A Theory of Small Earthquakes Read online

  He needs me, she thought wearily when Corey woke her for the fourth time in a night, and she felt utterly incapable of opening her eyes, let alone giving more of herself, even to him, and she would have traded a limb for a single night of sleep.

  Exhaustion, tedium, and anxiety began to encroach on Alison’s joy.

  She stumbled through her days so groggy that she was nauseous, so sleepy that she was brain-dead. She’d walk into the kitchen, forget why she was there, then realize she hadn’t eaten all day. She’d promise herself a nap when Corey went down for his and end up spending the whole two hours watching him sleep. What if he stopped breathing? What if there was another earthquake? How would Mark get home to them across the Bay Bridge?

  And then there was the matter of Zoe. The more time stretched between them, the more things happened to Alison that Zoe didn’t know about, the more she missed Zoe. While she washed the dishes, while she shoved the day’s third load of laundry from the washer to the dryer, and especially when two-month-old Corey gurgled in her arms, Alison found herself wondering what Zoe was doing, who she was doing it with, what she’d say if Alison called her on the phone.

  They hadn’t seen each other in nearly a year. Zoe probably hated her guts. Zoe didn’t even know that Corey existed. Still, Alison imagined calling her; imagined Zoe saying “I’ll be right over,” Zoe whirling around the house cleaning and cooking, telling Alison to rest while she gave Corey his bath.

  And then Alison imagined what would really happen if she called Zoe. She’d think about facing Zoe’s questions about Corey, facing Zoe’s anger and pain. And Alison would put the thought of calling Zoe aside.

  “I put the stroller together a week ago,” Mark said over the dinner he’d come home early to cook. “Didn’t you say you wanted to start taking Corey for walks?”

  “You think I’m fat.” Alison stopped pushing Mark’s bland, mushy pasta around her plate and burst into tears. She’d come home from the hospital with an extra fifteen pounds. It felt like fifty. She was plump and flabby everywhere she’d been lean and muscular before—her hips, her thighs, her belly, her arms. She’d learned to avoid mirrors, but she felt the weight whether she saw it or not.

  “You’re not fat. You’re bored,” Mark said. “Except for doctor visits, you haven’t left the house in weeks.”

  “You’re right,” Alison said. But every time she contemplated what it took to get herself and Corey out the door—taking off Mark’s castoff sweats and putting on real clothes, packing Corey’s diaper bag with pacifiers and diapers and burp cloths and breast pads and baby wipes and backup outfits—she curled up on the couch instead.

  One morning when Corey was nine weeks old and the two of them were alone in the house, Alison braved a confrontation with her pre-pregnancy wardrobe. She managed to squeeze herself into her baggiest pair of pre-pregnancy jeans.

  “Aren’t you impressed?” she asked Corey, who was lying on his stomach on the bed like a blue velour turtle, trying to lift his wobbly head. Alison regarded her shape in the mirror. “You’ve never seen your mom wearing an actual waistband before.”

  Corey beamed at her. “You’re right,” Alison said. “This calls for a celebration.” She dumped the contents of his changing table into the diaper bag, pulled the stroller out of the closet, and wheeled Corey out the door into the sunny August morning.

  Alison shielded her eyes, taking in the sights and sounds of adult life. From the railroad tracks down by the bay, she heard a train’s insistent whistle. A helicopter jackhammered the sky overhead. A rag-wrapped man pushed a rattling shopping cart down the middle of the street.

  “Welcome to the world, Pickle,” Alison said. She adjusted the stroller’s canopy to keep the sun out of Corey’s eyes and headed north on Shattuck.

  At La Peña Cultural Center, a crew of painters was freshening the 3D mural that wrapped around the building’s facade. Alison figured it was never too soon for a Bay Area kid to learn his revolutionary heroes. “Victor Jara,” Alison pointed to the central figure, his papier-mâché hand strumming a guitar. “Pablo Neruda. He was a poet, honey.” She squinted at the figures, straining her mommy brain. “Woody Guthrie. His son Arlo is closer to your age. Malvina Reynolds. She wrote a great song, ‘Little Boxes.’ I’ll sing it to you someday.”

