The Fall of Alice K. (46 page)

She called Mai back to explain what had happened and to ask her to please please try to reach Nickson and tell him everything.

“Tell him it's all over. There is no baby. Tell him to hurry back. Tell him I love him too.”

“Should I tell him you're going on the pill?” Alice had never heard sarcasm in Mai's voice before, and she tried not to hear it now. Perhaps she was simply trying to be a realist.

“Yes,” said Alice, with no sarcasm.

Alice phoned the principal's office at Midwest and told them she was sick and wouldn't be in school. She still had to do the chores. Would she have the strength after what just happened? Yes, she would have the strength. She had to have the strength, and she did, and as she worked
she thought of the women who had come before her, women who did what needed doing in the world even after a miscarriage. There were women who would be able to do what she was doing if they had just had a baby. Women who could do what she was doing if their husband had just died. She worked with the energy of what she imagined to be the energy of every strong woman who had come before her—the Dutch women, the Hmong women.

When she finished chores, she knew she needed a different kind of strength now that she had to tell her parents that she had miscarried. Yes, she told herself, she had the strength for this too: just another tough announcement in a life of tough announcements.

She told her parents over breakfast.

“I had a miscarriage last night,” she said.

Her mother showed no reaction. Her father's shoulders tightened and then relaxed. Then her mother said, “That will make some things easier, but you still did what you did. Don't you ever forget it. You still did what you did.”

“I know, Mother, I know,” she said.

Her father's expression was blank. He probably had resolved not to be disturbed by either good or bad news. Perhaps he was most relieved that they would not be forced into following through on their plan to have Alice go off to a home for unwed mothers.

“I'm tired,” said Alice. “I need to rest.”

Her father closed with prayer, a safe prayer that thanked God for the food they had eaten and asked for his guidance. Her father rose from the table and started toward his basement office.

“Are you all right, Albert?” her mother asked.

“Yes, yes,” he said. “I'm fine.”

Her mother turned slowly toward Alice. A little smile made its way onto her face, but her words were not cheerful: “You didn't get away with anything,” she said.

“I wasn't trying to,” said Alice.

“You'll need to see a doctor.”

Alice assumed that she meant she needed to go on the pill immediately, but that was not what her mother meant.

“This won't happen again,” said Alice.

What Alice meant was that she thought when Nickson returned from Saint Paul they would stop having sex and change their relationship to one that could withstand scrutiny—even her mother's. She honestly did imagine that she would never have sex again until she was married and that her marriage would be to Nickson—in a few years, while they were both in college. That is, if she, or anyone else, survived the millennium.

“You can't put toothpaste back into the toothpaste tube,” said her mother.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Progression is progression,” she said. “You can't go back to something you no longer have. You've gone too far. There are some stains you can't bleach out. You are what you are.”

“Please, Mother.”

“I was a virgin when I married your father.”

That was good! Having her mother tell a blatant lie was delicious, and it quickly changed the chaotic world of her feelings. Her mother a liar! Alice wouldn't even call her on it. She'd just savor it.

The idea that her parents might have been practiced lovers when they met was not an unpleasant thought to Alice, though she had never given it much thought before. Now she would. Her mother didn't have to volunteer that information about her virginity. She didn't have to lie, but she did, so there must have been some guilt there too. This was very good.

45

Alice did see a doctor that day—and it was not to get a prescription for the pill. Her mother made the appointment and made Alice go by herself—“to tell the truth and to face the truth. Your body has been through some trauma.”

“Reason for seeing Dr. Jungeweerd?” asked the perky but suspicious receptionist.

“Personal,” Alice said soberly—and made sure she didn't show an inkling of embarrassment or fear. The receptionist was irritated, but she must have heard this one before: she thought that Alice had come in for some kind of venereal disease and that she'd get her perverse pleasure when she saw what drugs the doctor prescribed. Alice didn't see what the receptionist wrote down, but she didn't push Alice any further.

Dr. Jungeweerd's face was the kindest face Alice had seen in days. She would like to think that this was what the face of Jesus really looked like, even though Dr. Jungeweerd was a fat and jowly bald man. His wrinkled cheeks bulged when he smiled. His squirrel-tail eyebrows rose over large, gentle eyes.

“Alice, is it?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“What can we do for you today?”

Alice looked at the examining table over his shoulder and imagined for a split second what it would be like to be lying on that table to have her baby delivered.

“I had a miscarriage.”

He nodded his head. “I see,” he said. His kind professionalism reminded her of Rev. Prunesma, but his kind eyes did not. “Do your parents know about this?”

“Yes.”

“And how long has it been since you aborted?”

“Two o'clock this morning?”

“And did you see what you passed?”

“Yes,” she said. “I looked.”

“How long had it been since your last period?”

“Eight weeks.”

“Did you have a pregnancy test?”

“I bought a kit. I gave myself one. It said I was pregnant and it was right.”

“When you passed the fetus, did you also see any tissue ?”

“Yes,” she said. She paused for a second and then she said, “It looked like pieces of pig lungs.”

He looked up as if he were trying to imagine what Alice imagined. “Good,” he said. “Has the bleeding stopped?”

“Pretty much,” she said. “I did chores this morning and didn't come back bloody. Maybe just a spot.”

“Good,” he said. “I think you will be fine, but I want to do a D and C just to make sure the uterus is clean and healthy. All right?”

“All right.”

“We can do that procedure right here. Dr. Vander Wheele will see you. She is excellent. I think you'll like her.”

“Thank you.”

“Before Dr. Vander Wheele sees you, would you like to discuss contraception?”

