The Checkout Girl (12 page)

“I think I'm pregnant,” Kathy whispered to Darlyn, still unable to say that she was, whispering because the hippie was watching her again.

“You think you are?” smart friend Darlyn stage-whispered back. “Or you really are?”

“I'm pretty sure,” Kathy said, speaking a little louder now that she didn't need to be specific.

“Did you have the test, Kathy?” wise Darlyn asked in her regular voice, her baton twirling champion confident voice.

“Yes,” Kathy said.

“Did the bunny die?” coaxed patient, cool Darlyn.

Good old Darlyn. No oh-my-god, or who and how, or you slut, but right to the point. Kathy told her yes, the bunny died. That the bunny was so dead Kathy was waiting to go for an abortion. She said this out loud. Her voice echoed off the walls. She stared at the hippie. He closed his eyes and slowly lay back on the wooden bench.

“I have an appointment,” she told Darlyn, her true friend, her fine friend, “in two weeks in Montreal.”

“I'll come with you,” Darlyn told her. “Don't worry. It'll be OK.” As if she was holding Kathy in her arms, patting her on the back, saying there, there. As if by saying OK, it would be OK. And that's when Kathy cried. The hippie got up, took the bandana from his hair, handed it to Kathy, said good luck, and walked out of the bus station.

Kathy grabs a piece of cold, crispy toast from her bedside table. She makes the toast before she goes to bed, sliced white bread baked in a low oven until browned, like Melba toast. She breaks a piece, puts it on her tongue — she can't stand to have food touch her teeth these days — and lets it melt. Her mouth fills with saliva and she's sure she's going to throw up again, but she doesn't.

This is how she's staying alive: oven-dried bread or other soft white food: angel food cake, warm dinner rolls (no butter), toasted hot dog rolls (no hot dog), butterhorns and Chelsea buns (Kathy spits out the nuts and bits of dried fruit, but she swallows the raisins — for the iron), and toasted hot cross buns with a thin layer of raspberry jam. She's getting pimples, too much white flour and sugar and no meat or fruit or vegetables. Her face is as doughy and pale as the food she eats; her nipples are sore.

The Thursday of her birthday, the day she made the arrangements for the abortion, Connie had her over for supper. Kathy told her not to cook anything special because she'd had the flu and wasn't up to eating much. Connie made chicken noodle soup for her and Shelly, a hearty chicken broth for Kathy. She said she'd make a cake when Kathy felt better. After Kathy ate a few spoonfuls of soup, Connie came over to her and took Kathy's face in her hands. She looked into Kathy's eyes until Kathy coughed so she could turn her head away.

If her mother suspected, she didn't say. What she said was, “Come home and live with us.”

Kathy tried to laugh; it sounded like a grunt.

“I told you, I had the flu. I'm not going to die or anything. And I'm not going to move back here,” she said. And she hardened herself against the tears she saw welling in her mother's eyes.

Shelly's wrapped like a mummy in her cartoon quilt. It's flannel and faded, frayed at the edges, threads hanging from the squares. And it's musty because it seldom gets washed. It's only a pieced quilt top, no batting and no backing, which Connie had started, using old pyjama material: pink bunnies on blue, blue bunnies on pink, bright spring flowers — pink on white, yellow on green, white on blue, red roses on yellow. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, brown puppies and white kittens and other bits of nighties or pyjamas Connie and Kathy and Shelly had owned.

Before Connie could stretch the top on the quilt frame, Shelly stole it from her ironing basket. She rolled herself in it and then lay on the floor to watch Saturday morning cartoons. When Connie tried to unwrap Shelly and convince her she could make the quilt prettier and softer by finishing it, Shelly closed her eyes, stiffened her body, knocked her head against the floor and screamed bloody murder. Connie let her have the quilt top.

Kathy and Shelly are watching Wile E. Coyote run past Road Runner over the edge of a cliff. Kathy's on the couch, Shelly's wrapped in her quilt on the floor, and Connie's in bed sleeping, her Saturday treat. Sun streams through the picture window. Prisms strung Pollyanna style along the top of the window frame beam rainbows across the walls and ceiling, across Shelly in her quilt. The furnace thrums alive, heat rises in a whoosh from the vents; the prisms turn gently on the moving air and the rainbows dance.

Wile E. Coyote hangs in the air and looks back at Road Runner, who has a puff of dust at his feet. Then Wile E. falls through a cartoon cloud and crashes flat as a pancake onto the road at the bottom of the mountain. Before the dust finishes rising, Road Runner zips into position beside Wile E. and waits for him to pop back into shape and take up the chase again.

Shelly laughs, “Ha-ha-ha!” Mirthless. Kathy laughs, too.

When the cartoon is over Kathy and Shelly are going to the auditorium for the Saturday morning public skate. Shelly's skates are by the door. Before she went to bed, Connie set them out for her. Then she tucked a two-dollar bill in Shelly's thin red leather wallet and tucked the wallet into the pocket of her jeans. In the pocket there's also a printed card with Shelly's name, Connie's name, Kathy's name and an address and phone number on it, in case Shelly gets lost.

