A Theory of Small Earthquakes Read online

  That period had been lighter and briefer than any period she’d ever had.

  Alison ran to the bathroom and vomited. And vomited again.

  On her way to PMC, Alison stopped in front of Thrifty Drugs, gazing at the Christmas window display. Strings of red and green lights blinked. Green plastic wreaths hung from red plastic chimneys. Plastic Christmas trees sported shrink-wrapped candy canes. A tinny rendition of “Joy to the World” wafted out from inside.

  Alison walked into the store, found what she was looking for, paid for it, and went to work. A few minutes later she sat in a stall in the PMC bathroom, unpacking the contents of the box, reading the instructions. “Please,” she whispered, not knowing which outcome exactly she was pleading for.

  She peed onto the pink plastic stick, wrapped it in paper towels, and carried it back to her office. She hid the bundle in her middle desk drawer and went to PMC’s weekly marketing meeting.

  Two hours and twenty-two minutes later, when the meeting broke for lunch, Alison went back to her office, closed the door, and sat down at her desk. Her eyes darted to the clock on the wall, to the blurry outline of the building across the street through the rain lashing her office window. She took the framed photo of Zoe out of her desk drawer and cradled it in her lap, tracing Zoe’s face with her fingertip.

  I’m sorry, she told Zoe silently. She put the picture facedown on her desk.

  It’s time.

  She opened her middle desk drawer and stared at the cardboard box.

  I need to know.

  Alison pulled the box out of the drawer and rested it on her lap. It was almost weightless, but its verdict would shape the rest of her life.

  She took the top off the box. Removed the plastic test stick from its swaddle of paper towels. And saw the results.

  Tears sprang to her eyes. She felt she’d never been so happy. She felt she’d never been so sad. She felt the sun was shining inside her, bathing her in light.

  part two

  15.

  san francisco

  July 1990

  Alison couldn’t quite believe it. After all that effort to have a child with Zoe, she’d drifted effortlessly into having a child with Mark.

  There was a part of her, the “no” part of her, that didn’t want to believe it. Her mother’s miserable life and her father’s early death had taught her the dangers of being a woman who counted on a man. So she didn’t tell Mark when she made her first prenatal appointment at the Lyon-Martin Women’s Clinic. She went to the appointment alone.

  “You said your last period was in October?” the doctor asked, one hand inside Alison, the other hand pressing her belly.

  “The thirty-first.”

  “How long did it last?”

  “Two or three days.”

  “So it was short. Was the flow normal?”

  “Pretty much,” Alison lied. “Why do you ask?”

  She knew why. But she needed to have had a period after her last insemination. She needed to know this baby could only be Mark’s.

  “Spotting in the first trimester is often mistaken for a period.” The doctor pulled her hand out of Alison, snapped off her gloves, stepped on the trash can pedal, and threw them away.

  She helped Alison sit up and looked her in the eye. “That’s what’s happened here. You’re eight weeks pregnant, Alison. Not four.”

  Riding Muni from the clinic to Mark’s house, Alison made a decision. She wouldn’t upset Mark with information that was only relevant to her past with Zoe, utterly irrelevant to her future with him.

  There was a reason she and Mark had made a baby so easily; a reason she and Zoe hadn’t been able to, despite how hard they’d tried.

  Alison knew that Mark would want this baby. She wanted this baby to be his. And so, she decided, that’s how it would be.

  No. That’s how it was.

  Mark and Alison, editor and writer, were no strangers to deadlines. They had one now, and it was nonnegotiable. Ready or not, they’d be parents in July.

  Mark was ready. As Alison had predicted, he was thrilled to hear her news. He was a river, pulling Alison from where she was to the next place, steadying her there, then pulling her to the next. They were having a baby, so of course they’d live together. They were having a baby, so of course Mark’s one-bedroom flat was too small. It made no sense to waste money on rent, so of course they’d buy a house.

  The Bay Area real estate boom had put San Francisco beyond their budget. Mark did some research and identified North Oakland as their ideal neighborhood, close to BART with easy access to their San Francisco jobs.