  Next door a Guinness truck was double-parked in front of the Starry Plough Irish bar. Alison stopped to read to Corey from the plaque beside its doors:No revolutionary movement is complete without its poetic expression. Until the movement is marked by the joyous, defiant singing of revolutionary songs, it lacks one of the most distinctive marks of a popular revolutionary movement; it is the dogma of the few and not the faith of the multitude.

  —James Connolly, 1907

  As she pushed Corey past the Berkeley Bowl, the former bowling alley converted to an Asian produce market, she made a note to herself to do some shopping on the way home. “Daddy tries. But cooking isn’t his forté,” she told Corey. “You’ll be much better at it. I’ll make sure of that.” She felt a stab, imagining Zoe teaching Corey to make her lentil soup.

  The downtown Berkeley BART station was surrounded by the usual knot of demonstrators walking in the usual small circle, waving the usual handmade picket signs. The injustice du jour was the U.S. involvement in the Gulf War, but one rogue sign read, I’M ALREADY AGAINST THE NEXT WAR. Another read, STOP UNWANTED SEISMIC ACTIVITY. Another demanded LECH WALESA FOR PRESIDENT. Alison wondered briefly which country the guy wanted Walesa to be president of. Berkeley being Berkeley, she thought, it’s as likely to be the United States as Poland.

  Crossing University, Alison entered her old neighborhood, Zoe’s neighborhood. “Mommy doesn’t live here anymore,” she told Corey, speed-walking him past the familiar corners: Delaware, Francisco, Virginia, Lincoln. Turning left on any of those corners would take her to Grant Street, to the cottage, to Zoe. “We’re going straight,” she informed her son. Never too soon to teach the kid to pun.

  Inside Black Oak Books, Alison looked around hungrily, drinking it all in: the shelves overflowing with used paperbacks and first editions, the framed photos of Alice Walker, Sue Miller, Barbara Kingsolver, and a dozen others she didn’t recognize. The tables piled with novels and journalistic exposés and spiritual tomes and cookbooks and art books and—

  And at the art book table, her back to Alison, a woman who looked like Zoe.

  Can’t be, Alison told herself. It was too much of a coincidence to be true. First time out with Corey, first time walking through their old neighborhood, first time fitting into her jeans. But . . .

  But. It wasn’t just the bristle of turquoise hair, or the cherry red Indian cotton shirt, or the blindingly yellow parachute pants. Alison knew it was Zoe because her own chest seized and her own belly melted and because she thought, Finally.

  Zoe put the book down. Her eyes met Alison’s. The blood drained from her face. And then Zoe saw the stroller. She stared at Alison as if she’d been slapped.

  Alison went to Zoe. Took Corey to Zoe. “There you are,” Alison said.

  “Here I am,” Zoe said stiffly. She was pale and gaunt and slightly disheveled. Alison thought she’d never seen anyone so beautiful in her life.

  “And who’s this?” Zoe asked, looking down at Corey.

  Alison swallowed hard. “This is my son.”

  Zoe’s blue eyes darkened. “Your son.”

  “I wanted to tell you. I’ve thought of calling you a million times.”

  Zoe turned away. “I gotta go,” she said.

  “Please don’t,” Alison pleaded. “I know you’re upset. Of course you’re upset. But can we please, please go someplace and talk?”

  “I’m not ready for this.”

  “But it’s been so long.” Alison hated the desperation in her own voice.

  “That was your choice, not mine. You’ve got a lot of nerve. You know that, Alison?”

  Zoe walked out of the store. Alison ran after her.

  “Fifte
en minutes,” Alison begged breathlessly.

  Zoe stopped walking. “Ten,” she said.

  17.

  berkeley

  August 1990

  They went to Masse’s, the French bakery next door. They both ordered chamomile tea. They took their little white teapots and their big black-and-white-striped mugs to a small round metal table in the window. They sat for a while without speaking, finding and avoiding each other’s eyes.

  Outside on Shattuck, people carried bulging pillowcases into the Laundromat and takeout bags out of Saul’s Deli. A homeless man held a sign that read, WILL WORK FOR PASTRAMI. In his umbrella stroller, Corey slumped like a rag doll, sound asleep. “Since when do you drink tea?” Zoe asked.

