A Theory of Small Earthquakes Read online

  Mark and Alison sat in their usual chairs in Schrier’s office. “How you doing?” Mark asked.

  “Okay.” Alison squeezed Mark’s hand, then got up and walked to the wall of glass. She looked up at the sky, remembering the weather she’d seen through that window during the past eleven months: moody spring, foggy summer, sweltering autumn, rainy winter, and now again the shifting sky of spring.

  She thought about the stupid jokes she’d made and the secrets she’d kept in that room, and the feelings she’d had, and the feelings she’d tried not to have. And she wondered now, as she did each time, whether all the money and effort and heartache would ever give them the baby they wanted. Or the redemption Alison wanted.

  Zoe and Trudy walked back into the room. “How was it?” Alison scrutinized Zoe’s face. She’s keeping something from me, Alison thought.

  “Fine.” Zoe avoided Alison’s eyes. Her lips were pursed, her shoulders hunched.

  She’s not going to go through this again, Alison realized. This is the only chance we get.

  “Zoe,” Alison said suddenly, “what are you hoping for?”

  Zoe looked startled. “You mean a boy or a girl? That’s your call.”

  “I mean, what’s the best thing that could happen here today? Not for Mark and me. For you.”

  Alison watched Zoe’s face stiffen, then relax. “For your sake, I hope I’m pregnant.” Zoe glanced at Trudy, then back at Alison. “For my sake, I’m not sure.”

  Exactly what I would have said if you’d asked me that question fifteen years ago, Alison thought. She wondered if Zoe had felt then the way Alison felt now: torn between wanting a baby and wanting what was best for the person who could give that to her.

  Dr. Schrier came in and sat behind his desk, a grim look on his face. Alison knew that look. It’s over, she thought.

  “I’m sorry,” Dr. Schrier said.

  Zoe gasped, a small, sharp, animal cry.

  “We can try again,” Dr. Schrier said.

  Zoe looked at Alison. Her eyes were dark with pain.

  “It’s over,” Alison said. “We’re done.”

  “Alison!” Mark said. “That’s not a decision you can make alone.”

  “I didn’t make it alone.”

  Alison got up and stood behind Zoe. “Zoe hasn’t been feeling well,” she said. “And she has a rash on her breast. Would you take a look at it, please?”

  “I’m not a gynecologist,” Schrier said. “I can’t—”

  “Now, please,” Alison interrupted him.

  Mark and Alison sat side by side, quiet and still. For once, they had the waiting room to themselves.

  “I’m sorry I called it off without talking to you first,” Alison said. “I didn’t know what I was going to say until I said it.”

  “You did the right thing.” Mark ran his hand through his hair. “I knew Zoe wasn’t really into it.” He frowned. “Do you think Trudy told her not to do it?”

  “I think Trudy told Zoe to do what’s best for her, not what’s best for us.”

  “It could have been good for Zoe. And for Trudy. We could have shared the baby with them, same as we share Corey.”

  “Maybe they want a baby of their own.”

  A single tear rolled down Mark’s face.

  “I’m so sorry,” Alison said. “I hope you can forgive me somehow.”

  “Forgive you for what?” Mark stared at her, uncomprehending.

  “Mark—”

  “Al,” Zoe said, her voice small and shaky. She stood in the doorway, leaning against Trudy. Zoe’s eyes were red and swollen. Her face was tight and shiny with fear.

  Alison didn’t see Trudy and she didn’t see Mark. She only saw her Zoe, her hero, her rock, her true love.

  “Al,” Zoe said again. Alison went to her and took Zoe in her arms.

  30.

  san francisco

  February 2005

  They drove back to Oakland in silence, Zoe and Trudy in the backseat, Mark and Alison in the front. Mark parked in front of their house and turned the engine off. No one spoke or moved.

  Alison unlatched her seat belt and turned to look at Zoe. “I’ll take you to your appointment tomorrow,” she said.

  “Thank you,” Trudy said. “But I bring her. And we call you as soon as we know.”

  Alison imagined herself home alone, waiting. “I can just drive you there and back. I don’t have to come in.”

