A Theory of Small Earthquakes Read online

  Alison followed her feet to Mother Jones. She let herself into Mark’s office. He wasn’t there. She closed the door behind her and sat in his desk chair, staring out the window at men in suits with briefcases, young women swinging Anthropologie shopping bags, homeless people squatting on blankets on Market Street.

  “Honey!” Mark said. “What are you—”

  Alison spun around in his chair. Mark’s face fell. He crouched in front of her. “Tell me,” he said, and she did.

  “I should have been with you,” he said. “From now on, I’m going with you.”

  From now on? Alison knew why Mark didn’t want to admit what was happening. Mark was thinking positive. Mark was telling himself a lie.

  That night Mark fell asleep over the story he was editing. Alison lay beside him, envying his oblivion, trying to quiet the clanging in her head. At eleven she gave up and turned on the late-night news.

  Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were touring black churches throughout the South, trying to convince lifelong Democrat parishioners not to vote for Bush. Alison thought, Now we have to work to get black people not to vote for Bush?

  “Ninety percent of African Americans voted against George W. Bush in the 2000 election,” the newscaster said. “But abortion and gay rights have become such powerful wedge issues that even the constituents the Democrats have taken for granted are threatening to abandon the fold.”

  The shot shifted to an African American pastor delivering election advice from the pulpit. “I cannot tell you who to vote for. But I can tell you what my mama always told me: ‘Stay out of the bushes!’”

  Back to the anchor: “While many African Americans hold a strong animus toward the current administration, Kerry does not appear to be a desirable alternative.”

  Bush is going to fucking win again, Alison thought. She heard Schrier telling her to think positive. She couldn’t imagine any amount of positive thinking making a president go down, or making her baby live. She didn’t even know how she was going to make it to Friday morning.

  Alison turned off the TV, pulled the covers up over Mark’s shoulders, closed her eyes, and pitched a deal to God: I swear I’ll never complain about the war or even George W. Bush again if you’ll just let my baby live.

  MoveOn was sponsoring a nationwide bake sale, “Bake Back the White House,” on a Saturday in September in one thousand locations coast to coast. On the MoveOn website, Alison had typed in her zip code and found seven bake sales within a five-mile radius of her house. She’d also downloaded recipes for Bush Is Nuts Brownies and Condoleezza Rice Crispy Treats.

  Mark stumbled into the kitchen the morning before their appointment at Redwood. He found Alison sifting unbleached cake flour, melting unsalted butter, ripping open packages of chocolate chips. Pans of brownies were cooling on the counter. Plates of Condoleezza Rice Crispy Treats covered the table.

  “What are you doing, Alison?” Mark looked haggard and unhappy. “The bake sale isn’t till Saturday. What time did you get up?”

  “Early.” Alison stood in front of the open freezer, shuffling packages of Trader Joe’s vegetable pot stickers and Peet’s French roast. “I’m going to freeze it. I won’t have time to bake tomorrow.”

  “Oh, honey.” Mark came up behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist. “Maybe we should talk about what we’ll do if—”

  “Wow, Mom,” Corey shuffled into the kitchen. “Opening a bakery? Going for a second career in case that writing career doesn’t work out?” He grabbed a rice crispy treat. “No extra charge for being your taste tester.” Trailing crumbs, he headed out the door.

  Alison wriggled out of Mark’s grasp. She handed him a jar of extra-crunchy peanut butter and told him to open it. And then she went on cracking cage-free brown eggs on the rim of her favorite big blue ceramic bowl.

  Friday morning. Redwood Fertility. Please, Alison prayed silently. She was on the table. Mark was sitting next to her in an orange molded plastic chair. “Please,” she said out loud.

  Mark got up, stood beside her, and stroked her forehead. Since Tuesday, Alison realized, he hadn’t touched her belly once.

  Dr. Schrier walked into the room with Lowell in his wake. “Good morning,” Schrier said. Lowell twisted the cap off a fresh tube of conductive jelly. Alison wanted to thank him for doing his very best to find her baby’s heartbeat, but she thought she might vomit if she opened her mouth. Mark took Alison’s hand. His was ice cold.