  Alison’s need for control was shrinking as her belly and her exhaustion grew. So when Mark drove her to see the North Oakland three-story, two-fireplace 1904 Victorian and proclaimed it their dream house, she was predisposed to agree.

  “Wait till you see the view from the attic.” The Realtor tugged on a rope dangling from the ceiling and unfurled a retractable ladder. Mark and Alison stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows, taking in the sweeping view of the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, the sailboats bobbing on the bay.

  Of course they bought the house. And of course Mark hired and supervised the electrician, the plumber, the carpenter, and the gardener so they could move in a month before the baby was due.

  Alison loved him for taking such good care of her and the baby. She loved him for his competence, his sunny disposition, and his quirky sense of humor. She loved him for adoring her, and she realized that these were many of the same qualities she’d loved in Zoe, and she found that a little bit scary and also very lucky. If only she could stop thinking of Zoe every time the baby kicked, it would feel less scary and luckier.

  Alison escaped the noise and dust and chaos of their house one Saturday and took a walk to Telegraph Avenue.

  She stopped at Scoop Du Jour for a child’s-size cup of hazelnut gelato—no Zoe to tell her it wasn’t good for the baby. Savoring each mouthful, she strolled past head shops, pizza places, and bookstores. She couldn’t resist the samples of macadamia–chocolate chip cookies at Mrs. Fields, and she couldn’t resist ducking into Wasteland to browse the used jeans, just in case she could ever wear an actual pair of pants again. As she was rifling through a rack of 501s, she looked up and spotted a colorfully dressed woman with a magenta crew cut striding out of the store.

  Alison knew that walk. She ran outside and she saw the magenta-haired woman turn left toward Sproul Gate.

  “Zoe!” Alison shouted. Cradling her enormous belly with both hands, she ran past the dreadlocked hippies, the black teenagers smoking fat blunts, the uniformed cops on foot patrol. She caught up as Zoe was about to cross Bancroft. Alison put her hand on Zoe’s shoulder. Zoe spun around. It wasn’t Zoe. It was a punked-out teenager who glared at Alison and crossed the street. She stood on the corner of Bancroft and Telegraph, hands on her belly, sweat and tears coursing down her face.

  Alison was at the kitchen table flipping through The New Yorker, fanning herself with a fistful of subscription cards. Mark’s key turned in the front door.

  “Hey, darlin’,” he called.

  “I swear it’s a hundred fucking degrees in here,” she greeted him.

  “You’re sweating for two.” Mark poured a glass of ice water and stood behind her, pressing the cold glass against the nape of her neck. Like Zoe, Mark often knew what Alison needed before she did. Unlike Zoe, he didn’t force his remedies down her throat.

  Stop comparing, Alison told herself for the zillionth time in the past seven months. She took the glass out of Mark’s hand, gulped the water down, and held it out for more.

  “Just so you know,” he said, refilling her glass. “This love slave routine ends the day the baby comes.”

  “Let’s rediscuss the day the baby starts college,” Alison said. “I’m kinda loving it.”

  Mark laughed and reached for the stack of mail on the table. “Nothing but bills,” Alison said. “I swear this house eats money while we slee
p.”

  “Now, honey,” he said in the corny voice he used to mock what Alison called their Ma and Pa Kettle life. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about that.”

  He bent over and kissed the low-slung dome of Alison’s abdomen. “Heads, I mean.”

  Alison ran her fingers through his close-cropped blond curls. “I’m tired. And hot. And fat.”

  “Hot, yes. Fat, no. You’re nine months’ pregnant.” He knelt before her. “And you’re radiant.”

  “And you’re delusional.” Alison rested her cheek against Mark’s chest. He wrapped his arms around her, rocking back on his heels.

  “I should have taken a month off work. We’ll never get this place ready in time,” Alison said as she looked around despairingly at the tower of unpacked boxes in the corner. The half-assembled stroller, a gift from Alison’s coworkers. The filmy water stains on the oak hardwood floor, a vestige of the earthquake that had toppled the water heater six months before they’d bought the house.