  Zoe leaned forward, touched Alison’s cheek, tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear. “I need you to listen to me, Al,” she said in the tender voice she’d only used in the past when the two of them were alone. “Whatever happens with me, you’re going to have big feelings about it. And big needs.”

  “I won’t—”

  Mark took his hand off the steering wheel and laid it on Alison’s thigh. Alison quieted.

  “If you want to help me,” Zoe said, “the best thing you can do is take care of yourself.”

  “I want to take care of you,” Alison said.

  “I know you love me, Al,” Zoe said. “And you know I love you. But I need you to understand the difference between things you do for me and things you do for you.”

  What’s she talking about, Alison thought. “I’ll try,” she said.

  “I know you will,” Zoe said. “You always do.”

  And then Zoe and Trudy got out of Mark and Alison’s car and climbed into Trudy’s and drove away.

  At eleven the next morning, Zoe called Alison from Trudy’s car.

  “It’s probably just an infection,” she said. “The doctor put me on antibiotics. We’ll know more in a few days.”

  “What else might it be?”

  “Inflammatory breast cancer. Which wouldn’t be good.”

  Alison swallowed hard. Do what’s good for Zoe, she reminded herself. “How can I help?”

  “Please don’t ask me that kind of question, Al. It takes energy to think about it. Right now I need all my energy for me.”

  “I’ll call Trudy later. I love you,” Alison said.

  She went to her desk, googled “inflammatory breast cancer,” and scanned the listings. “Flu-like symptoms may be mistaken for breast infection.” “Difficult to treat successfully.” “One of the most lethal forms of the disease.”

  I can’t lose her, Alison thought. I won’t.

  Alison called Trudy’s cell phone. Trudy didn’t answer. Alison desperately wanted to call Zoe. But that would be to ease her own suffering, not Zoe’s.

  She had to do something for someone. She Googled “best florist in Berkeley” and browsed its $200 bouquets. She went to Epicurious.com, searched for “anticancer foods,” and found a disgusting-sounding recipe for citrus tilapia. She went to the Warm Things website and priced goose-down duvets. She knew that Zoe didn’t want any of those things.

  The next morning Alison called Trudy again and got her voice mail again. An hour later, Trudy called back. She sounded as if she’d been crying.

  “I need your help,” she choked out. “Zoe is so sick. Her breast is red and swollen and so painful. She feels too ill to get out of bed.”

  Trudy’s voice broke. “The appointment with the doctor is not until the day after tomorrow. I don’t know what to do. I am so afraid.”

  Alison’s hands were shaking, but her mind was clear. “What does she need?”

  “She needs you,” Trudy said.

  The cottage garden was a sodden mess, the river rocks buried beneath drifts of dead leaves, hyacinth buds poking through a thick carpet of weeds. Alison stepped around clumps of mud, through shin-high weeds, and took a breath and knocked on the door. Trudy opened it. Wordlessly, she nodded toward the bedroom.

  Zoe was asleep. Alison drew a chair up to the bed and looked around the room. The gauzy lace curtains that she and Zoe had hung twenty years earlier looked freshly washed and ironed, opened to the gossamer winter light. A bunch of yellow tulips on the dresser bowed from Zoe’s favorite glass-brick vase. The nightstand was
cluttered with a dozen amber bottles with rubber droppers. In a wicker basket beside the bed, a hot water bottle dressed in a gray cashmere cozy lay at the ready, like a small dog waiting for his person to wake up and take him for a walk.

  “What are you doing here?” Zoe glared at Alison, her eyes blue ingots in her pale face. Her platinum hair was askew, brown roots creeping. “I told you I’d call if I needed you.”

  “I heard you had a Meg Ryan hair thing going on,” Alison said. “I wanted to see it for myself.”

  Zoe’s pale lips curved into a small grin. As she reached for the glass of water on the nightstand, the covers slid off her shoulders. Her left breast was its normal small, pink self. Her right breast looked like a bright red rubber ball.

  Alison resisted the urge to pull the duvet up over Zoe’s chest. She resisted the urge to throw herself into Zoe’s arms and weep.

  “How are you?” Alison asked.

  “Pretty shitty,” Zoe said.

  That’s a good sign, Alison told herself. Cancer doesn’t make people feel sick. She reached over and stroked Zoe’s soft, warm forehead. How long had it been since she’d touched that delicious velvet skin?

