A Theory of Small Earthquakes Page 8

  She forced her attention back to her magazine. Would it ever stop irking her to see the word president in front of the words George H. W. Bush? Although for once, he seemed to be doing something halfway decent: banning imported assault rifles. He must have a hidden agenda, Alison thought. An excuse to bust black people. A kickback from a gun company. Something.

  She came to a series of pictures of oil-drenched birds in Prince William Sound, Alaska. “Thank you, Exxon Valdez,” she muttered.

  Zoe peered at the pictures over Alison’s shoulder. “Jesus,” she said. “Eleven million gallons. Fucking oil corporations run the fucking world.”

  “Shhh!” Alison glanced around the room. Of course, everyone else in it was frowning at Zoe.

  “It’s a crappy world to bring a child into.” Zoe took Alison’s hand. “But I’m so glad we’re doing this.” Alison was always begging Zoe not to draw attention to them in public. But Zoe just went on living as if the world were already the way they wanted it to be.

  “Zoe Fairbanks. Alison Rose?”

  A cute twentysomething woman with short, stylish hair, white button-down shirt, and rolled-up jeans stood in the waiting room doorway. “Hi,” she said, extending a hand to Zoe, then Alison. “I’m Sarah. You two ready to choose your baby’s donor?”

  “Totally,” Zoe said. They followed Sarah down the hall and into a small conference room. Zoe whispered “dyke” into Alison’s ear. Alison flushed, hoping Sarah hadn’t heard.

  The three of them sat around a conference table. Zoe handed over the folder full of health questionnaires, disclaimers, and consent forms they’d filled out after their intake appointment a few weeks earlier.

  Sarah tapped the loose-leaf binder on the table. “Each of these men has given us multiple samples. We’ll put several vials aside for you as soon as you make your choice. That way, if we need to do more than one round, or if you want your next child to have the same father, we’ll have a reserve on hand.”

  “We won’t need more than one round.” Zoe gave Sarah her confident smile.

  Sarah nodded noncommittally. “Take your time with the profiles. I’ll check on you in a bit.”

  As the door closed behind her, Zoe laid her hand on top of Alison’s and looked her in the eye.

  “I want you to know how much this means to me,” Zoe said. “How much you mean to me. I love you, babe.”

  “I love you too.”

  “Okay then.” Zoe opened the binder. “Let’s find us a man.”

  They studied the profiles, each sheathed in a plastic sheet protector. They’d agreed that they wanted their baby to look like both of them, which meant finding a donor who looked like Zoe, but without the crew cut and Doc Martens.

  “Every one of these guys says his hobby is music,” Alison observed. “Don’t men like fishing anymore?”

  “Babe, look!” Zoe said, pointing to the page in front of them, bouncing in her seat. “He’s perfect!”

  Alison read the description of number 1893. He had fair skin and blue eyes like Zoe’s. He was tall, six foot one, and lean, 175 pounds, with wavy brown hair like Alison’s.

  He was a UC Berkeley sociology major with no family history of cancer, mental illness, or alcoholism. He described his personality as “balanced, patient, happy, good natured.” His hobbies were “writing, meditation, tennis, basketball, and music.” He’d checked the box that said “wishes to remain anonymous.”

  “Who ever heard of a happy, good-natured writer?” Alison stalled, waiting to be struck by the lightning bolt of certainty she thought she should feel.

  “This guy’s the one!” Zoe said.

  Alison summoned the clarity she’d felt that day on Mission Street with that baby’s finger in her mouth, the certainty she’d felt watching Zoe push Molly on the Tilden playground swing.

  Zoe looked now the way she’d looked then: like an excited little girl about to blow out the candles on her birthday cake.

  If I want a baby, which I do, Alison thought, and if I want Zoe, which I do, this is how it’s going to happen.

  “Number 1893, I think I love you,” Alison said.

  Three weeks later Alison and Zoe were greeted at the East Bay Sperm Bank by a short-haired, stocky woman in a flowered smock, turquoise polyester pants, lavender socks, and purple Birkenstocks.

  “I’m Naomi, your nurse practitioner. C’mon in.”