  “If you’d taken a month off, we wouldn’t have a house,” Mark said. PMC offered its employees three months’ maternity leave—half paid, half unpaid. Mother Jones gave fathers two weeks of paid leave.

  Alison winced.

  “Honey. What’s wrong?”

  “Ow!” Alison grabbed her belly. It was as rigid as a metal bowl. She heaved herself up. Her legs wouldn’t hold her. A paroxysm seized her body again. A rush of liquid splashed onto her feet.

  “Alison! Your water broke.” Mark’s voice was barely recognizable. Alison was somewhere else, somewhere far away. There was no Mark throwing clothes into her overnight bag, there was no baby causing this cataclysm, there was no puddle on the floor. Alison and her writhing body were alone in a world of purpose and pain.

  “Push, Alison!” Mark shouted. “Push!”

  Alison clenched her fists and screwed up her face and bore down with every bit of strength she had.

  “You can do this!” Mark urged her on.

  Over her heaving belly and her splayed legs Alison saw the doctor whispering to the nurse beside him. “What’s wrong?” Alison cried.

  “Your baby’s heart rate is falling,” the doctor said through his white paper mask. “We need to get this baby out now.”

  Another contraction gathered Alison up and slammed her down. A nurse shoved Mark aside and leaned in close to her face. All Alison could see was her flapping guppy mouth. “Push, Alison. Push!” she shouted. “You’re almost there.”

  “I can’t,” Alison grunted. She heard her own familiar voice. She recognized herself, and that brought her back to who she was. I have to tell Mark the truth, she thought, or this baby will never get out of me.

  She clenched her teeth and pushed as hard as she could. Harder. Her body was swimming in sweat.

  “That’s good,” the nurse said, but Alison knew she didn’t mean it. The baby was still inside her. She knew why it wasn’t coming out.

  “Mark,” Alison cried out. “I need to—”

  “What do you need?” He put his ear to her lips. “Anything, honey. Just tell me.”

  But it was too late. The pain was building again.

  “Now!” the nurse yelled. “Push, Alison. Push!”

  But there was no Alison. There was only pain. The pain was hurling her around the room, tearing her insides out, setting her aflame. She heard a wolf howling, a cow bellowing, a woman screaming.

  Alison roared, and she felt the pain pushing through her. Hope surged through her. She was in charge of the pain now. She could move it down and out if she just kept roaring. So she kept roaring and she kept pushing and she felt something slither out from between her legs in a wet, sticky rush.

  From the other end of the table, the other end of the world, a baby mewled.

  “Congratulations,” the doctor said. “You have a son.”

  Mark’s tears fell onto her neck. “We have a son, Alison,” he wept.

  Alison propped herself up on her elbows. The room looked like the OR on M*A*S*H. Blood was splattered everywhere: on the floor, on the walls, on the doctor’s blue scrubs, on the nurse’s white shoes.

  “Is he—” And then she saw him in the doctor’s bloody hands: purplish, reddish, crying.

  “He’s perfect,” the doctor said. Alison fell back, limp with relief. The nurse took the baby, wiping blood and cottage-cheese blobs of vernix off his skin. “Ten fingers,” she said, smiling. “Ten toes.”

  “You’re my hero.” Mark’s tears mingled with the sweat on Alison’s face.

  The nurse wrapped the baby in a blue flannel blanket and laid him in Mark’s arms.

  “Look,” Mark said hoarsely. “Look what you did, Alison. Look at our beautiful son.”

  Alison saw the baby’s heart, the size of a kidney bean, beating inside his tiny pink chest.

  My son. Alison’s eyes stung with tears. Every bit of joy in the world poured into her chest and filled her heart until it hurt, the sweetest ache she’d ever known. I have a son.

  “I want to hold him,” she said.

  The nurse put a pillow under Alison’s head. Mark laid the baby across her chest. Alison cradled him, put him to her breast, guided her nipple to his lips. He latched on, gagged, let go, rooted frantically. He found her nipple again.

  Alison closed her eyes, surrendering to the pleasure and the pain. She felt each tug of his mouth in both of her nipples, in her heart.

  She touched her finger to her baby’s tiny fist. He grabbed it and held on.