  Alison imagined how hard this must be for Zoe: being helpless when she’d always been strong. Being scared when she’d always been brave. Suffering when she’d given herself meaning by healing other people’s pain.

  Alison took Zoe’s hand and massaged her fingers, up and down one finger, up and down the next. Oh, those fingers of Zoe’s, those fingers that made beautiful, disturbing art; beautiful, disturbing love. Alison had never seen Zoe’s hands before without paint beneath her nails.

  Zoe’s breathing slowed. Her limbs went limp. Alison remembered Zoe’s body tense and straining against hers, and then the sighing, and then the repose. That was one kind of beautiful Zoe. This was another.

  “I’m so sorry you’re hurting,” Alison murmured.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “I hope not.”

  Normally Zoe would have reassured her. But this was not a normal time.

  “Thanks for coming,” Zoe said.

  “Thanks for letting me.”

  Zoe seemed to fall asleep. Then she opened her eyes. “I don’t think the medicine’s working,” she said.

  Alison knew what Zoe needed because Zoe had given it to Alison so many times. “It’ll work,” Alison said. “Just give it a few days.”

  Alison wondered whether Zoe had felt this helpless, wanting to rescue Alison from every bad feeling, every bad thing.

  “I brought you some treats,” Alison said.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “It’s not food. Can I help you sit up?”

  Zoe nodded. Alison put her hand on Zoe’s back. Her spine felt like a row of marbles. Alison leaned Zoe forward with one hand and fluffed the feather pillows with the other. She leaned Zoe back into the down cloud.

  “Want me to get you some matzo ball soup from Saul’s?” Alison asked.

  Zoe gestured at a half-eaten bowl of muesli on the tray beside the bed. Next to the bowl, an orange gerbera daisy leaned out of a glass bud vase. “I’m ready for my treats.”

  Alison reached into the messenger bag at her feet and pulled out the current issue of The New York Times Magazine.

  “Your story!” Zoe stared at Alison’s name on the cover, her eyes big and wide. “You did it, Al. I always said you could. Remember?”

  “I remember.” Suddenly, strangely, Alison was suffused with joy. Right there, right then, she had Zoe to share this moment with her. Only Zoe knew what it meant to her. And here they were, together.

  “I’m so proud of you.” Zoe brought Alison’s hand to her mouth and kissed each finger—first one, and then the next, and the next.

  Alison let Zoe do it. She didn’t rush her. She didn’t stop her. Alison was a light show flashing every sensation Zoe had ever given her. The lust. The desperate dependence. The fear. The delight.

  The love. The love. The love.

  Zoe had been Alison’s touchstone for the better half of her life. She’d been Alison’s mother and her child. Her lover and her son’s other mother. Her best friend. Until she met Zoe, Alison had spent a lifetime longing for someone to crawl inside her, never leave her, turn her into the better person she’d always wanted to be. Zoe had done that for her. Zoe was doing that for her now.

  Alison looked at Zoe, who might wake up healthy tomorrow, who might be dying. Alison thought, Zoe couldn’t fix me then and I can’t fix her now. But no one will ever love me the way she does. And no one will ever be what she is to me.

  Alison felt certain, in that moment, that Zoe would be okay. And in that moment, she found the strength to silence her own self-protectiveness, her pessimism and fear.

  “Ready for your next treat?” Alison asked. She pulled Corey’s boom box out of her bag, plugged it in, and popped in a CD. Corey’s deepening voice, accompanied by his acoustic guitar, wafted into the room. “Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly . . .”

  Zoe closed her eyes, her lips mouthing the words of the song. Silently, she began to cry.

  Alison handed her a wad of tissues.

  “Corey’s back to playing guitar?” Zoe choked out.

  “It’s the Justina effect,” Alison said. “Behind every vastly improved teenage boy is a teenage girl.”

  “I can’t wait to meet her,” Zoe said.

  “You’ll love her. And she’ll love you.” Alison tossed Zoe’s soggy Kleenex into the wastebasket in the corner.

  “Two points,” Zoe said.

  “Three.” Alison held her finger to her lips. “Shhh. Listen. There’s more.”

