A Sense of the Infinite (13 page)

THAT NIGHT WAS AVA’S ROOMMATE’S
birthday. We all ate cake and drank something called Moscow Mules in the warm, messy kitchen, then bundled up in our hats and coats and mittens and dragged some big pieces of cardboard to a place called Half Moon Mountain, which was really more of a steep, snowy hill at the far edge of campus that looked down over the forest and town. You could slide down on the cardboard like a toboggan, with the twinkly lights of town rushing at you and the dark, jagged trees whispering past on either side, then tromp back up the hill on stairs someone had cut into the snow.

I slid again and again, sometimes sitting on the cardboard, sometimes Superman-style with my stomach bumping over
the snow, sometimes in a long chain with Ava and Ava’s roommates. The sound was all muffled out there. Like if you brushed away the tiny sprinkling of voices and laughter, you could hear the sound of the earth itself. The more I climbed and slid and screamed, the louder the earth seemed to speak, until I could feel its voice all around me.

Loren had said there was an outdoor program at Northern that was founded in honor of Wilda. You spent half the year “in the field,” tracking wolves and taking tests of river water and learning about forest fires. Maybe I could do that. Maybe I could be another Wilda. As I hurtled down the hill on my sled, it didn’t seem unthinkable anymore.

On the way back to the dorm, Ava borrowed my phone to tell another one of her friends where we were. “Who’s the cutie?” she said, clicking the camera app shut to make the call.

“He’s just the campus tour guy. The museum lady wanted to take a picture.”

“Did you get his number?”

I blushed. “Ava. I’m not exactly looking.”

She put an arm around my shoulder. “Oh, don’t pull the fallen woman thing on me. That’s such horseshit. You think guys feel the need to punish themselves for the heinous crime of
having a body
?”

“I need some time for myself.”

“That’s different.
Need some time
, okay.
Nobody can ever
love me after this
, not okay.
I can’t love myself after this
, not okay. Would you feel bad for meeting a cute boy if Oliver was the one having the appointment?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

She bopped me on the shoulder. “Think about it.”

Ava was big on
think about it
these days.

We came to the dorm and went inside. While Ava was taking a shower, I took her laptop to the common room and curled up with it on a couch. Noe had uploaded a million pictures of the River Rats game and the tiki party, with Noe, Lindsay, Rhiannon, and Kaylee grinning in bright orange clothes. I’d come back from Half Moon Mountain in an expansive mood, but as I gazed at the screen my temples began to throb. There is something haunting about seeing pictures of your friends having a good time without you, even if you were having a good time in parallel, even if you were having the time of your life. Suddenly, you have one memory and your friend has another, and you’ll never be able to say,
Remember that time?
and never laugh together, remembering. A part of me would rather have had a mediocre time at a River Rats game with Noe than a great time on Half Moon Mountain, because the River Rats game would have increased the space where the circles in our Venn diagram overlapped, and Half Moon Mountain made it smaller. Maybe that was why so many people chose to do mediocre things, as long as their friends were doing them too:
it was all about making the circles overlap, even at the expense of greater adventures, even at the expense of life itself.

Ava appeared in the common room doorway wearing one of Nan’s old bathrobes, her damp hair giving off a scent of cedar. “Ready for bed?” she said.

“I’ll be up in a minute,” I said.

But while I was looking at the last of Noe’s photos, my mind kept darting to the procedure I was going to have the next morning. What if it hurt? What if something went wrong? I started loading the websites I’d looked at on the day I took the pregnancy test, the ones that explained what was going to happen during the abortion. From there, I started reading stories that other girls had posted, scanning forum threads, clicking link after link, getting more and more wound up until suddenly it was six a.m. and I hadn’t even gone to bed.

I shut the laptop. My ears were ringing and my eyes were dry. Climbing the stairs, I could feel the quiet of the house, unbroken by so much as a birdcall.
Four more hours
, I thought, and my heart began to beat so hard I had to pause and lean against the wall.

In Ava’s room, I set the laptop on the desk and crept over to her bed. After a moment’s hesitation, I shook her shoulder gently.

“Ava?” I said. “I’m scared.”

