A Theory of Small Earthquakes Read online

  “Dried-up old spinsters,” her mother sneered when the women got out.

  “What’s a spinster?” Alison asked.

  “A woman who isn’t married.”

  “You’re a woman who isn’t married. What’s so bad about that?”

  Her mother yanked Alison by the arm, pulling her into the hallway, her mouth stretched into a thin, angry line. “I lost my husband. I’m not a bull dyke like them.”

  “Now there’s a thought.” Zoe’s angry voice brought Alison back. “You’re the one who insisted on carrying our first kid. But since you need a break, maybe I should go first.”

  “That’s so unfair. I can’t believe you’re doing this.” Alison was fighting tears.

  “Doing what? Trying to have a baby with you?”

  “Bullying me. Manipulating me. You’re acting like a man.”

  “Well, you’re acting like a homophobe.” Zoe’s face was red. “You wouldn’t say that if I were straight.”

  “If you were straight, we wouldn’t be having this problem.”

  A bearded, scabby-faced homeless man stumbled into the doorway.

  “Spare change?” he mumbled. Zoe scrounged in the pocket of her plaid Bermuda shorts, dug out a dime, and handed it to him.

  The man held the coin up to his face, shook his head, and handed it back. “Got anything bigger?” he asked. “I’m trying to get an iced mocha at Peet’s.”

  Zoe pulled out her wallet and handed the man a dollar bill. Without a word, he stumbled away.

  “No way,” Alison said. “Did that homeless guy just say—”

  “You gotta love Berkeley,” Zoe said. And then her furious face collapsed and she was laughing. Alison started laughing and couldn’t stop. They stood in the shoe store doorway, laughing harder and harder, dizzied by heat and hysterics, holding onto each other to keep themselves upright.

  “I’m going to pee in my pants,” Zoe gasped.

  Alison laughed until she cried.

  They did what people do when they’re in love and they’re having trouble and they want to stay together and it’s not as easy as it used to be. They lowered the volume on their righteous indignation. Swallowed the small stuff. Spent stupid money wooing each other with extravagant restaurant meals, exotic bouquets. Raised the volume on fun and sex and compromise.

  Softened by Zoe’s renewed attention, scared by her own warring emotions, Alison agreed to be inseminated in October. Zoe agreed that if their fourth effort didn’t take, they’d take a one-month break before the fifth.

  “It worked this time. I just know it,” Zoe said as they left the clinic on a hot October afternoon. She threw her arm around Alison and steered her toward Shattuck. “C’mon, little mama. Let’s celebrate. I’ll buy you a shot of wheat grass juice.”

  Zoe had been running their fourth conception effort like a military campaign. She scoured the shelves of Berkeley’s abundant bookstores, bringing home treatises on natural infertility treatments from Cody’s, philosophical texts on the meaning of motherhood from Moe’s, legal self-help workbooks for same-sex parents from Nolo Press, Chinese medicine guides from Revolution Books. She’d bought a wooden African fertility goddess at Gaia and glassine bags of herbs at Lhasa Karnak. She’d been force-feeding Alison nightly eyedroppers full of evening primrose oil, along with nauseating quantities of yams, spinach, and tofu, and herbs that she brewed into putrid-smelling teas.

  Alison gazed longingly across the street at Berkeley’s newest gelato shop, the Daily Scoop. “I could have a wheat grass gelato instead.”

  “Al . . .” Zoe tightened her grip on Alison’s shoulder.

  “Pretty please? With evening primrose sprinkles on top?”

  “We’ll never get pregnant if I let you have your way.”

  Zoe smiled at Alison teasingly. In the next instant her face became a mask of terror.

  At the same instant Alison felt the sidewalk rippling beneath her feet. How can the sidewalk move? She heard, no, felt a thunderous boom, as if a plane had exploded in the sky. She looked up and saw the fifteen-story Wells Fargo building swaying like a conductor leading an orchestra, bowing to the left, then the right. How can a building move?

  She heard glass breaking, car alarms shrieking, bricks shattering on impact with the street.

  “Earthquake!” someone shouted. Time froze. People froze. Cars froze in place.

  The ground kept shaking. People cried out, clutching at each other. Alison clutched at Zoe.