  I’ve got you, Alison told her baby. I’ll never let you go.

  16.

  oakland

  August 1990

  Corey was an exceptionally good-natured baby. He was rarely sick, cried only when he was hungry, hurt, or scared, nursed eagerly, slept deeply, and woke up beaming, eager to launch another day.

  Alison had hoped that motherhood would warm her, soften her, give her an irrefutable purpose on this earth. Sure enough, being Corey’s mom was turning her into the person she’d always wanted to be: a member in good standing of the human race, joined to the endless chain of mothers reaching back in time.

  Corey wouldn’t let Alison love him a little, love him if, love him until. He didn’t care what she looked like or where her stories were published or what anyone else thought of her. She didn’t have to try to love Corey fully, the way she’d struggled to love Zoe, the way she still struggled to love Mark. Every time she looked at her baby, smelled him, caressed his feathery head, her heart bloomed, a cactus flower unfurling in her chest. How could she have thought she knew what beauty was? What love was? She’d never known.

  In the past, this abundance of goodness would have made Alison brace for the inevitable crash to come. But she was floating on a pink postpartum cloud of hormones and new-baby bliss. Feminism be damned. She was doing no writing, earning no money, thinking no great thoughts, not even having sex with her man. And for the first time in her life, she felt like a good person. She felt complete.

  A healthy, loving family was what she’d always wanted, and now a healthy, loving family was what she had. She, Mark, and Corey were living a sweetly simple life, dancing to Corey’s rhythm—no clocks, no schedules, no meetings, no calls.

  The sun rose and set, food was cooked and eaten, diapers were dirtied and changed, cries were soothed, laughter was shared. Alison and Mark slept when Corey slept. When he was awake, Mark and Alison held him and stared at the wonder of him nursing, crying real tears, producing perfect green poops. Their big, rambling, unfinished house was a desert island. Alison, Mark, and Corey were blissfully marooned.

  Out there somewhere, the world was turning. Demonstrators took to the streets of San Francisco, protesting the Gulf War. Mark and Alison and Corey stayed home. The Oakland A’s lost the World Series, unleashing media memories of the aborted World Series game on the day of the Loma Prieta quake. Everyone was abuzz about two new TV shows, The Simpsons and Seinfeld. Black playwright August Wilson won the Pulitzer, Leonard Bernstein co
nducted the last concert of his career, Madonna pissed off the Catholics, having too much fun with a cross on her Blond Ambition Tour. All of it was background noise to Alison. Who had time to watch TV or wallow in memories?

  The murkiness of Alison’s normal life, the ambiguity of her normal emotions cleared like a glass of water long left on the sill. Moment to moment, hour to hour, she knew exactly what to do—whatever Corey’s well-being required—and why—because he needed her. She gave Corey everything she had, and the well of her energy was endlessly, mysteriously refilled. She sailed through the incessant feedings, the up-and-down all-nighters, the confinement to the house, the bedroom, the bed.

  It wasn’t agonizing to care for a child, as her mother had always complained it was. It was a joy, not a contest, for a mother and a father to share a child. It was a joy, not a burden, to be a good mother to her son.

  Alison was nursing Corey to sleep in the easy chair in their bedroom, half-asleep herself, when she heard a sound. She looked up and saw Mark in bed, looking at Alison and Corey and crying. “I love you both so much,” he said.

  If Corey wasn’t his, Alison told herself, I’d feel it by now.

  “We love you too,” Alison whispered over Corey’s head.

  When Corey was four weeks old, Mark wrenched himself off their island and went back to work.

  Alison was secretly glad to have Corey to herself. She loved the steadying weight of his body in her arms, the reassuring puffs of his breath on her neck, the private language that only their bodies spoke. Mark could comfort Corey when his diaper was wet, when he wanted to be held, when he needed to be walked to a nap. But only Alison could give Corey what he needed to stay alive.

  He needs me, she thought happily when Mark handed inconsolable Corey over to her and she lifted her shirt and put him to her breast. He needs me, she thought happily when Corey paused to smile at her as he nursed.