  Dr. Schrier turned on the monitor. Lowell rolled the sensor over Alison’s belly. Every creak and gurgle of her churning intestines was broadcast into the stillness of the room.

  “You’re checking for a heartbeat, aren’t you?” Alison asked.

  Dr. Schrier was silent, listening. Mark gripped Alison’s hand so tightly it hurt.

  No one said a word except for Alison’s mother.

  That’s what you get, liar.

  Alison went to bed and bled. For the first few days after the miscarriage—that’s what they called it, although what ended the pregnancy was actually a D&C, technically an abortion—Mark stayed in bed with her. They didn’t talk. They held each other and cried.

  Zoe took Corey to school in the mornings. After practice, she brought him to the cottage for homework and dinner. After dinner, she brought him home. One night Trudy sent over a caraway-scented chicken stew and a dozen yellow tulips in a tall, slim glass vase. Zoe put the bouquet on Alison’s dresser. Each day their yellow heads drooped lower, their petals wilting in surrender, as if the sadness in the room were wearing them down too.

  On Sunday morning, Corey appeared at Alison’s bedside. “Here, Mom,” he said. He handed her a lavender Hallmark card. Under the printed “get well soon” message, he’d written his own, in the same loopy handwriting he’d used since he was ten.

  Dear Mom, I’m sorry about the baby. I really want a little brother or sister and I hope you and Dad will try again and I hope it works next time. I love you, Your son, Corey (Pickle).

  Alison looked up at him and opened her arms. Corey bent to hug her. Their bodies collided in an awkward embrace. Alison started crying again.

  “I’ll get Dad,” Corey said, and he backed out of the room.

  Alison pulled the covers over her head and wept, and wept, and wept.

  Alison was looking for a rope to grab onto, a story to tell herself, something strong to pull on. There was no silver lining to losing her baby, but the miscarriage did make everything crystal clear. The petty things that normally bugged her fell away. What mattered to her—Mark, Corey, Zoe, even Trudy—mattered more than they ever had. More than she’d ever let them.

  Alison woke in the night and heard the sound of crying and realized it wasn’t her own.

  She reached for Mark.

  “I can’t stand it,” he sobbed. “I wanted that baby so much.”

  “I know,” Alison murmured.

  “I was happy when we were pregnant with Corey. But this was different,” Mark choked out. “We worked so hard to get that baby. Not just the fertility stuff. But everything that happened between us.”

  “I know.” Alison stroked his hair. “At least we still have us,” she said. “We’re still here.”

  Mark went on crying and Alison went on holding him. They fell asleep sharing a pillow soaked in the one river of their tears.

  A few hours later Alison bolted upright in bed. This time it wasn’t her own crying or Mark’s that woke her. It was a promise she’d made in her sleep.

  Now that she’d seen Mark suffering the loss of their second child, she knew she could never tell him that he might not be the father of their first.

  Zoe called at eight each morning and asked if Alison was hungry, if she wanted company, if there was anything she could do. Sometimes Alison said no, thank you, nothing. Sometimes she cried and Zoe listened, really listened, as only Zoe could.

  Zoe’s attention cosseted Alison’s heart. In the damp darkness of her grief, a seed of gratitude grew. She’d lost so much
when she lost Emma. But there was still so much she had.

  Alison lived by deadlines and she gave herself one. By Election Day, she’d start acting as if she were okay, no matter how she actually was.

  On Election Night she granted herself an extension, since she was so not okay, and neither was anyone else with a brain, which, based on early election results, was well under half of the U.S. population.

  Mark and Alison fell asleep at 1:00 AM with the TV on and Kerry’s lead evaporating. When they woke at five, the newscasters were still talking about votes yet to be counted. By the time Mark took Corey to school at eight, the only question was when Kerry would concede.

  Alison went back to bed, flicking from one channel to the next, as if finding the right one would give her the right results. At noon Mark called from work to commiserate. His voice was low and sad. Alison couldn’t even remember what Mark’s happy voice sounded like. She wondered if she’d ever hear it again.

