Admission (59 page)

A
t the bus station in Boston, Portia was about to buy herself a ticket to Northampton when she suddenly realized that she didn’t
live there anymore. Only a few months earlier, she had helped her mother pack up the house and ferry her belongings up 91
to Hartland, where she then spent a couple of days repainting Susannah’s bedroom lavender with white trim. And all of this,
she now understood, had simply slipped her mind as she had numbly made her way across the ocean, unthinkingly imagining herself
back in the house and on the street where she’d grown up. She stood at the ticket window with two shuffling bodies behind
her, waiting for this curiously elongated transaction to conclude so they could get wherever they were going, but Portia had
abruptly found herself without a destination and taken on the general demeanor of a pillar of salt. There was no longer any
reason to be in Northampton. She felt no desire at all to go back to Dartmouth, where she wasn’t supposed to be now and wasn’t
at all sure she’d ever want to be again. And something in her quailed at the idea of going to Hartland, presenting herself
to the three of them—Susannah, Frieda, and Carla—a wayward young lady indeed. Those women, veterans of protests and marches,
strikes, actions, sit-ins, initiatives, drives, and boycotts—they would encircle her with comfort and affirmation, assure
her that she had been horrendously victimized, shelter her from the wackos at the clinic (if the state of Vermont had managed
to produce any), and make sure she got all the pain pills she was entitled to. They would do this out of love and also pride,
because wasn’t this precisely what they had worked and petitioned and agitated for? So that she, a young flowering woman who
had every right to determine what was best in these unfortunate circumstances, would not have to put herself in the hands
of some slimy practitioner or stick a wire hanger up inside herself and bleed to death?

And she did want to be taken care of, didn’t she?

And she did want that clinic, and the pain pills, and for it all to be over. Didn’t she?

Apart from the nausea, Portia had done a pretty good job of repressing the whole thing. Her clothes still fit, though admittedly
she hadn’t worn anything very form-fitting in her tramp around Europe. It was true that she had avoided the mirror, unwilling
to confront the more subtle changes under way, but that was very deliberate on her part, as she had no wish to subject herself
to more distress. Now the termination couldn’t be more than a few days away, and she might come out the other side without
ever having seen herself pregnant. But when she tried to imagine where this liberation would take place, she found her head
spinning. The line behind her grew longer and more impatient. There were too many options and nothing she could hold on to.
Boston itself, of course. Portland. Providence. Burlington. New England must be jammed with politically evolved places for
a girl to get out of trouble. There were hotels everywhere. There were pharmacies and hospitals. Did it even matter where
she went? Just as long as Susannah wasn’t there, she thought suddenly. And this thought was so alarming that she quickly stepped
out of line and let the person behind her move up to the window.

It made no sense, thought Portia, shouldering her backpack again and walking across the room to an empty bench. Why should
she do this without Susannah? Her mother would want to help, to support her and be of use. And Portia obviously needed the
help; no one should have to go through an abortion alone—she knew that much. A few minutes ago, she’d been so intent on finding
her way home to the nest that she’d forgotten the nest wasn’t there anymore. Now she was prepared to go anywhere her mother
wasn’t. Because, she thought, beginning to prod this paradox, I don’t want her to know that I was dumb enough to get pregnant?
Because I don’t need to hear her opinion of Tom, thanks very much? How about, she thought, moving closer to it, because I
don’t want her to know what I am going to do, in case she tries to stop me?

She smiled at this initially absurd notion.

Susannah, who had once claimed to have written the slogan “If you’re against abortion, don’t have one”? Susannah, who had
been a volunteer at the clinic in Springfield, holding a blanket over the scared girls as she led them inside, taking the
brunt of the curses herself?

And of course, I believe in it, too, thought Portia.

She just didn’t want to.

She began to sweat, still in her warm winter coat, clutching her backpack against her belly.

Because it was murder to kill it? she thought very, very carefully.

It was not murder.

Because I want to have a baby? I want to be a mother?