  She led them into a no-frills exam room and glanced down at the forms. “Alison. You’re the one we’ll be inseminating?”

  “It’ll be me for our next kid,” Zoe said.

  Naomi nodded. “Alison, hop onto the table while we talk. I see that you’ve chosen to start with intrauterine insemination.”

  “We don’t want to waste any time,” Zoe interjected.

  “IUI is more effective,” Naomi said. “I just need to make sure you understand that inserting the sperm into the uterus carries a slightly higher risk of infection and more discomfort.”

  “We know all that,” Zoe said impatiently.

  “Since Alison’s the one who’s being inseminated, I’d like to make sure it’s okay with her,” Naomi said.

  Embarrassed, Alison nodded.

  “You’ve been taking your temperature at the same time every morning?” Naomi asked Alison.

  “Like clockwork,” Zoe answered. “Her temperature was up to 99.6 this morning. That means she’s ovulating, right?”

  “We’ll do an ovulation test before we inseminate, just to be sure.”

  Naomi looked from one of them to the other. “Any questions? Concerns?”

  Am I doing the right thing, Alison wanted to ask Naomi. For me? For my child? Will I regret that I didn’t make a baby the way normal people do?

  “Let’s get started,” she said.

  “You’re going to feel some pressure here,” Naomi said, as the cold metal speculum slid into Alison. Naomi snapped its jaws open and Alison’s abdomen spasmed. Her feet tensed against the stirrups clothed in flowered oven mitts. Zoe stroked her forehead, looking concerned.

  “Try to relax,” Naomi said.

  Alison stared at the water-stained, cottage-cheese ceiling, forcing herself to take deep breaths.

  “I’m threading the catheter through your cervix now. You’ll feel a pinch.”

  “Ouch!” Alison cried.

  “Oh, sweetheart,” Zoe groaned.

  “Catheter’s in. I’m ready to inseminate,” Naomi said. She sat back on her metal stool. “You two say when.”

  Zoe brought her face close to Alison’s. Alison saw the tide rising and falling in her blue eyes. She remembered the first time Zoe had carried her out to sea.

  Alison felt she’d lived a lifetime since she’d fallen in love with Zoe. She’d been happy for most of that time. A baby would make her—them—happier still.

  I think I’m ready, she thought. “I’m ready,” she said.

  Zoe and her hourly interrogations were a swarm of mosquitoes that Alison couldn’t swat away. Zoe woke up every morning with questions on her lips: “Any morning sickness? Can I get you anything?” She called Alison at work every day. “You’re not cramping, are you? Are your breasts sore?” She went to bed with her hands on Alison’s breasts. “I swear they’re bigger. They are!”

  Alison was sure she wasn’t pregnant. Still, on the tenth day after the insemination, when she was at her desk at work and her belly started cramping, her throat hurt too. She tried to ignore the familiar aching. She wrote a headline. She called a client to set up a lunch. She threw away the headline and wrote another. Finally the need to pee overtook her. She took a breath, gathering herself. She stood up. And then she knew.

  She duckwalked to the PMC bathroom, closed herself into a stall, confirmed the news her body had delivered. She felt punched in the stomach. And she felt relieved.

  “I got my period,” Alison told Zoe at dinner that night. As if she’d flicked a switch, the light went out in Zoe’s eyes.

  “Are you sure it’s not just spotting?
” Zoe asked, her voice pinched with desperation. “That happens in the first trimester sometimes.”

  Alison took Zoe’s hand. “I’m sure.”

  Zoe got up, pulled Alison out of her chair, and held her tight. “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” she said. “We’ll try again in two weeks.”

  Naomi spread lubricant on the speculum. “Scoot toward me, Alison,” she said. Alison clutched the thin blue paper gown to her chest and shimmied her hips to the end of the table.

  “I really thought we’d get it on the first try,” Zoe said, her hand on Alison’s shoulder. “Is there anything she should be eating? Some kind of exercise she could do? Yoga, maybe? Meditation?”

  Alison felt the cold, hard wetness of the speculum enter her, feeling more like a lab rat than a mother-to-be. “We’re starting fresh today,” Naomi said. “So let’s think positive, okay?”