  Zoe called in tears. “I keep thinking we should have done more. Gone to Cleveland to register voters. Given money to Michael Moore. Hung banners from freeway overpasses. Something.” Alison heard Trudy talking in the background. “Trudy says we should all move to Brazil. Or the moon.”

  Corey came home from school in a foul mood. “At lunch everyone was throwing their Kerry buttons on the ground and stomping on them. My English teacher was crying.”

  He sat on the floor, leaning against Alison’s bed, and together they watched the news. “In the end, this wasn’t an election about the war, or the economy, or health care,” Dan Rather said. “It was an election about gay rights and abortion and God.”

  Check, check, and check, Alison thought. I’VE BEEN GAY, I JUST HAD A D&C, AND GOD JUST BLEW HIS FIRST AND LAST CHANCE WITH ME. She saw her mother’s waggling finger. See? The whole country agrees with me, not you.

  Shut up, Mom, Alison told her. “Enough,” she said out loud. She clicked off the TV, got out of bed, went to her closet, and started rifling through her clothes. Sensing imminent maternal nudity, Corey skittered out of the room. No more wallowing, she told herself. If I have to fake it till I make it, faking it will have to do.

  A few days later Alison, Mark, and Zoe were in the Berkeley High bleachers, watching Corey warming up with his teammates before their big game against their fiercest rival, De LaSalle.

  “Is that the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?” Zoe pointed down at Corey, who’d stopped mid-dribble and was staring intently into the crowd. Alison followed his gaze to a tall, mocha-skinned, dreadlocked, voluptuous girl in a skintight Berkeley High tank top, baggy red Berkeley High sweatpants, and red patent leather Air Jordan basketball shoes.

  The girl blew Corey a kiss. Corey spun around and sent a three-pointer whooshing through the net. The kids in the bleachers hooted and screamed.

  “That’s his new girlfriend,” Zoe said. “He was gonna talk to you guys about her. I guess he hasn’t gotten around to it yet.”

  “Stop gloating,” Alison said. “Just tell us everything you know.”

  “Her name’s Justina,” Zoe shouted over the eardrum-popping noise in the gym. “She’s in his African American history class. She’s a starter on the girl’s basketball team. He told me they’re in love.”

  “She looks . . . formidable,” Mark said.

  “She looks like she’s twenty-five years old,” Alison said.

  The next night Corey called home at 6:05 PM, five minutes past his legal limit, to say he was having dinner at a friend’s. “Which friend?” Alison asked.

  “Justina.” Corey paused. “My girlfriend,” he explained, as if they’d already had the conversation Alison had been waiting for him to begin.

  “Are her parents home?”

  “Yup.” Corey lowered his voice to a whisper. “Please, Mom. Don’t make them talk to you.”

  Alison tried to keep her smile out of her “strict voice.” “I won’t. Just this once. But it’s a school night. Be home by nine.”

  She and Mark were cleaning up after dinner when the doorbell rang. Alison checked the clock before she went to answer it. 8:55.

  She opened the door and there they were—her baby and his girlfriend. And a tall, handsome black man in a suit.

  “Mr. Hamilton drove me home,” Corey said. His eyes were a neon sign flashing, “Don’t embarrass me.”

  Alison ushered them into the entryway. Mark made his entrance from the kitchen, wearing a tie-dyed Ben & Jerry’s apron over his Mother Jones T-shirt. Corey looked mortified.

  “Mom. Dad. This is Justina.” Corey blushed to the roots of his bleached-out, stiffly spiked hair. Mr. Hamilton cleared his throat theatrically. “And her dad,” Corey added, turning redder than Mark’s shirt.

  “Nice to meet you,” Alison said.

  Justina was stunning, her skin smooth and glowing, her eyes bright and alert. Silver studs and hoops marched up her earlobes, flashing through the plaits of her shoulder-length hair. She bounced in place on platform shoes that brought her to Alison’s height. “I’m so psyched to finally meet you,” she bubbled. “Corey talks about you all the time.”

  “Really,” Mark said drily. Alison elbowed him in the ribs.