She did not want to have a baby or be a mother. It was absurd to think of doing that—that was for later, when she was no longer
a child herself. When she was with someone. She didn’t want to do it the way Susannah had done it. She wanted the normal things:
love, partnership, hearth, and home. Of course she wanted children. She just had never thought about it before.

By then it was early evening, raining faintly. She had slept a little on the plane, but she was still tired and very dirty,
with rapidly diminishing reserves. She felt, more than anything, the need for a decision, even a working plan to get her to
some place of rest, where the next decisions could at least be made in some comfort. Portia got to her feet and went back
to the ticket booth, taking her new place in line. She looked at the destination board and read down the list: “Worcester,
Albany, Providence, Hartford, Lawrence.” She had been to all of these places, except for Lawrence. She knew no one who lived
in Lawrence or who had ever lived there, and not much about the place at all except that it was not so small that a pregnant
stranger would be noted. That realization was suddenly thrilling, because it meant that she could be invisible in Lawrence.
Full of purpose, she bought a one-way ticket, a transaction that felt otherworldly, magical. No one would find her in Lawrence,
she thought, climbing aboard the bus and making her way to the back. She had not realized until that moment that she had been
trying to disappear.

That night, she stayed in a motor lodge near the Lawrence bus station. It was not a restful place. Down the corridor, a couple
fought with drunken abandon, but she was irrationally pleased to see American television again and fell asleep to Johnny Carson
interviewing a celebrity she did not recognize. She spent the next day in bed, too, except for a midday meal at the IHOP across
the road, writing lists of things to take care of on the back of her place mat: place to live, something to do (job? volunteer?),
Susannah, school, doctor. Doctor? thought Portia. The word had the impact of a needle, breaking into her reverie of independence.
It was not that she had decided to ignore the fact of her pregnancy, only repress it for a little while longer. She had also
decided to believe that a college-educated woman who’d possessed her own copy of
Our Bodies, Ourselves
since the age of thirteen must be capable, on her own, of being responsibly pregnant, not like some seduced and abandoned
cheerleader who wasn’t even sure how she’d gotten that way. Obviously, Portia had taken a pass on any tests and medications
recommended for the first trimester, but she couldn’t have missed anything too important. Women, after all, had been having
healthy babies even before Hippocrates, let alone
What to Expect
. Her European sojourn had featured lots of walking, often with the backpack, so she felt generally well, apart from the daily
puking, but that was starting to fade, too—first one fairly good day per week, then three, then five. She had money—that was
one thing she didn’t have to wring her hands over. She was supposed to be traveling in Europe, staying in hotels, and eating
in restaurants. It couldn’t cost more to stay in one faded mill town, rent an apartment, and keep still. She was not expected
home for two months and at Dartmouth for three. These were problems to be addressed, surely. But she had time.

The next day, restored by more sleep and more showers, she went out and found a furnished apartment to rent, in one of the
old textile mills that were being converted to residences. The agent was eager to get bodies in while the construction continued,
then out before she hoped (insanely, Portia thought) to sell the units as condos, probably by the fall. Did Portia have pets?
Did she smoke? No and no. Was she employed? the woman asked worriedly.

“I’m a writer,” said Portia. “I’m working on a book.”

She was, in fact, working on a book. She was working on
The Pickwick Papers,
which she borrowed from the Lawrence City Library, checking it out instead of the mindless fare she’d originally gone in
for. Reading her way through Dickens—
Pickwick
to
Edwin Drood
—seemed like a serious project for an English major who had never taken on anything but
A Christmas Carol,
and that mainly in the form of Albert Finney’s
Scrooge
. In her apartment, which had been furnished in nouveau mismatched castoff, she lay on the faintly malodorous couch and began
the picaresque, finishing it three days later. Then she took it back and exchanged it for
Oliver Twist
.

