A Theory of Small Earthquakes Page 15

  “I wish we could be friends,” Alison said.

  “How would your . . . how would Mark feel about that?”

  “He knows how important you are to me. And I think the two of you would like each other.”

  The man at the next table stared at them openly.

  “I want you to be in Corey’s life. And I want you to be in mine.”

  “It should take me ten years to forgive you,” Zoe said slowly. “But if I’m going to get to know this baby, I don’t have that kind of time.”

  Corey stopped nursing. Alison lifted him from her breast, cupped his head carefully, and handed him to Zoe.

  18.

  berkeley

  August 1990

  Alison floated home, high on Zoe, high on hope that they had some kind of future waiting to be made.

  As she pushed Corey’s stroller south on Shattuck, Alison practiced telling Mark. Because of course she had to tell Mark, because she had to talk him into seeing Zoe with her next time, because whatever happened with Zoe from then on would have to include Mark and Corey, or at least the idea of Mark and Corey, and it would have to be honest and aboveboard and clean. Except for that one secret, of course. Zoe would have to promise that she’d never, ever tell Mark about the insemination; that she’d never, ever make Mark doubt that Corey was his son.

  The thought stopped Alison cold. Zoe still wanted her, so why wouldn’t she do whatever she could to get Alison and Corey away from Mark?

  Zoe would never hurt me like that, Alison told herself. And then she thought, That’s what Zoe used to think about me.

  Alison didn’t stop at Berkeley Bowl. She rushed home and sat at the kitchen table with Corey in her lap and the Yellow Pages in front of her. She opened the phone book to “Attorneys.”

  The National Lawyers Guild’s listing advertised free fifteen-minute consultations. Alison dialed the number. She gave the receptionist a fake name and told the story of Corey’s conception to the lawyer who took her call. What would happen, Alison asked, if “Sue,” her ex-lover, insisted on a paternity test? Worse yet, could Sue claim Corey as her son?

  The lawyer said that Sue had no parental rights, regardless of how Corey had been conceived. “According to the law, a child born to the wife during the marriage is presumed to be the husband’s,” she said.

  “What if the father and I aren’t legally married?” Alison asked.

  “Do you live together?”

  “Yes,” Alison said. “Since before our son was born.”

  “Everyone will assume that you’re married. Worst case scenario, it goes to court, the judge asks to see a marriage license, you run out and get one.”

  Alison hung up feeling relieved. Zoe couldn’t force Alison to have Corey paternity tested. She couldn’t take Corey away.

  Now Alison had some convincing to do. Zoe had to agree to keep the secret of the insemination. Mark had to agree to let Alison’s ex-lover into their lives.

  Corey and I went for a long walk today,” Alison told Mark after they’d put Corey to bed and crawled into their own.

  Mark didn’t look up from the article he was editing. “That’s great, honey,” he said.

  Alison noted that Mark no longer called her honey with the bite of irony that had made the corny endearment actually endearing.

  “We went to Black Oak Books.”

  “Mmm,” he said, crossing out a word, adding another.

  Alison swallowed her annoyance. Since Mark had gone back to work, she’d been feeling more and more irritated by him, less and less close to him. Their most intimate moments these days were the smiles they traded over Corey’s head.

  Alison used to feel turned on just looking at Mark. Now she looked at him and saw an opportunity to hand off the baby or take a nap. If they’d made love in the past couple of months, she couldn’t remember it—which either meant they hadn’t or that she’d slept through it. Alison had been telling herself that they were going through classic new parent syndrome, that it would pass.

  Her news, she was confident, would get his attention.

  “I ran into Zoe,” Alison said.

  “Your Zoe?” Mark lowered the sheaf of paper in his hand. “How was that?”

  “Good.”

  Mark raised his eyebrows, waiting.

  “She was really sweet with Corey.”

  “That must have been weird,” Mark said. “She never even knew we were pregnant, did she?”

  “Nope.”

  “Does she have a new girlfriend? Boyfriend?”

  “I didn’t ask.” Alison said a quick prayer and pushed on. “I figured I could ask her that next time.”