She let out a sleepy murmur and lifted her blanket. I slipped in beside her and she pulled me close. Within a few minutes, pale dawn light was creeping into the room. I had just started to drift off when the first birds of morning began to sing.

AVA AND I DIDN’T TALK MUCH
on the way to the clinic. I was too nervous, and Ava was still waking up. She sipped the coffee she’d dumped into a travel mug on our way out of the dorm and honked at a trucker who cut us off.

“Dickhead,” she grumbled, then, “Sorry, Annabeth. I tend to be a bitch until about noon.”

She smiled at me, then patted my leg. “You didn’t sleep at all last night, did you?”

I shook my head.

“You think you’re scared now,” said Ava, “imagine if you didn’t have a choice.”

She flicked the turn signal on and pulled into the parking lot. “Well, chickie. Here we are.”

The nurse called me in to sign some papers and talk over what was going to happen during the abortion, and then I had to go back out and wait for almost another hour. The waiting room was filled with teenage couples and twentysomething college students and grown women with kids. I wished I’d brought my headphones to tune out all the chaos. Instead, Ava and I hunched over a crossword puzzle in a magazine.

“What if the doctor goes out to lunch before she gets to me?” I kept saying. “Do you think the nurse forgot I’m here?”

“It’s okay, Annabeth,” Ava said. “The waiting is the worst part. Just remember, by the time you go to sleep tonight, this will be over.”

Finally, the nurse came out and called my name. Ava squeezed my hand. “I’ll be right here,” she said.

In the exam room, I undressed and put on the paper gown the nurse had left for me, then took out the tiny bottle of lavender oil Ava had given me in the car.

“Take a deep breath of this if you’re feeling scared,” she’d said. “It helps.”

Now I dabbed it on my wrists and under my nose, anointing myself like a priestess about to enter a holy mountain. I couldn’t believe that in five or ten minutes, this would be over. They would take it out of me, and when I walked out of this room it would not be there anymore.
Good-bye
, I thought, and then there was a knock on the door, and the nurse and doctor came in.

AVA’S FRIEND WAS RIGHT. THE
awkward, tense, scary thing I’d been bracing myself for all night had barely gotten started when the doctor said, “And we’re done.”

I couldn’t believe how quickly it was over. I kept thinking there were other steps, but no, said the nurse, I was really done.

As I walked out with Ava, the world was bright and snowy, noisy with traffic. I wondered what Noe was doing. I wondered if Mom was having a good day at work. It was amazing that things could go back to normal so quickly. I guess I hadn’t realized it, but part of me had expected something terrible to happen. It was taking my brain a moment to get reoriented to the new, disaster-free reality.

I was hungry, and a little crampy, and woozy from the sedative drugs. On the drive home, Ava stopped at a coffee shop to get us blueberry scones. When we got back to the dorm, Ava’s roommates had pooled together to buy me flowers. They were sitting in a vase on Ava’s desk, dahlias like fireworks, yellow bursting out of pink.
Get Well Soon
, said the card, with a picture of a cartoon frog.
Love, your friends at Mackenzie House
.

“What do you feel like doing now?” said Ava. “Want me to stay with you, or would you rather be alone?”

“I think I want to be alone for a while.”

“You can use my computer if you want. Or take a nap or a shower. Eat whatever you want in the kitchen. You know where the tea is, right?”

“Yeah.”

She smiled at me, her blue hair bright against the white wall.

Funny, the people you end up being close to in the end.

WHEN AVA LEFT, I WENT THE
kitchen to make tea. The dorm was quiet. While the water boiled, I took my time choosing from a dozen jars of flaky stuff with names like Peppermint Passion and Ginger Fairy. When my tea was ready, I carried the mug up to Ava’s room and started to read one of her theater books.

Outside Ava’s window, people were trickling across the quad like colored dots, hurrying to their classes. A few intrepid squirrels were venturing out to inspect post-lunchtime contributions to the garbage cans. I imagined that this was my life. Curling up in a dorm room, reading a smart book, waiting for my friends to get back from their classes so we could cook
something delicious and figure out what we were doing that night. On the weekends, I’d go rock climbing or hiking, or lie in the grassy quad watching leaves fall. I wondered if I’d think about this day—if I’d remember myself at seventeen, throwing up on the Greyhound, sliding down Half Moon Mountain, going to the clinic with Ava, sitting on her bed and looking out the window after it was all done.