  “I need to get this young lady home,” Mr. Hamilton said. “School night. Homework. All that good stuff.”

  “Bye, Mr. and Mrs. Miller,” Justina said to Mark and Alison. “See you soon, I hope.” Justina and Corey tumbled out the door. Corey pulled it closed behind them.

  “Corey’s a great kid,” Mr. Hamilton said. “And such a talented musician.”

  “How do you—?” Mark stammered.

  “Corey and Justina play guitar together at our house. Mostly Bob Marley songs. They’re quite the duet, those two.”

  Mark and Alison exchanged a shocked look. They hadn’t heard Corey playing anything other than rap in months.

  Mr. Hamilton opened the door, startling an entwined Corey and Justina, who quickly jumped apart.

  Justina pecked Corey chastely on the cheek, followed her father to his late-model Mercedes, and folded her long body into the front seat.

  Corey galloped up to his room. As Mark and Alison headed for the kitchen, the soft strains of a reggae tune wafted down the stairs.

  “Good-bye 50 Cent,” Mark said. “Hello Bob Marley.”

  Alison stopped drying silverware and turned to Mark. Her eyes filled with tears. “He’s never brought a girl home before. Let alone a girl’s dad.”

  “That was no girl. That was a woman. Our little boy is growing up.” He smiled at Alison. “Justina reminds me of you.”

  “What about her, exactly?” Alison asked sarcastically. “The perky boobs? The dreadlocks? The perfect sixteen-year-old skin?”

  Mark shook his head. “Her energy. She’s curious. She glows, like you.” He hung up his apron and looked Alison in the eye. “You’re always worrying about how Corey’s going to turn out. Well, if his first girlfriend is any indication—which it is—he’s doing great. Can you let yourself feel good about what a wonderful mom you are? Just for a minute?”

  Alison considered the possibility that despite every mistake she’d made, every secret she’d kept, every lie she’d told; despite the flawed character she was and the selfish bitch her mother had sworn she’d always be—she had somehow done a decent job of raising her son.

  “Why don’t we make sure he graduates high school,” she said dryly, “before we congratulate ourselves too much.”

  Mark shook his head at her. “What am I going to do with you?”

  “Love me,” Alison said.

  Six weeks after the miscarriage, one month after the election, Alison told Mark she wanted to try again.

  “I don’t want to give up,” she said. “We have to act like we have more hope than we actually have.”

  “I don’t want to give up either,” Mark said.

  And so, six months after their first visit to Redwood Fertility, Mark and Alison returned, downgraded from happy pregnancy checkups to grim consu
ltation in Schrier’s office; downgraded from views of sun and fog to windows blurred by driving December rain.

  “We ran some tissue tests after your D&C.” Schrier peered at them over the glasses on his nose. “I have to be honest with you. The results do not bode well.”

  “What—” Mark stammered.

  “Alison’s uterine lining is too thin to sustain fetal development. Eight millimeters is optimal. Six is feasible. Alison’s is four.”

  “But I had Corey,” Alison said.

  “The uterine lining changes with age,” Schrier said.

  “Are you saying I can’t—” Alison’s voice caught. She swallowed hard. “Are you saying I can’t get pregnant again?”

  “You could,” Schrier said. “But it’s unlikely that your body will sustain a pregnancy.”

  Reflexively, Alison’s hands drifted to her belly.

  “We have to fix this,” Mark said. His voice broke, like Corey’s. “There has to be something you can do.”

  Schrier took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “We could do a few trial cycles with estrogen to try and make the lining grow. But that could take months. And the odds of success aren’t good.” He ticked their choices off on his fingers. “You could adopt . . .”

  “No.” Mark shook his head. “We want a child who’s biologically ours.”

  “You could consider yourselves lucky that you’ve had one biological child and come to terms with not having another.”

  “And?” Mark prompted.

  “And then there is one other choice. Surrogacy.”

  “You mean hire another woman to have our child?” Mark blurted.

  How crazy will we get? Alison wondered. How much money will we spend? How far will we go?

  Hadn’t she asked herself and Zoe the same questions fifteen years before?