  “We gotta get out of here,” Zoe shouted. Her face was pale. Her eyes were wild with fear. “Al! Get me out of here now.”

  Sirens wailed. Zoe’s fingers dug into Alison’s arms. The shaking stopped. The sudden stillness was shocking. Slowly, the scene came back to life. Cars inched through intersections. Sirens wailed. Alison pulled Zoe toward Reid’s Home Appliances, where a crowd was gathering, watching the TVs behind the cracked plateglass window.

  The same image appeared on each of the screens. The Bay Bridge, broken in half, its top span collapsed onto the bottom. “Breaking News,” the caption read. “Big Earthquake Hits Northern California.”

  “Oh, God,” an elderly woman next to Alison shrieked.

  The image switched to the scene at Candlestick Park. People with green and yellow Oakland A’s hats and black and orange San Francisco Giants hats were scrambling, falling, stepping over each other, emptying the stands. For the first time ever, the Giants were playing the A’s in the World Series. “My son’s at the game. My son’s at the game,” a black man moaned.

  Lines formed at phone booths on the corners. A fire truck sped south on Shattuck, horn blaring, cars creeping out of its path. A plume of smoke rose from a building just south of downtown. Alison turned and saw Zoe sitting on the curb, slumped over, her Doc Martens in the gutter, her head in her hands.

  Alison crouched in front of her. She put her hands on Zoe’s cheeks. Zoe’s skin was pale and clammy, glossy with sweat. “I’m—” Zoe said. A helicopter clattered noisily over their heads.

  “I’m scared.” Zoe fell against Alison, her body quaking. “Everything’s b-b-broken,” she stammered.

  Over Zoe’s shoulder, Alison saw men in suits and women in dresses running out of the Wells Fargo building, horror on their faces. How could the building still be there? Alison wondered. Moments ago, she’d seen it lurching like a drunk.

  A teenager walked by, the boom box on his shoulder blasting the news: “The Cypress overpass in Oakland has collapsed. As many as one hundred motorists are feared dead. The Marina District of San Francisco is in flames . . .” The voice faded as the boy walked on.

  Zoe lifted her ruined face to Alison. Suddenly, the shaking started again. The window of the photo shop across the street shattered. Zoe cried out as if she’d been shot.

  “Just an aftershock,” a man standing above them said.

  Alison looked up at him. I miss you, Daddy. It was more an ache than a thought.

  “Better get used to it,” the man added. “There’s going to be a lot of those over the next weeks. Months.”

  Scenes from the past months flashed through Alison’s head. Fighting with Zoe. Feeling unsure of Zoe. Feeling unsure of herself with Zoe.

  Alison pulled Zoe close. “It’s going to be okay,” she murmured. “We’re going to be okay.”

  I wanted everything to change, Alison thought. And now everything will.

  11.

  berkeley

  October 1989

  Berkeley’s leafy streets were obstacle courses of fallen chimneys, crushed cars, uprooted sidewalks. Gingerbread bric-a-brac dangled from restored Victorians. Chicken wire poked through cracked stucco walls. Craftsman cottages leaned askew on brick foundations. The stately main branch of the Berkeley library, the banks, the shops, the restaurants were shuttered in plywood. Helicopters rat-tat-tatted overhead.

  Their world shrank. The Bay Bridge was closed indefinitely. Getting to San Francisco—to Alison’s job, to Zoe’s gallery—meant taking BART thro
ugh the tunnel beneath the bay. With fifty aftershocks up to magnitude 6.0 each day, no one wanted to be underneath anything. Alison and Zoe stayed home and read newspapers, listened to the radio, watched TV.

  There was nothing on TV, on the radio, in the newspapers, in conversations at the grocery store, about anything else. On TV, disaster tape loops played again and again. A shuddering Candlestick Park shaking sixty-two thousand World Series fans out of their seats. Apartment buildings crushed and burning in San Francisco. Downtown Santa Cruz a pile of rubble. The upper span of the Bay Bridge snapping, tossing cars onto the shattered road below.

  And the Cypress overpass. The Cypress overpass, crumpled and pancaked, crawling with engineers, construction workers, and neighborhood volunteers desperately combing through rubble while bodies decomposed in cars crushed like Matchbox toys in the simmering October heat. The Cypress overpass, which once filled the view from the windows of Zoe’s West Oakland studio and now was a horror show.