You’re doing okay
, I thought to myself, and it was like there was a future Annabeth saying those words inside my head.

It was nice to think there was a future Annabeth who liked me and thought I was okay. It was almost like making a friend.

You’re okay, too
, I said back, and I put my head on Ava’s pillow and fell asleep.

WHEN I WOKE UP FROM MY
nap, it was almost time to walk to Pauline’s house for dinner. I lay on Ava’s bed for a while longer, not wanting to get out from under her fuzzy blanket. I was still a little crampy and very tired, and all I wanted was to sleep some more. For a second, I thought about calling Pauline and telling her I couldn’t come. But then Pauline would tell Mom I was sick, and Mom would be both curious as to the nature of the illness and disappointed I hadn’t seen Pauline.

I got out of bed and took a few of the pills the nurse had given me.
Just go to Pauline’s and get it over with
, I thought. At least tomorrow, I wouldn’t have to do anything except ride a bus and sleep.

Ava must have come into the room and left again. There was a piece of leftover birthday cake on her desk, with a note that said,
Call me if you need anything!

I wrapped up the cake and put it in my backpack for the bus ride tomorrow. Who knew? Maybe I would meet someone who needed a magic spirit friend, and I would give it to them.

Pauline lived only a mile from campus, but somehow the walk drained the life out of me. It felt like the day had already lasted a hundred years. I wanted to talk to myself some more; to attend to those quiet inner stirrings that didn’t happen every day. I wasn’t ready to turn outward, to engage.

It’s just dinner
, I told myself.
Do it for Mom
.

I rustled up a smile and rang the doorbell.

“ANNABETH!” EXCLAIMED PAULINE, SWINGING
open
her front door that was festooned with a wreath and a clutch of jingling bells. “Come on in.”

Pauline was shorter than me by a few inches. She was fond of long skirts and linen shirts with wooden beads for buttons. Mom had told me that Pauline had been in Earth First! in college and chained herself to a tree. Now she was a lawyer for an environmental nonprofit and fought for the trees in a courtroom instead. When I was little, I thought Pauline was weird because she brought her own food when she came to visit us, sacks of bulgur wheat and lentils and seaweed, as if she was going on a camping trip and not visiting someone’s house.
What was wrong with frozen pizza from No Frills?

Pauline and Mom went to high school together, but Pauline hadn’t lived in our town since before I was born. When she came to visit, it always used to surprise me that she knew where everything was; that it was her town, too, from a previous lifetime. It bothered me that people could have repertoires of towns; I found it slightly offensive. In my childish way, I told myself Mom and I were superior. Sometimes after Pauline’s visits, Mom would talk about finishing her paramedic training and “traveling around a little” after I went away to college. This always freaked me out. Not the going-away-to-college part, which was still a distant abstraction, but that Mom might pack up our little house and go away too.
I need you
here, I would say, and stamp my foot. As if Mom going anywhere would unhinge east from west, and I wouldn’t be able to find myself anymore.

Pauline’s house was small and warm and wood-paneled. I recognized a few of Mom’s paintings on the walls. There was a Christmas tree in the corner and a big, drooling dog dozing on the couch. Pauline’s husband, Lev, was in the kitchen chopping parsley.

“Leslie told me you’re vegetarian,” Pauline said. “I hope falafel’s okay. Can I get you something to drink? Water, tea, juice?”

“Just water, please.”

She disappeared into the kitchen, and I sat on the couch
with the dog. There was a box of records on the floor. I fingered their narrow spines. Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary, Ani DiFranco. Pauline’s couch was big and comfortable, with a thick blanket folded up on one end. I wondered whether Mom would have a house like this if she hadn’t had me. If Mom would have a life like this.

“So, tell me about your visit to Northern,” said Pauline, coming back with two glasses of water and a little bowl of snack mix on a tray. “Did Ava take you to Half Moon Mountain?”