  Mark dropped the manuscript into his lap. “You’re going to see her again?”

  “I’m hoping we can all have dinner or something.”

  “All who?”

  “You, me, Zoe, Corey.” Alison plucked a speck of lint from Mark’s T-shirt. “Can we just go to dinner with her? See how it goes?”

  Mark scrutinized Alison’s face. She felt herself reddening.

  “She was really important to me for a long time,” Alison said.

  “Are you sure you’re over her?”

  “I left her, remember?”

  “You’re not answering my question.”

  “I’m over her.”

  “Not terribly convincing,” Mark said. “But sure, let’s have dinner. I’ll check out the vibe for myself.”

  “That’s going to be really weird for me, knowing you’re sitting there analyzing my vibe with Zoe.”

  “Take it or leave it,” Mark said and picked up his manuscript again.

  Alison dialed her ex-girlfriend at her ex–phone number. “It’s Alison,” she said when Zoe answered. “How are you?”

  “Surprised. I thought you’d change your mind. Or that your boyfriend would change it for you.”

  “Mark’s looking forward to meeting you.”

  “I’m sure he is.”

  Had Zoe always been so sarcastic? Or had Alison’s leaving done that to her? “When can you have dinner with us?” Alison asked.

  After a long silence, Zoe answered, “I’m trying to figure out why I’d put myself through that. Meeting your boyfriend. Seeing the two of you together. Seeing the two of you with . . .”

  “Corey,” Alison said.

  “Corey,” Zoe said.

  Sitting in a booth at Szechwan Gardens on University Avenue with the man she’d chosen and the woman she’d left, her baby asleep in his infant seat on the table, Alison felt the tectonic plates of her past and future colliding.

  Passing steaming platters of pot stickers and mu shu chicken, trying to make conversation, trying to show Mark that he had nothing to worry about, trying to make Mark and Zoe like each other, trying to make them both forgive her, Alison felt she was walking uphill, with one foot on each side of a fissure in the ground.

  “Alison tells me you paint,” Mark said to Zoe.

  “Alison tells me you edit,” Zoe replied.

  Jaw clenched, Mark spooned vegetables onto Alison’s plate.

  Alison saw a tic working in Zoe’s right eyelid. She braced herself. She knew that tic. “I don’t believe in keeping secrets,” Zoe said to Mark.

  She wouldn’t dare, Alison thought.

  “So I’m gonna tell it like it is,” Zoe continued. “I lost Alison. You have her. That hurts.”

  Zoe glanced at sleeping Corey, who took a few reflexive sucks on his pacifier. “But for all of our sakes, I’m going to put my jealousy aside. I hope you’ll do the same.”

  “That should be easy,” Mark snapped back. “Since I have nothing to be jealous of.”

  Alison wanted to reel Zoe in, tell Mark to play fair. But there were so many ways for this fragile détente to detonate. Siding with Zoe against Mark was one of them. Siding with Mark against Zoe was another.

  “If you want to make this work,” Mark said to Zoe, “I need you to respect my relationship with Alison. Do I have your word that you’ll do
that?”

  “Al made her decision,” Zoe said. “I’ll live with it.”

  “So. You’ll support my family. And I’ll support your friendship. Deal?” Mark stuck his hand out.

  “You really do go for the lay-it-on-the-line type, don’t you,” Zoe said to Alison. Then she shook Mark’s hand.

  To seal the deal, Mark poured tea into Alison’s cup, then Zoe’s, then his own.

  Alison raised her teacup. “To Corey,” she said. Mark and Zoe clinked their cups against hers.

  It was surreal to hear Zoe’s voice on Alison and Mark’s answering machine, to call Zoe back and make a date for brunch.

  Second only to protesting, brunch was Berkeley’s next-most popular ritual. On weekend mornings, throngs of bleary-eyed, caffeine-craving Berkeleyites clutching their Sunday Chronicles and New York Times lined up outside Mama’s on San Pablo, Café Fanny on Cedar, Sam’s Hideaway on Telegraph, the Homemade Café on Sacramento. Leaning up against buildings and telephone poles, they waited an hour or more for their lattes, silver dollar pancakes, and applewood-smoked bacon; their huevos rancheros and chorizo; their Alice Waters poached eggs on grilled Acme levain toast. The East Bay Express’s restaurant reviews were entertaining but superfluous. The size of the crowd milling around each café was the most accurate guide to the best spots in town.