  “I can’t have caffeine. I’m breastfeeding.” It was hard to say the word breast to Zoe. “You look great.”

  “I look like shit. Which is pretty much how I feel.”

  Same old Zoe, Alison thought. She’d never heard Zoe utter a disingenuous word about her own appearance. Zoe didn’t crave compliments or deflect them the way most women did. She gained weight, lost it, did one crazy thing to her hair after another, went to parties in outfits Alison wouldn’t sleep in, all cloaked in that irresistible, cocky confidence of hers.

  “Are you still in the cottage?” Alison asked.

  “Yup.” Zoe blew on her tea.

  “Are you painting?”

  Zoe nodded.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Oddly enough, it’s going great.” Zoe took a sip of tea. “What a cliché. Heartbreak, the great muse.”

  Alison’s throat clenched. “I’m still at PMC,” she said, as if she could turn this into a normal conversation by acting as if it were one. “They gave me three months’ maternity leave. I wish I could take a year.”

  “You said you wanted to talk, Alison,” Zoe said. “So talk.”

  Alison took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Mostly I wanted to say . . . I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Sorry you hurt me? Or sorry we’re apart?”

  Tell the truth, Alison told herself. But what was the truth? “Sorry I hurt you.”

  Zoe winced. “Not the answer I wanted.”

  “I’m sorry,” Alison said again.

  “Are you with the baby’s father?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he the guy you—?”

  Alison nodded.

  Zoe’s jaw tightened.

  “Zoe. You and I haven’t seen each other in months. We don’t need to have this conversation right now.”

  “Maybe you don’t. But I do.”

  Nothing’s changed, Alison thought. I’m still disappointing her and feeling guilty about it. And she’s still insisting that I tell her more than I want to say. Maybe the best thing I can do for both of us—for all of us—is to get up now and walk away.

  Alison sneaked a peek at Zoe and saw her watching Corey sleep. Zoe’s face was a sky of changing weather: awe, anger, tenderness, grief. Alison knew that face—all those faces—better than she knew her own.

  “What do you need to know?” Alison asked.

  “What do you think I need to know? You left me eight months ago because you didn’t want to have a baby with me. And now you show up with a baby you had with someone else.” Zoe twisted her mug in her hands. “Did you marry the guy?”

  “No.” Alison knew her mind and Zoe’s were traveling to the same place and time. On their fifth anniversary, Zoe had asked Alison to marry her. Alison had treated her proposal as a joke, saying she’d change her name to Alan, tape her breasts flat, and show up at City Hall in a tux. Zoe had never brought it up again. But even though there was no way for them to do it, not getting married became one more way Alison felt she’d let Zoe down.

  Zoe glared at the man at the next table, who was blatantly eavesdropping. He picked up his New York Times.

  “Do you love this guy?” Zoe asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you in love with him?”

  Alison hesitated.

  “I didn’t think so.” Zoe leaned back in her chair. “What does he do?”

  “He’s a magazine editor.”

  “At Mother Jones?”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “You met him at a Mother Jones party. I’ve been reading the magazine. I saw your piece.”

  “I got that assignment before he and I—”

  “I know when you got your first Mother Jones assignment, Alison,” Zoe said icily. “I brought you flowers to celebrate, remember?”

  “It surprised me, too, what happened,” Alison said slowly. “I know you trusted me. And I—”

  “Actually, I didn’t trust you,” Zoe said. “Because I knew you never really trusted me. But I did think that if I loved you well enough, for long enough, eventually you would.”

  “I wanted it to work with you, Zoe. You know I did.”

  “Until we started trying to have a baby.”

  She’s right, Alison thought, and she’s wrong. Since they’d broken up, Alison had realized that if she’d known Zoe was fallible—right sometimes, wrong sometimes, brave sometimes, scared sometimes, just like any other mortal human—things might have turned out differently for them. And that wasn’t Zoe’s fault.