  Alison was shaken, of course. It was bad for everyone. But Zoe took the Loma Prieta earthquake personally. She lost her appetite. She couldn’t sleep. Or laugh, or concentrate, or paint. She didn’t even ask Alison about her pregnancy symptoms, real or imagined. All she did was read about the earthquake in the newspapers and watch earthquake coverage on TV. She sat on the couch with her legs folded under her, back rigid, knuckles white on her knees. She seemed to believe that the tension in her body was holding the world together, that if she moved or even breathed, it would come apart again.

  Her only surviving hunger was for sex, and it was voracious. In bed at night, she grabbed at Alison with an aggressiveness that disturbed Alison more than it turned her on.

  Zoe’s mood improved briefly when a seismologist appeared on TV to support “the theory of small earthquakes,” the popular belief that each earthquake released pressure on the fault line, reducing the chance of a bigger one. But then she plunged into despair again when the San Francisco Chronicle reported a 63 percent chance of a magnitude 8.0 earthquake in the Bay Area within the next thirty years.

  Alison did what she could for Zoe, yielding to her hungry hands at bedtime, reading to her when she woke up thrashing in the night, cooking her favorite foods to tempt her to eat.

  Painting would save her, Alison thought, but Zoe wasn’t about to go back to her studio while rescue crews were still pulling bodies from the concrete graveyard across the street. So Alison snuck into Zoe’s abandoned backyard studio and made it inviting again, propping a fresh canvas on the easel, tossing out dried-up tubes of paint, setting out new ones.

  “Come with me, babe,” she said, reaching out a hand to Zoe, who was lying on the couch. “I have a surprise for you.” Zoe didn’t seem to want any more surprises. She just curled herself into a tighter ball.

  A few weeks and a lifetime before, Alison had been given her first assignment for Mother Jones.

  When the contract came back to her in the mail, it included an invitation to an office-warming party at MJ’s new digs on the edge of the Mission District, San Francisco’s hottest up-and-coming neighborhood. The envelope was addressed to “Alison Rose and Guest.” On the back her editor had scribbled, “Would be great to meet you. Best, Mark Miller.”

  Alison’s first impulse was to run to Zoe, share her excitement, and start planning what they’d wear. But that was the old Zoe and Alison. Did she really want to show off her lesbian relationship in its current shaky state? Did she really want to take the chance that Zoe would embarrass her at the party, kissing her in front of everyone or hitting up the art director for an illustration gig?

  No, she did not. Although Alison suspected that being gay might actually elevate her status at MJ, she hadn’t yet turned in her first draft. She’d never met her editor. If she ever came out to Mark Miller, it certainly wouldn’t be until their working relationship was established. So when Alison told Zoe about the invitation, she said it was for one.

  Alison felt guilty for lying and for wanting to go to the party alone. She felt guiltier still about abandoning Zoe and edgy about taking BART just days after the quake. But she needed a night off from her own anxieties and from trying to soothe Zoe’s. She needed to know that there was life beyond her struggles with Zoe and the nightmare she’d been living since well before October 17.

  Alison walked into the living room to kiss Zoe goodbye. Zoe was lying on the couch, as usual.

  “I’ll be back in a few hours,” Alison said.

  Alison watched emotions blow across Zoe’s face. She was sure Zoe was about to ask her not to go. Had she not done enough for Zoe since the earthquake? Didn’t her own feelings count at all?

  “Please don’t make a big deal out of this,” Alison said. “I’m a little nervous about it myself.”

  Zoe’s face calmed. “Let me look at you.” She got up, put her hands on Alison’s shoulders, and turned her slowly, the way she used to do whenever Alison had somewhere special to go. She tucked an errant Banana Republic label into Alison’s collar, smoothed Alison’s khaki jumpsuit over her hips.

  “There’s mushroom barley soup in the fridge,” Alison said.

  Zoe nodded. “I’ll be fine. But don’t forget you might have a baby on board. No alcohol. No caffeine.”

  “Yes, boss.” Once again, Alison was sure she wasn’t pregnant. But she wasn’t about to say that to Zoe now.