  She switched her head lamp on. “Take a deep breath, Alison, and let it out slowly.”

  The catheter poked at Alison’s cervix. She felt her cervix fight to refuse it and lose.

  “Keep taking deep breaths,” Naomi said. “Almost done.”

  She pulled the catheter out. Alison winced. It hurt as much coming out as it did going in. “I’m going to have you keep your legs up for a while, hon,” Naomi said. “Get gravity working for us.” She lifted Alison’s legs and leaned her feet against the wall. Then she patted Alison’s shoulder and left the room.

  “Sexy,” Zoe said.

  “Maybe from where you’re sitting. From my end, this is about as far from sexy as it gets.”

  Zoe kissed Alison’s inner thigh. “How ’bout a little girl-on-girl action to help that boy stuff do the job?”

  Alison’s sadness rushed up from where she’d stuffed it. She was supposed to be making love to make a baby, not lying on a sticky vinyl table with a stranger’s sperm inside her and her legs in the air.

  “What’s wrong, babe?” Zoe asked. “Not in the mood?”

  She’s oblivious, Alison thought. “Gosh,” she said, “I can’t imagine why I wouldn’t be.”

  Alison was in a meeting at work two weeks later when she felt the bleeding start. This time she didn’t feel relief or sorrow. She didn’t feel a thing.

  She excused herself from the meeting, went to the bathroom, and cleaned herself up. She washed her hands, looking at herself in the mirror over the sink, and saw her mother’s scowling face. There’s a right way to do things, she was saying, and the wrong way never works.

  Alison dried her hands and turned her back on the mirror, afraid that her mother was right.

  The third insemination didn’t take either. Alison wondered if her ambivalence could have taken root where the baby should be, the symbiotic twin of her grief.

  “Maybe there’s something wrong with me.” She and Zoe were lying in bed the night she got her period again—not entwined and naked the way they used to be, but inches apart, not touching, in the pajamas they never used to wear.

  “There’s nothing wrong with you.” Zoe turned onto her side. “My perfect girl,” she said tenderly.

  The clouds parted. For the first time in months, Alison felt Zoe’s uncomplicated, unconditional love. “Then why isn’t it working?” Alison started to cry.

  Zoe gathered her up, whispering, “Baby, my baby” in her ear. Alison had almost forgotten how good it felt, letting Zoe in. It felt so good to stop fighting—with Zoe, with herself, with her mother’s ghost.

  “It hurts,” Alison said, meaning the inseminations. Meaning their fighting. Meaning her uncertainty. Meaning her heart.

  Zoe’s body went rigid. “I can’t stand to see you go through all that pain for nothing. The clinic must be doing something wrong.” She kicked the covers off and jumped out of bed. “We need to meet with Naomi. I’m gonna go leave her a message.”

  “Wait,” Alison said. “Please. Can you just be with me right now?”

  But Zoe was already in the living room, talking angrily into the phone.

  10.

  berkeley

  September–October 1989

  “So, ladies. What’s the emergency?” Alison and Zoe were sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the examining table; Naomi sat on a metal stool, looking up at them.

  “Alison got her period,” Zoe said. “Again.”

  Naomi frowned. “That’s the emergency? I told you, this process takes patience. IUI can take a year or more.”

  Alison was mortified. Why had she let Zoe drag her into this meeting?

  “But you said we had everything going for us,” Zoe said. “And it’s been three months. Aren’t there some tests you can run? Is there some other procedure we can try? I don’t care what it costs.”

  “I know it’s hard to be patient,” Naomi said, “but it’s much too early for more tests.”

  “The thing is,” Zoe said quietly, leaning toward Naomi, “Alison and I, we’re special. Magic. Our whole relationship has been about crazy dreams coming true. So this just has to happen for us.”

  Alison wondered whether Naomi heard the desperation in Zoe’s voice. And whether Zoe heard it in her own.

  Naomi flipped through the pages in their file. “I see that you dated men in the past,” she said to Alison. “What kind of birth control did you use?”

  “A diaphragm.” Alison flushed. “Most of the time.”

  “Any pregnancies?”

  “No.”