  “It wasn’t just that,” Alison said. “I felt too . . .” Alison swallowed the word smothered. She pulled a more neutral word out of the lesbian lexicon, a language she’d never spoken fluently, a language she’d been glad to forget. “Too merged with you.”

  “You were scared,” Zoe corrected her. “Scared of being a lesbian mother. Scared of loving me the way I loved you. I thought we were working on that.” She raked a hand through her magenta hair. Even her fingers were thinner. “I didn’t know you had other plans.”

  “I didn’t plan what happened.”

  “You wanted to get pregnant. You didn’t want to raise a child with a woman. What else could have happened?”

  “I tried to get pregnant with you.”

  “Is that the story you’ve been telling yourself? That you left me because we couldn’t have a child?”

  The man at the next table made a show of turning the pages of his newspaper. “Zoe,” Alison whispered, “please lower your voice.”

  “I don’t give a shit who hears me.”

  Part of the deal, Alison thought. Take Zoe, take her as she is.

  “I always had to be the grown-up. The strong one. I freaked out about the earthquake. That made me worthless to you.”

  “You’ve never been worthless to me.”

  “Did you tell your boyfriend about us?” Zoe asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Did you tell him we were inseminating when you met him?”

  Alison’s heart hammered. “There’s no reason for him to know that.”

  “That’s pretty major information you’re withholding. The two of you must be very close,” Zoe said sarcastically. She paused. “How old is the baby?”

  I can get up and walk out of here right now and she’ll never know the answer to that question, Alison thought. But if I want her in my life, if I’m ever going to forgive myself, I have to tell her the truth. “His birthday was July 18.”

  Watching Zoe doing the math in her head, Alison remembered watching Mark making the same calculation. “Which means he was conceived . . .” Zoe said.

  “In October.”

  “We were still together in October. We inseminated in October.”

  “It didn’t work.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Listen to me, Zoe. This is important.”

  “You bet it is.”

  “I slept with Mark two days after we inseminated for the last time. And we . . . he didn’t use protection.”

  “Wait a minute.” Zoe looked confused. “You had your period in November.”

  “That was just spotting.”

  “Wow, Alison.” Zoe shook her head in disbelief. “First you cheated on me. Then you left me when you w
ere pregnant with a child we might have made together.”

  “I didn’t know I was pregnant when I moved out, I swear. Corey is Mark’s child. Mark’s and mine.”

  “Get real, Al. That baby might be ours.”

  Alison felt a chill.

  “How are you going to explain it to your man if Corey doesn’t look like him?” Zoe asked.

  “He already does. Everyone says that.”

  “What did you do, Alison? Pick a guy who looked like our donor?”

  She hadn’t done it deliberately, but in fact, that’s exactly what Alison had done. Like the donor, Mark had fair skin, blue eyes, and curly hair. Still: how many men fit that description? Thousands. Millions, maybe.

  A tiny yelp burst from the stroller. “The windup,” Mark called it. Then, when Corey started wailing, “and the pitch.” Sure enough, Corey began to wail.

  Alison scooped him from the stroller, lifted her shirt, and held him to her breast. It wasn’t until she was kissing the top of Corey’s head, smoothing his sweaty baby hairs, that she saw Zoe’s face.

  The tightness and the anger were gone. Zoe’s eyes were brimming with tears. “I wanted so much to see you like this,” she choked out. “Can I hold him? When you’re finished, I mean?”

  “Of course.” Alison was tearful herself. Who else could tell Corey who his mother had been before she met his father? Only Zoe. Who else would teach him to draw, and cook lentil soup, and turn boring thrift store castoffs into fabulous clothes?

  Alison had always believed that Zoe’s confidence, her groundedness, her fearlessness came from her mother’s love. Alison wanted her son to have that kind of love. She hoped she could give it to him, even though she’d never had it herself. She knew Zoe could.

  “This might really piss you off,” Alison said. “But I miss you.”

  “It does piss me off,” Zoe said. “And I miss you, too.”

  Alison’s nipple popped out of Corey’s mouth. “Sorry, Pickle,” she murmured, and she helped him latch on again. Comically loud slurping sounds erupted from her breast. Despite themselves, Zoe and Alison grinned at each other.