  “Hey, Zoe,” Corey’s voice filled the room. “I’m really sorry you’re sick. I wish I could be there, but Mom says you need privacy. I didn’t even know you liked privacy. But anyway, I hope these songs help you get better soon. I love you. Oh, yeah. This is Corey.”

  “Play that again,” Zoe said.

  As they listened together, slants of sunshine moved across the room like a slow-motion camera, lighting the loosening tulips, lighting the 1987 Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival poster on the wall, lighting Zoe, naked in a white nest of feathers and crisp white cotton.

  “That kid of yours is really something,” Zoe said hoarsely.

  “That kid of ours is really something. And he wouldn’t be who he is without you.” Alison touched Zoe’s cheek. “Neither would I. That’s why I brought you this.” She reached into her bag and handed Zoe a sealed white envelope.

  Zoe turned it over in her hands. “Since when do you have a post office box?” she asked Alison. “And what’s DNA Discovery?”

  Alison sat silently, waiting. And then Zoe looked at Alison disbelievingly. “Did you get Corey’s DNA tested?”

  Alison nodded.

  “How?”

  “You always said it would be easy,” Alison answered. “You were right. I ordered the kit online. Swabbed the inside of Corey’s cheek while he was sleeping. And sent the kit back.”

  “Why did you do that?” Zoe asked. She looked at Alison, terrified. “You think I’m going to die.”

  “I know you’re not going to die.”

  “Then why this? Why now?”

  “You’ve wanted this from me for fifteen years,” Alison said.

  “I’ve wanted a lot of things from you for fifteen years, Al. You haven’t given them to me.”

  Alison gazed into Zoe’s ocean blue eyes. She saw the sailboats sailing. She sailed with them and she held on, held on, held on. “I know,” Alison said.

  Watching Zoe’s face was like writing a poem or a story, only knowing how it would begin, never knowing how it would end.

  Zoe looked down at the envelope in her hand. “You didn’t open it.”

  “It’s yours to open, or not. It’s my gift to you. A tiny thank-you for all you’ve done for Corey. And for me.”

  Alison pushed her chair back and stood up.<
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  “No!” Zoe blurted. “Don’t go, Al. Don’t leave me with this. Please!”

  “I’m just going to the bathroom, babe,” Alison said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Alison paused in the bedroom doorway, gazing at Zoe in the sick bed that once was their love nest, in the sick room that once was their sanctuary, now cluttered with medicine bottles and heating pads and Blockbuster videos and fear.

  “You don’t have to decide this minute.” Alison said what Zoe would have said to her.

  “I feel like I do,” Zoe said. “I feel like I have to do everything right now.”

  “But you don’t,” Alison said, smiling at Zoe. “You have time.”

  Alison wondered if she was lying to Zoe or if this was what it meant to be kind.

  Alison walked down the hall and closed the bathroom door behind her. Whether Zoe knew it or not, she needed time alone to make her decision. Alison needed a moment too.

  She gazed at her murky reflection in the antique mirror she and Zoe had hung on that wall together, so many years before. She saw their delight, discovering it at the flea market, lugging it to their car, no man required.

  Fogged by years of usefulness, the mirror blurred the creases that crisscrossed Alison’s face, the salting of gray hairs on her head, the sadness that lived in her eyes. In its hazy reflection, she could be Alison now or Alison fifteen years before, when she lived in this cottage with Zoe, when she looked at herself in this mirror each morning, deciding how much of herself to hide and how much of herself to show.

  I still hide, Alison thought, but not as much as I did.

  She remembered playing hide-and-seek with Corey when he was a baby, and then a toddler, and then a little kid. Each time he reached a new threshold, it had taken her a while to catch up. “You let me find you,” he’d complain, Alison’s cue to make the game more challenging the next time. Soon she wouldn’t need to let Corey find her. He’d find what he needed, all by himself—including, if she was very, very lucky, his mom.

  Alison washed her hands with Zoe’s gritty black soap, dried them on the purple towel that hung from the crooked white ceramic middle finger screwed to the back of the bathroom door. Zoe’s bumper sticker collection was still plastered there, a short history of American activism, a short history of Alison and Zoe’s life together from 1983 to 2005.