  “Why do you ask?” Zoe asked.

  “Just looking for indicators of fertility. Nothing conclusive there.” She glanced at her watch. “Sorry, ladies. I’m late for my next patient.”

  She tucked their chart under her arm and stood up to go. “If this is getting too stressful, you could always take a few months off. You’re young. You have plenty of time.”

  As soon as the door closed, Zoe said, “We should try another sperm bank. I don’t like her attitude.”

  Fighting annoyance, Alison reminded herself that Zoe’s determination was one of the things Alison loved about her. She reminded herself that there would be no Alison and Zoe if Zoe were any other way. She told herself how lucky she was that Zoe wanted a baby with her. How many women would kill for a partner like that?

  “Good idea,” Alison said as lightly as she could. “We’ll just move to LA, where the nearest sperm bank is.”

  “There’s one in Oakland, remember?”

  “It only serves married couples, remember?”

  They emerged from the clinic into a typical September Berkeley morning: cloudless blue sky, no breeze, ninety degrees.

  As they walked to Shattuck, Alison counted four panhandlers squatting on the sidewalk. One was a punked-out teenage girl on a blanket with a puppy in her lap and a scribbled sign that said WILL PANHANDLE FOR KIBBLE.

  Zoe dropped a quarter onto the girl’s blanket. “Normally I only support panhandling for cat food,” she said. “But I’ll make an exception for you.”

  Is there anyone she won’t flirt with, Alison wondered.

  “Come back tomorrow.” The girl smiled, black lipstick against white teeth. “I might have a kitten by then.”

  They walked on past a construction site where Hink’s Department Store, Berkeley’s oldest family-run business, was being converted to a ten-screen movie theater. “Who needs ten theaters?” Zoe shouted over the jack hammering. “Hollywood doesn’t make enough good movies for one.”

  They crossed Shattuck to avoid the noise. “I like Naomi’s idea,” Alison said. She paused in the doorway of the EZ Stop deli. “I want to take a break from inseminating.”

  “We are taking a break.” Zoe stopped walking, too. “We don’t get to try again for two weeks.”

  Alison sighed. “Trying to get pregnant is taking over my life. I can barely concentrate on anything else. It took me a year to get my first assignment from Mother Jones, and it’s due in a month. I need more than two weeks off.”

  “God, Al. You make it sound like it’s a job,” Zoe said. “A job you hate.”

 
A small herd of Berkeley High girls with tiny tank tops and large breasts pushed past them into the deli. Alison and Zoe started walking again, silently, separately. In front of the Other Change of Hobbit bookstore, five or six scraggly old white guys walked in a circle with Industrial Workers of the World signs, chanting, “Union, yes! Scab labor, no!” Alison squeezed past their left side; Zoe went around them on the right.

  As they passed Edy’s Soda Shop, Alison looked into the plateglass window and saw a woman feeding oatmeal to a toddler in a high chair. Alison imagined herself smiling at her baby over breakfast. She saw Zoe laughing, spooning oatmeal into their baby’s rose-petal mouth.

  Alison thought back to a few nights before, the first time in months she’d cried in Zoe’s arms, how safe Zoe had made her feel.

  Zoe’s eyes were facing straight ahead as she stomped down the street, a soldier on a death march.

  Alison caught up. “I love you, Zoe. I do want to have a baby with you. It’s just that this is so hard. In so many ways.”

  She waited for Zoe to melt, take Alison in her arms, say she was sorry. Sweat darkened the fringe of Zoe’s short platinum bangs, but her face was cold. Alison had to speed-walk to keep up with her, the way she used to run after her mother, trying not to lose her on crowded Manhattan streets.

  Zoe ducked into the doorway of Huston’s Shoes. “You’ve never wanted to have a baby with a woman,” she spat at Alison. “You’re looking for a way out.”

  She’s right, Alison thought. “That’s not true,” she said. “If it was your body going through this, you’d understand.”

  A scene from her childhood flashed through Alison’s head. A few weeks after her father’s funeral, she and her mother were in the elevator in their building with the two women who shared the apartment right below theirs. Alison smiled at the women. Her mother stared straight ahead.