Prophet (62 page)

“Still don’t know what I’m going to say,” she said with a bewildered shake of her head.

“Don’t worry, babe,” said Max. “You’re Annie’s mom. You just remember that, and the words’ll come.”

“I know John and Carl and Mrs. Barrett are all praying for you,” said Leslie. Then she added, “And so am I.”

“O Jesus,” Deanne prayed, looking toward Heaven, “I’m praying too. Help me do it right.”

She picked up the receiver and started dialing the number. “Now watch her not be there . . .” A recording asked her to enter the calling card number, and she did, consulting the number at the top of her notes.

A short pause.

“It’s ringing,” she reported.

Click.
“Hello?”

Okay
, Deanne told herself.
It’s all yours now.
“Hi, is this Shannon?”

“No, this is her roommate Olivia.”

“Oh, is Shannon there please?”

“Just a minute.” Then away from the phone, “Shannon, it’s for you.”

Deanne looked at Max and Leslie, and they just looked back at her, their faces full of support.

“Hello?” came another voice.

“Hello . . . Shannon?”

“This is she.”

“Shannon . . . my name is Deanne Brewer. I’m a mother, I’ve got four kids . . . Well, I had four kids, now it’s just three . . .” Deanne hesitated, much as a novice skydiver would do at the door of the airplane before jumping. “Shannon . . . I know you don’t know me, but . . .” There was nothing left to say but the Truth. Deanne looked toward Heaven even as she spoke the words. “Shannon, I used to have four kids, but my oldest, Annie, who was seventeen, died from an abortion she got at the Women’s Medical Center, that abortion place down on Kingsley Avenue. And I . . .” Deanne’s hands were shaking, and her voice was beginning to quiver. “Well, Annie died in May. May 24th. And I don’t mean to . . . Are you still there?”

There was silence. Deanne looked at Leslie and Max, worry in her eyes.

“Shannon?”

Shannon’s voice sounded weak. “
Where
did she die?”

“The Women’s Medical Center, that clinic on Kingsley Avenue.”

That seemed to hit home. Shannon said nothing for a moment, fidgeting with the receiver. Then she said, “O God . . .”

“Shannon? Honey, are you still with me?”

“Pardon me, what was your name again?”

“Deanne Brewer. My husband’s name is Max, and our daughter’s name was Annie.”

“Mrs. Brewer . . . what did they do to her?”

“Well . . .”

“Did she bleed to death?”

“No. They . . . well, they hurried too much, I guess. They left parts of the baby inside and perforated her uterus, and she got an infection and died.”

Shannon’s voice was quivering and weak. She could have been crying. “How did you know to call me?”

Deanne struggled for just a moment and then remembered John’s words: “Just tell the Truth.” She decided to do just that. “Shannon, my husband, Max, and I have been trying to find out what happened to Annie and who was responsible, and some good people from the TV
station, from Channel 6, have been helping us. We just got a genuine copy of Annie’s autopsy report last night, and that’s the first real proof we’ve had. The clinic won’t tell us a thing—they’re hiding it.”

“Channel 6?”

“Yes, that’s right. They know there’s something going on at that clinic, and they’ve been helping us.”

“I got a call from a Leslie Albright just a few nights ago.”

Deanne could see Leslie getting anxious about all this truthfulness, but Deanne was going to go with it do or die. “Mm-hm. Well, Leslie’s here right now—she’s sitting right next to me.”

“But . . . she said she was trying to do a follow-up story on me as the first recipient of the Hillary Slater scholarship.”

Deanne had no answer for that. “Well, would you like to talk to her?”

Shannon hesitated.

“Maybe you can ask her about that and she can explain it to you.”

“Okay.”

Deanne held the phone out to Leslie.

Leslie sank just a little, feeling she’d been cornered and caught. Well, time to come clean and die all, die merrily. She took the phone. “Hello, Shannon. This is Leslie.”

“Hi. Are you the one who called me?”