Portia had called her mother on Christmas Day and New Year’s, both times from chilly pay phones located on broad central European
boulevards. She called now from the public phone in the library and spoke of thick hot chocolate in the cafés and the smell
of chestnuts cooking over coals in the vendors’ carts, the boorish American boys who had tagged along with them for a few
days, from Paris to Brussels and then on to Munich… details she pulled from the bulletin board in the library basement, events
and fund-raisers and church sales, promising her mother that she felt fine, felt safe, was happy, would call again soon. She
was reasonably assured that the old-fashioned rotary phones in the Hartland house would not betray her secret. She was thinking,
she might say, of writing to Dartmouth, delaying her return until the summer term or perhaps even the fall. Dartmouth wouldn’t
care if she moved things around or even—if it came to that—whether or not she graduated with her class. That was the point
of the Dartmouth Plan, to let her education alter with new interests and circumstances and be personal and idiosyncratic.
It was a great thing, actually. And did she mention how educational it all was? The Mozart museum? The villa where the Wannsee
Conference had been held?

It shocked her, how convincing she was, how pleased with herself she sounded. It shocked her how easily she parried Susannah’s
objections, which were first resentful of the added time away (from school? from her?) and the apparent longevity of Tom’s
affections, then increasingly resigned to the distance, both physical (away from her) and emotional (between the two of them).

Portia finished
Oliver Twist
and moved on to
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.

She needed bigger clothes. A book in the library said she ought to be taking folic acid, so she took it.

A woman and her sister moved in next door. The sister had Down syndrome and liked to play checkers. Portia, after a game or
two, figured out how to lose stealthily.

She finished
Nicholas Nickleby
and started
The Old Curiosity Shop
.

In March, she found a doctor in an old Victorian on Haverill Street with a downright Dickensian sign out front:
SMITHFIELD, BEERKIN, AND NOGGS, INFERTILITY AND OBSTETRICS
.

Hers was Beerkin, and he saw her first in an office that had once been the house’s front parlor, complete with fireplace and
window seat. “Who have you been seeing up until now?” he asked her, noting that she was probably at sixteen weeks.

Portia explained that she had recently returned from Europe. “I’ve sort of been doing it on my own,” she said to his obvious
disapproval.

He examined her, made notes, pronounced her healthy, gave her proper vitamins and a test for gestational diabetes. When they
returned to his consulting room, Portia told him that she wanted to discuss adoption with someone.

He looked at her blankly. “Discuss?”

“Adoption.”

“You mean, you’re giving up this child?”

Now the disapproval was palpable.

“I’d like to consider it.”

“May I ask why?” he said.

She looked at him in complete disbelief. “No,” Portia said. “You can’t.”

After a minute, he said: “I know a group here in town that takes in young women in your situation.”

“I don’t need to be taken in,” she said unkindly. “I just want to talk to someone who can explain the options.”

He frowned at her. “I don’t know if you really understand the trauma of giving your baby away,” he said with highly disingenuous
concern.

“I don’t either,” Portia said deliberately, as if to a child. “That is why I would like to discuss it with someone.” She got
up. “Do you have a name for me?”

He held her gaze for a long moment. He must not, it occurred to her, be used to single pregnant girls who gave him a hard
time.

“The nurse has a list,” he said finally.

Portia collected the list and took it home with her. Catholic Adoption Services. Lutheran Services. LDS Family Services. New
Hope Christian. The idea of the people who would call these agencies, people who only wanted a baby sanctioned by their own
faith, appalled her. At the bottom of the page, in a different typewriter font—as if it were a grudging afterthought—was the
state agency number for adoptive services. They could see her the following week.

She paid her rent in traveler’s checks. When those ran out, she drew on her bank account in Hanover. One of the librarians
who saw her every day asked if she would tutor a couple of seventh graders who were failing English. Their names were Milagro
and Gloria, and they were cousins. Portia had never taught anything except soccer, but the girls tried hard and got a little
better. She was in the library study room with them when the baby kicked for the first time. Squealing, they put their hands
on her belly.