I sipped my water and did my best to chat with her. Pauline still had a long braid that went down to her waist, a braid I loved to play with when I was little. When she used to visit us, we would play Climbing Trees and Building Forts and, if it was winter, Dragging the Injured Hiker on a Sled. Things were more fun when Pauline was around. When it was Pauline’s turn to be the Injured Hiker, Mom would get a wild look in her eye and we would pull the sled as fast as we could, giggling like crazy until somebody fell down or the sled tipped over.

“Do you know what you want to study?” Pauline was saying.

“Maybe forestry,” I said.

It felt like only 1 percent of me was actually talking to Pauline, and the other 99 percent was doing anything it could to acquire sleep. The pattern on the blanket was swimming before my eyes. “Take it easy for a day or two,” the nurse had said. “No sledding.” I wanted to be back in Ava’s room, curled up in her bed.
It was stupid to come here, stupid stupid stupid
.

Pauline was waiting for me to say something.

“Can I use your bathroom?” I said.

“Sure.”

Pauline showed me the way. I locked myself in and washed my face, trying to wake myself up with the cold water. I remembered the time in tenth grade when I’d found Noe and this girl Dulcie Simmonds from choir in the downstairs girls’ bathroom, the tiled room echoing with Dulcie’s sobs. I joined them at the sink.

“What’s wrong?” I’d said.

Noe had her arm around Dulcie’s back.

“Dulcie’s pregnant,” Noe informed me.

“What?!”

Dulcie’s face in the mirror was splotchy and pink. The paper towel dispenser was all the way dispensed. After school that day, I went with them to the drugstore and then to Dulcie’s house and sat on her enormous frilly bed while Noe herded her into the bathroom, listening to their voices through the half-open bathroom door. Laughter, too. As if this were a game, another girlish adventure. And maybe it was.

“Pee on it,” Noe was saying. “Aim, girl.” They’d exploded into giggles.

“I can’t aim when you’re—”

Giggles, giggles. I’d looked around Dulcie’s room. She had very few books, just a closet and a wardrobe and a desk covered with framed family photographs and ballerina figurines,
all sorts of shoes lined up against her bedroom wall: red satin high heels, knee-high boots in black leather, blue plastic sandals, black pumps with feathery stuff on the toes. They looked like the props in a magician’s bag, the hoops and wands and handkerchiefs necessary to a life based on illusion. Mom and I had one pair of shoes each, three if you counted hiking boots and sandals for summer.

Jubilant shrieks. “Oh, thank God!”

And Noe, drily, “Congratulations. Your oven has been certified bunless.”

I smiled, imagining Noe saying that to me:
Congratulations. Your oven has been certified bunless.
And smiled again, remembering how Noe had informed me, later, that Dulcie Simmonds had never even had all-the-way sex, could not possibly have been pregnant, and was making the whole thing up for drama:
Unless there is something really weird going on with Mark DiNadio’s tongue, in which case all bets are off.

I sat on the edge of the tub for a few minutes to rest. The smell of the dinner Lev was cooking crept in under the door. I could hear them talking in the kitchen.
Just act normal
, I thought.
You can sleep soon.

When I came out of the bathroom, Pauline poked her head out of the kitchen. “Dinner’s on the table,” she said brightly.

I followed them into the dining room and we all sat down to eat. We chatted about the Wilda McClure house and the
theater lecture Ava had taken me to, and I managed to eat most of my falafel and tabbouleh, but by the time Lev went into the kitchen for the blueberry pie, I was spent.

“Pauline?” I said. “I need to lie down.”

Scraping of chairs, worried murmurs, the blueberry pie hustled back into the kitchen. I thought I would die of embarrassment.

“I thought you looked a little sick,” said Pauline.

We went out to the living room and I lay down on the couch beside the drooling dog. Pauline draped the patterned blanket over my shoulders. I wanted to sleep for ten thousand years. I hadn’t realized how worried I’d been until the appointment was over. Now that the burden had been removed, I felt its full weight for the first time.

I must have looked awful.

“Do you want to call your mom?” Pauline said.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

She reached for the phone. I grabbed her hand to stop her.

“Please don’t call her,” I said.

Sharp silence. Something changed in the air. I took my hand off Pauline’s, but it was too late. She sank to a crouch beside me and patted the dog’s head.

“Annabeth,” said Pauline. “I think you’d better tell me what’s going on.”