“Yes. It was Tuesday night, I think. We were talking about your being the first one to get the Hillary Slater scholarship and . . . well, I guess I—”

“Do you still want that story?”

Leslie perked up at that. “Um . . . well, Shannon, I have to tell you . . . I wasn’t really after that in the first place, I just—”

“I’ll talk to you. And I want to talk to the other lady too.”

“Mrs. Brewer?”

“Yes. I’ve had time to think, and I know I have to talk to somebody. I can’t carry this . . .” Emotion overtook her. “Excuse me.”

“Shannon . . .” Leslie could hear her crying, so she spoke gently. “I’m going to let you talk to Mrs. Brewer again, okay? She knows how you feel, more than anybody else does.”

Leslie handed the phone back, whispering, “She’s crying.”

Deanne felt she was reaching out to a daughter. “Shannon, I’m
here.” Deanne listened to the girl weep and began to shed tears herself. “You go ahead and cry, honey. I’ve got my arms around you, hear? I’ve got my arms around you.”

THEY MET AND
embraced for real under a spreading oak tree in the center of Balen Commons, the centerpiece of the Midwestern University campus, a pleasantly meandering mall of groomed lawns, hundred-year-old trees, brick walkways, and gently rolling terrain. On all sides were the original brick buildings from the nineteenth century. Nearby a fountain with sporting bronze porpoises trickled and sprayed, and here and there bronze, marble, and granite sculptures jutted out of the evenly mowed grass like oversized toys. It was Saturday afternoon, a warm and pleasant day for October.

“This is my husband, Max.”

Max offered his big hand, and Shannon took it warmly.

“I’m gonna take myself a tour of this place for a while,” he said, “and let you ladies talk. When you want to meet?”

They consulted their watches and agreed on a time about an hour later. Max walked away, just taking in the campus and looking for something interesting to do.

Shannon and Deanne found a bench in a pleasant little hideaway bordered by shrubbery alive with tiny, chattering birds. They talked for a while about themselves and their different backgrounds—Deanne, raised in the inner city by staunch Baptist parents, never well-to-do nor career-oriented, but happy to be the wife of a welder and a mother of four; Shannon, raised in a wealthy home by social-activist, Presbyterian parents, with the children of VIPs for friends, including the governor’s daughter, and now aspiring to study law and economics.

And then they talked about Annie, not much younger than Shannon herself at the time of her death, a young lady with a bright future and the mind and will to tackle it. Understanding and appreciating her life was easy. Trying to derive some sense or meaning from her death and all the factors that caused it was another matter.

Then Shannon said abruptly, “Please don’t hate me.”

Deanne was shocked at that. “Shannon, why would I hate you?”

Shannon looked across the campus as she gathered her thoughts
and controlled her emotions. She was determined that they would serve and not rule her today. “It’s my understanding that, had I spoken up, had I said something, had that clinic been investigated, Annie could very well be alive today. Ever since Hillary was killed, I was always afraid that it might happen to someone else, and when you called . . . well, I knew it had happened. That’s what I’m having to live with now.”

She returned her gaze to Deanne, her face tense with emotion, her eyes watery. “Mrs. Brewer, I’ve been under tremendous pressure not to say anything, I want you to understand that. And not being perfect, and having morals that are somewhat undefined at this point in my life . . . I did choose the easy route, or what I thought was the easy route. It’s been that way ever since April, when Hillary died. But I can’t go on with it. It just can’t continue. I’ve thought a lot about it and I arrived at two possible choices. I could stay quiet about it and die inside—just cease living as a true human being. Or I could speak up and probably ruin my educational future. But . . . since either course will be a kind of death anyway, I figured that last death I could live with.” She smiled at the paradox of the words.

Then she looked away again. Just looking across the lawn and the leaves turning gold made it easier to think, speak, and hold her emotions in check. “I’m sorry if I don’t look you in the eye very much. I’m feeling a lot of shame right now.”