  For Alison and Zoe, brunch was a minefield of memories. The Brick Hut was out, of course, and so were the other places they’d frequented. Alison suggested Bette’s Ocean View Diner.

  “You want to go to Fourth Street?” Zoe asked. As downwardly mobile, self-righteous lesbians, she and Alison had scorned the yuppie development.

  “The food’s great. And we can wander around while we wait.”

  “If you say so,” Zoe said dubiously.

  Alison left Corey at home with Mark and two bottles of breast milk and drove their Honda Civic across town. As usual on a weekend morning, Fourth Street was crawling with non-Berkeley rich folks in their Range Rovers and BMWs, vying for places to park. Alison beat out an Acura and walked toward the restaurant, zipping up her faded Oberlin sweatshirt. It was a cold, socked-in morning, the kind of August day that made Alison wonder why so many people were willing to live on a fault line and drive through eternal traffic jams with their car heaters on in the middle of summer. Of course, she was one of them. And the only thing she loved more than making fun of Berkeley was Berkeley itself.

  Zoe was waiting at a sidewalk table in front of Bette’s with a latte in front of her. Her hair was Day-Glo orange. Her expression was guarded. She and Alison hugged hello, a brief, measured embrace. “Where’s Corey?” Zoe asked.

  “Home. Nap time.”

  Zoe frowned.

  “I like your hair,” Alison said quickly. “What’s that color called? Homey the Clown?”

  “I was looking forward to hanging out with him.”

  “Next time. Did you put our name on the list?”

  Zoe nodded, squinting at Alison appraisingly. “It’s good to see you,” she said.

  “It’s good to see you too.”

  They made small talk, watching the tube-and-tunnel couples ducking in and out of the fancy shops, the homeless men hawking copies of Street Spirit, the babies being pushed in seven hundred–dollar strollers. Alison felt she’d been breathing with one lung and she suddenly had two.

  “Thanks for giving this friendship thing a try,” Alison said.

  “Considering the alternative, I don’t have much choice.”

  “That’s pretty harsh.”

  “It’s a pretty harsh situation. For me, anyway. And for Mark, I’m guessing. It’s pretty damn sweet for you.”

  “It’s not sweet for anyone right now,” Alison said. “But I’m hoping it’ll be good for all of us in time.”

  Zoe looked surprised. People change, Alison wanted to say. I’m a mom now. The job comes with a longer view.

  “Speaking of what’s good for us,” she said instead, “Mark and I talked, and we don’t want Corey to know that you and I were lovers.”

  In fact, Alison had had to talk Mark into that decision. She had one secret to keep from Mark, two secrets to keep from her son. The secrets were knitted together. Yanking on one could unravel them both—which could unravel the life Alison was carefully constructing for herself, for Corey, for all of them.

  “Kids’ lives are confusing enough,” she’d told Mark. “I want him to think of Zoe as an aunt or a godmother, not as my ex.”

  Mark had argued that withholding that information was homophobic as well as dishonest. Alison said that they could always tell Corey later, but they couldn’t retract the information once it was revealed. Finally, he’d given in.

  “Are you kidding?” Zoe asked. “You’re ashamed to tell your son you’re gay? Were gay, I mean. Or whatever.” She paused. “I don’t believe in secrets, Alison. That’s your specialty.”

  Alison absorbed the blow. “Can I count on you to keep our past to yourself?”

  “What’s next?” Zoe sputtered. “You’re gonna make me promise not to tell the kid you’re Jewish? A writer? A woman?”

  Alison leaned forward. Her elbows burned, digging into the metal mesh tabletop. “There is something else. I want you to promise you’ll never tell Mark that you and I were trying to have a child.”

  “What?” Zoe sputtered.

  “There’s no reason for him to know.”