  Zoe sank to her knees and pressed her ear to Alison’s belly. “Hello? Anyone home?”

  “The party starts at six, babe. I gotta go.”

  “I swear you’re getting bigger.” Zoe put Alison’s hands on her own abdomen. “It worked this time. I know it did.”

  “We just inseminated five days ago,” Alison said as gently as she could. “It’s too soon to feel anything.”

  Zoe stood and pulled Alison close. She ran her hand between Alison’s legs.

  “Not now,” Alison protested. But Zoe’s fingers were moving, moving. She unbuttoned Alison’s jumpsuit, slid her hand inside. Alison’s body responded to Zoe the way it always did, her breasts tingling, her hips pressing against Zoe’s hand, her legs shaking, her whole self wanting more, more, more.

  “I can’t do this now,” Alison croaked. It seemed cruel to deny Zoe the one pleasure she still craved, the one pleasure they still shared. But Alison had a party to go to. And her career was more important to her than ever.

  She buttoned her jumpsuit. Her underwear was wet. She didn’t have time to change.

  “Eat that soup,” she said.

  “Yes, Mom.” Zoe closed the top two buttons of Alison’s jumpsuit. “Have a good time,” she said forlornly. For a moment, Alison considered staying home.

  “I won’t be late,” she said.

  “I love you, Al.”

  “I love you too.”

  The BART train was thundering toward the Nineteenth Street station when it bucked, then slammed to a stop. A gasp erupted from the passengers. The woman next to Alison grabbed her hand.

  “Was that an earthquake?” The woman’s face was pale beneath her makeup. The diamond ring on her finger bit into Alison’s palm.

  “I don’t think so.” The train lurched, then started moving again. “It’s okay,” Alison said, extricating her hand.

  The woman looked embarrassed. “Sorry.” She tucked strands of streaked blond hair behind her ear.

  “It’s okay. We’re all a little nervous these days.”

  “You’re so comforting. Thanks for being so nice.”

  Comforting? Alison thought. Nice? That’s not me. That’s Zoe.

  And then she thought: Not anymore. Lately Zoe’s love had been making Alison feel smothered, not safe. Possessed, not held.

  If I were a good person, Alison thought, I’d tell her how I feel. But I just can’t do that to Zoe. Not now.

  Alison’s hands fluttered to her flat, empty belly. I’ll get my period in a week or two, she thought. I shouldn’t make any decisions till then. Maybe when the aftershocks stop and Zoe calms down, I’ll fa
ll in love with her again.

  Or not. Alison was flooded with sudden anger, remembering those last minutes before she left home. Why had Zoe grabbed her when it was time for her to go? Was she trying to keep Alison from going to the party?

  Maybe I am pregnant and that’s why I’m in such a pissy mood. Alison glanced down at her breasts. They didn’t look a bit bigger.

  Zoe was wrong. Again. The thought blew through Alison like a cold wind. Before they’d started inseminating, before the earthquake, Zoe had been right about everything—everything important, at least. Now, instead of grounding Alison, Zoe had become a wishful thinker. Now Zoe was afraid to leave the house, afraid to be in the house, afraid to go anywhere or do anything—and Alison was the brave one, taking BART beneath the bay.

  Maybe the insemination isn’t working, Alison thought, because Zoe and I aren’t good for each other anymore.

  The train emerged from the tunnel and screeched to a stop at the above-ground West Oakland station. The sun was setting, the platform lit by the day’s last shards of light. A group of teenagers jostled each other onto the train, laughing and flirting, the girls giggling, the boys grinning, circling their arms around the girls’ waists.

  A tall white guy holding a pole above Alison’s head stumbled. His backpack brushed her shoulder. “Sorry,” he said, looking down at her.

  “It’s okay,” Alison said. The guy was cute. He looked like a bike messenger, scruffy and young. He shrugged out of his backpack, dropped it at Alison’s feet. “I’m Johnny,” he said.

  I’m not doing this, Alison thought. “I’m married,” she said.

  “Nice to meet you, Married,” Johnny said. He picked up his backpack and moved away.

  No good man would want you once he got to know you, she heard her mother’s voice saying. You’re damaged goods now.