Deanne reached over and touched her hand. “Honey, don’t carry any shame for me, or for Annie. I forgive you, and I know she would. And God will, if you just ask Him.”

Shannon closed her eyes and drew a deep, shuddering breath as her jaw trembled. For several moments she fought back her emotions, her hands frequently going to her face to cover it or to dab away tears. “I do appreciate that. I need to dig my way out of this pit somehow, and I do appreciate your understanding.”

Then with trembling hands she reached into her carrying bag and produced a spiral notebook. “We really need to get into this while I still have the strength.” She opened the notebook in her lap and paged through it until she found the first of many pages of notes. “Do you want to record this?”

Deanne shook her head. “Honey, this isn’t an interview. We’re just talking, that’s all. If you decide you ever want to talk to Leslie and John
and do it for a camera or a tape recorder, that’s entirely up to you. Right now it’s just you and me.”

She nodded. “Well, I could use a dry run anyway.” Then, starting at the top of the first page, she pressed forward, purposefully forcing herself over rough and difficult emotional terrain. Deanne didn’t know what else to do but slide close to her and touch her whenever she needed it, which was most of the time.

“Hillary Slater and I were best friends from the time we were little. We went to Bowers Elementary together, and then we both started fourth grade at the Adam Bryant School. I think it was because our fathers were both involved in politics and it was that kind of school, a school for the children of the elite, the influential. Hey, we were privileged kids; we had the best.

“So Hillary and I grew up together, and we got to know each other’s family, and I always knew that Hillary’s dad was a driven man. If something didn’t bring him success or power or influence in political circles, he didn’t show much interest in it. And that’s how it was with his children. He drove them too. He was very demanding, and he expected them to play the political game with him. I can remember the whole family putting on the smiles and standing together for pictures and publicity during his last campaign, everything rosy and the wife happy and the kids doing fine.

“But it was all public image. Hiram Slater can be cruel, and I saw him slap Hillary a few times to keep her in line, to keep her going along with his program. She was the governor’s daughter, and she had to perform and look good to make him look good, and for the most part she did that—she maintained the image.

“Until she got pregnant. I know who the boy was, but that’s immaterial. He’s in college now, and I suppose he’s dating other girls, and all I can hope is that he’s learned a lesson, but who knows?

“But I remember Hillary was really scared and kept talking about how her father would just kill her, and she didn’t want anybody to know about it, she just wanted to get it taken care of and go on with her life. Knowing her father and how publicly oriented he was, and how public everything was with their family, I didn’t blame her.

“I remember on April 16th—a Tuesday—I was called down to Mrs. Ames’s office—she’s a counselor at the school. Hillary was there in the
room, and she and I and Mrs. Ames had a private meeting, and that’s when I learned that Hillary was pregnant. She’d had a pregnancy test done by the school nurse, Mrs. Hunt, and the test had come up positive. So now Mrs. Ames had made an appointment for Hillary to get an abortion, and Hillary chose me to be the one who would drive her to the clinic and then take her home afterward. We had a lot of trust between us. We’d shared a lot of secrets, and now we were sharing this one.

“Mrs. Ames picked the Women’s Medical Center because it was across town, in the south end, where the lower-income girls usually went. She figured that would be the best place because no one would know Hillary there, and we could get in and out of the area without being seen or noticed. They would even accept a phony name as long as you used the same one in all your dealings with them. So we picked out a false name, Susan Quinto. We got the idea from ‘Suzy Q.’ It was dumb, but that’s what we picked. So on Friday we both went to school like always, but then got excused from classes at lunchtime—Mrs. Hunt wrote both of us medical excuses—and we drove over to the clinic.

“And that place was busy—it was just crammed. A whole van full of girls got there right before we did, and . . . everybody was quite stressed, there was a lot of tension. The clinic people were stressed and yelling at us, and . . .” Shannon drew a few deep breaths. “And the doctors were stressed as well. We could hear them yelling in the back, and we could hear some of the girls screaming . . .”