this.” Zoe lifted her ruined face, stared at Alison with her ruined ocean eyes. “You’re moving in with him.”

  “I’m going to a hotel near PMC. So you can keep the car and I can walk to work.”

  “You’re driving to San Francisco? How the hell do you plan to do that?”

  “I’ll go through Marin.”

  “That’ll take you an hour. Why don’t you—” Zoe seemed to realize the absurdity of what she was doing, telling Alison which route to take while leaving her. Her face collapsed again. “Am I having a nightmare? Please, baby, please. Tell me I’m having a bad dream. This can’t be happening. Not to us.”

  “I’m sorry,” Alison said again. She walked out the front door and closed it behind her. Zoe’s wrenching cries ripped the night air.

  14.

  san francisco

  November–December 1989

  Alison pulled up to the Excelsior, a funky hotel that booked rooms by the day, week, or month. At one in the morning, she found a parking spot right out front.

  Room 315 was the size of their bedroom—Zoe’s bedroom. The carpet was stained, the dresser and nightstand chi
pped and ancient. The window, painted shut, looked out onto an alley littered with trash. Alison wondered whether the room had looked less depressing in the daytime, when she’d seen it on her lunch break and prepaid for a week. Or maybe her subconscious had decided that this squalor was what she deserved, a fitting place for the lying, cheating bitch she was.

  It’s temporary, Alison told herself, brushing her teeth at the dirty sink, and at 3:00 AM, lying sleepless in the swaybacked twin bed on pilled polyester sheets. At 4:00 AM she wondered what Zoe was doing. Was she sleeping, or crying into their goose-down pillows, thrashing in their crisp white cotton sheets, calling or cursing Alison’s name?

  At six Alison swore she felt Zoe’s grief invading her body, an army of fire ants. Or was that hot, needling pain her own? She gave up on sleep and peace of mind, got dressed, and went to work. She stashed the photos of her and Zoe in her bottom desk drawer. She didn’t expect anyone at PMC to notice or ask why. She wasn’t close to any of her coworkers. She hadn’t needed to be; she’d had Zoe.

  Alison worked through the day, grateful to have work to do and a place to do it that wasn’t Room 315. She wrote a direct mail fund-raising package for the Sierra Club, wrapping text around photos of adorable, endangered northern spotted owls. She wrote an ad for Planned Parenthood, protesting the Supreme Court’s decision to give states more power to restrict abortion. When the office emptied for lunch, she finished the revisions Mark had given her on the Cypress Heroes story. She left a message on the Mother Jones answering machine telling him to watch the mail for her next draft.

  At 8:00 PM, when Alison couldn’t keep her exhaustion and grief and her sense of unreality at bay another minute, she left the office and walked to the Excelsior. She fell into a shallow, unsatisfying sleep.

  Alison never stopped missing Zoe, but she got used to her new life. She arrived at PMC at seven or eight in the morning, worked through lunch, left by five, and walked the rainy streets to her room, where she stayed up late and wrote and wrote and wrote. It seemed she couldn’t pound the keys of her word processor fast enough, emptying her head onto page after page after page.