“That won't be necessary.”

He studied Alice kindly. “You do know that everything that is done or said in this office is private information. It's confidential.”

“Even with the receptionist?”

“With all of us,” he said.

“Would my parents have to know?”

“No.”

“Are they expensive ?”

“You'd have to call the druggist. They're not prohibitively expensive.”

“Could I get them at Walmart?”

“That would be fine.”

“I'd better not,” she said. “I'm not going to have sex again until I'm married.”

“If you change your mind, call me. Just leave a message with the receptionist. Just say, ‘I'm calling about the prescription Dr. Jungeweerd recommended.' That's all I'll need.”

“Thank you.”

“Is there anything else you would like to talk about?”

“I think that's it.”

“All right, I'll have the nurse come in and help you get ready for Dr. Vander Wheele. And you let me know if you have any unusual pain or bleeding, all right?”

“All right. Thank you.”

“You won't be able to drive a vehicle after this procedure. Would it be all right if we called your parents to come and drive you home ?

“Yes, please.”

“I forgot to ask one important question,” said the doctor.

“Yes ?”

“Were you using any drugs?”

“Drugs?” Alice thought of Nickson's marijuana and her mother's Valium.

“Not really,” said Alice.

The doctor's face showed that he knew he had opened a door that Alice was reluctant to open. “I told you everything you say is confidential.”

“Well, I smoked marijuana a couple of times.”

“Anything else?”

“I took a couple of my mom's Valiums. Did that cause the abortion?”

“Probably not. Neither of those things would be likely to cause a spontaneous abortion. Any other drugs? Acne medication, or anything like that?

“Acne medication? No, certainly not.”

The doctor's eyes roamed her face. He was looking at her cheeks and probably seeing her blush.

“How have you been treating your acne ? It looks like it's fading.”

“Luck, I guess,” she said.

“I see,” he said. “ Well, if you are ever pregnant again, be sure to see me before taking any kind of medications, all right?”

“All right,” said Alice.

The doctor touched Alice's shoulder with his gentle hand. “See you in church,” he said, and left.

After the procedure, Alice's parents were waiting outside. Alice had lost track of time, but she thought it was midafternoon. Her father drove the 150. Alice rode in the front seat of the Taurus while her mother drove.

What Alice could not tell her mother on the way home was that it was not until after the D and C, in that strange zone of pain and total medicated relaxation, that she felt the impact of the loss. A child had begun inside her body, a whole potential life was there—its future sorrows and future joys—all of it was potentially there. She did not even know what sex it might have been, but she believed it was the makings of a boy, and, yes, instead of naming him after her father, or after Nickson, she would have named him David and given her parents the son they never had—and little brother, no, nephew for Aldah.

These were the thoughts she could not share as her mother drove the Taurus, with eyes straight ahead, hands at eleven and two o'clock—these were the thoughts that roamed freely through Alice's mind, and then, without warning or forethought, her lips and tongue erupted with the words, “I'm sure it was a boy, and his name was David.”

The words hung in the air, and after she had said them, Alice thought the sound of the heater's blower had either distorted or obliterated them. She looked out the window as they moved through the outskirts of Dutch Center at the shoestring factory that was being built, a single-level brick building whose construction had been started and then abandoned until spring. Its flat roof was in place and its lines of blank, black windows looked hopeless and expressionless, a hollow, useless structure like herself.

“Our David was a real person,” said her mother in her unemotional voice. “Don't use his name like that.”

Alice felt neither a reason to respond to her mother, nor to regret the words that had sprung uninvited from her own lips. Two miles passed in silence. Not responding to her mother gave Alice an odd feeling of relief, as if she had truly begun the process of letting her mother go.

And did it really matter what a person thought about a fetus anyhow?
It was too private and personal for judgment or generalization. She remembered Mai's response when she had told her about her miscarriage: “Did you save the placenta?” she had asked. She must have believed that the fetus had a spiritual life that went on. Because a spirit was intangible, it really was a personal thing. Maybe Mai could believe that the fetus could carry on in the septic system of the Krayenbraak farm, its spirit joining those of its ancestors. If Nickson believed that, Alice did hope for the eternal life of her and Nickson's fetus, living forever with Mai and Nickson's ancestors, if not with her own.

“It is time to move on,” said Alice's mother as she turned down the driveway of the Krayenbraak farm. “You have a whole life ahead of you.”

It was the most hopeful thing she could remember her mother ever saying.

In her own heart, Alice heard herself saying, Amen.

Alice went to bed and slept through chores, which her mother helped her father finish before he went to bed at six thirty. He was returning to his work at the dairy and would be getting four and a half hours of sleep before he'd have to get up.

At eight o'clock that night Alice's mother called her down from her bedroom. She had a visitor, Mai, who had driven over to talk. Disapproval bordering on hatred burned in Alice's mother's eyes. If she could have had her way, the entire Vang family would be sent back to Saint Paul.

Mai was not bubbling. She was a small statue of intense seriousness. A frozen face, her usual animation gone. She wore a gray hooded sweatshirt that she had pulled up over her head. She looked like a little nun. Alice walked outside and opened her arms to her. With that, Mai came to life, opening her arms too. They stood on the cold gravel driveway next to the Vangs' station wagon holding each other. Alice didn't realize how tense her body was until she felt Mai's small strong arms around her and almost melted into them.

“This day has been too much,” Alice sighed. “Just too too much.” Mai rubbed her hand soothingly between Alice's shoulders. She was no longer her sister-in-law. They were back to being friends.