  “There’s only one reason for him not to know,” Zoe said. She paused. “I know why you’re keeping that from him. You don’t think the baby’s his.”

  Manfred, the co-owner of Bette’s, came to the doorway. “Alison for two,” he called.

  Zoe took her latte, and they followed Manfred to a table in the back, squeezing through the narrow aisle.

  “Know what you want?” A young waitress with cotton-candy pink hair, black lipstick, and a yin-yang tattoo on her forearm flipped her pad open and cocked her hip.

  “I’ll have the apple soufflé,” Alison said. “And a decaf chai, please.”

  “Whatever she’s having,” Zoe said. When the waitress left, she said, “I have a great idea.”

  I’m not going to like this, Alison thought.

  “Let’s give Corey a paternity test. If we find out that Mark is Corey’s father, we’ll never have to talk about this again.”

  And if we find out he isn’t, Alison thought, my whole life will fall apart. “That’s not going to happen,” she said.

  “I knew it! You think the baby’s ours.”

  “Here’s what I know. If you won’t keep the insemination to yourself, I can’t have you being around Corey and Mark.”

  “That’s blackmail.”

  “That’s me protecting my family.”

  “You’re holding Corey hostage. You’re taking away my rights to a baby who might be mine.”

  “If I wanted to keep you and Corey apart, I wouldn’t be here. I’m not asking you to give anything up. I’m offering you the most important thing I have. I’m offering to share my family with you.”

  Zoe caught Alison’s eyes in hers. For a moment, Alison felt that lying-down feeling, that fluttering belly, that swoon.

  “Put yourself in my place, Al,” Zoe said hoarsely. “I don’t want to fall in love with Corey and lose him. I’m barely over losing you.”

  Zoe’s gaze was a caress, a stranglehold. How did I ever leave her? Alison thought. “We’re not going anywhere,” she said.

  “Until you and your boyfriend don’t want me around anymore.”

  “We want what’s good for Corey. Mark doesn’t know yet how great you’d be with Corey. But I do. And he’ll see.”

  The waitress delivered their food and strutted away.

  “Okay,” Zoe said. “I’ll keep your goddamn secrets. We’ll try it your way.”

  “That’s a first,” Alison joked.

  “Not exactly. Us being apart is your way. It sure isn’t mine.” Zoe picked up her fork and stared down at the dinner-plate-size souff
lé in front of her. “How do you eat this thing?” she asked. “With syrup? Butter and jam?”

  “I like mine straight,” Alison said.

  “Very funny,” Zoe said humorlessly, twisting her mouth into something resembling a smile.

  It’s a start, Alison thought.

  19.

  oakland

  August–October 1990

  One of many worries Alison had about opening the door to Zoe was that she’d come charging through it in Zoe’s usual way: show up too often, stay too long, have too many opinions, make too many assumptions, take over as if she owned the place.

  But Zoe moved into their lives slowly, carefully. She was clearly determined not to overstep her bounds. Who knew Zoe even had bounds? She called before she came to visit, usually when Mark was at work. Later, as she and Mark began to get to know each other, she’d pop in after Corey’s nap time on weekends, before his bedtime at night. She never picked Corey up or changed his diaper without asking Mark or Alison first. She offered advice only when asked, and then lightly, not in her old “Zoe says so” way.

  She cooked pots of food at her house and brought it to theirs, and left it for Mark and Alison to eat. When they invited her to join them for dinner, she demurred. Who knew Zoe could demur? Who are you, Alison wanted to ask, and what have you done with my bossy, unboundaried, anything-but-demure ex-lover?

  “You’re doing too much,” Alison fretted.

  “Too much for who?” Zoe said. “It’s not too much for me.”

  It didn’t seem to be too much for Mark either. Alison watched him watching her with Zoe. If he was worried, he was hiding it well. At first he’d fade into the background when Zoe came over, staying in bed, reading or working when she was there on weekend mornings; watching a football game while Zoe and Alison were doing the dinner dishes. Gradually he eased his way in—not between Zoe and Alison but with them. As he dropped his guard a bit, came to trust Zoe a bit, Alison dared to believe that a genuine, if wary, affection was growing between them.