Road Runner's feet twirl through the air, and then he's off. Wile E., revived and looking more like himself, is left in the dust again. When the commercial comes on, Kathy gets up and goes to Shelly. She sits down on the floor beside her cocooned sister and presses both her hands firmly on Shelly's cheeks. She rubs gently, the way Shelly likes her to.

“Time to get dressed, Shelly. We have to go or we'll miss skating,” Kathy says. She holds Shelly's face still and looks into her eyes. Shelly grins; her breath smells like milk. Shelly wiggles out of the quilt and beams at Kathy because she's already dressed and ready to go. She laughs, and it almost sounds happy. It's a good joke, that's for sure, and Kathy laughs too, because sometimes Shelly's smarter than they give her credit for. And sometimes she's even dimmer than they could imagine, but it's always nice to be with Shelly on a good day.

While Kathy helps Shelly into her coat, she tells her about Charlie, and the rinks they used to make in the backyard. “Before you were born,” she tells Shelly, “Dad made rinks as shiny as glass and he bought me a brand new pair of hockey skates. We skated at night under the stars and we had hot chocolate, just like we're going to have today. Even Mom skated. Imagine, Shelly — Mom. She was really good, a figure skater. I wish she'd skate with us. She hasn't skated once since Dad died.”

Kathy tucks Shelly's mittens under her jacket sleeve. “He'd be so proud of you. You're such a good skater. You hardly ever fall.”

She helps Shelly into her boots and Shelly sits on the floor while Kathy puts hers on. “You know what, Shelly? Some people actually get paid to skate, like Bobby Orr.”

“Bobby Orr, #4,” Shelly yells, “Bobby Orr, #4.” She jumps, opens the door and runs outside. Kathy comes out after her.

“Maybe someday I will too,” she says, and she catches up with Shelly and they get into the car.

It looks like she has no choice. Kathy's going to remember her abortion as The Day the Beatles Broke Up. The radio was filled with break-up chatter. Some DJs blamed Yoko Ono, who certainly didn't go out of her way to win hearts. Others said it was about money, or how the band lacked cohesion after Brian Epstein died. All the radio stations — French and English — played Beatles music.

“It's morbid, like they're dead,” Darlyn said. “And it's really bringing me down.”

Donny sang “Strawberry Fields” and soon they were singing all the tunes as they were played.

Kathy's lying on a double bed that's tucked under the sill of a dust-encrusted window. She's wrapped in a grey wool blanket, like the army surplus blankets her father used when he went fishing with “the boys.” Camp blankets, the same ones she and Darlyn borrowed to build tents in their backyards.

Beside Kathy, Darlyn's asleep under a tattered bedspread and a yellowed sheet. Her arms are around Donny, who's smushed into the wall, snoring. Or not so much snoring as saying “HAGH” when he breathes out. For a time Kathy counted Donny's HAGHs, but stopped when she was distracted by the number of times someone dropped or clanged pots while preparing the breakfast she hoped to eat in the brasserie below their room. Forty-seven clangs and crashes so far. Before the snores and clangs, she counted drips from the bathroom showerhead as they hit the metal floor of the shower stall.

The bathroom holds a toilet on which it is impossible for a normal-sized person to sit without damaging their knees, and a much-dinged metal shower stall with a dripping showerhead, and a drain so clogged with variously-coloured hair that it didn't drain. Darlyn removed the wad with a piece of toilet paper. The sink is at the foot of the bed, not in the bathroom. Two dingy towels and a stiff dishcloth hang from an unbalanced metal rod, that when touched, clatters to the floor.

Darlyn and Donny drove with Kathy to Montreal. They left after work and drove through Friday night, arriving downtown on Saturday morning. They found a diner and had toast and café au lait, a coffee that was sweet and milky. They dunked their toast, holding floppy bites out to each other, laughing to cover their nervousness.

They had the morning to kill — Kathy's appointment was at two — so they walked through Old Montreal to a park. There a few musicians huddled — a bongo player, four acoustic guitarists, a girl on an autoharp, another playing a flute, a boy with a Jew's harp — sharing rhythms, jamming mostly, though occasionally a recognizable tune emerged and someone sang along until anarchy reigned again. It was exuberant, happy music. Listeners smoked cigarettes and joints, girls and boys, hippies mostly, danced. People talked. It wasn't really warm, about 55°, but the sun made it seem warmer, the way sun does in spring.

An office worker with a brown duffle coat over his suit, a pink button-down shirt and a paisley tie, offered Kathy a toke. She nodded no thanks. His curly hair was longish, dark brown, and he wore black horn-rimmed glasses over kind, blue-grey eyes. He said he was from Halifax. He'd moved to Montreal for the summer and decided not to go back to university in the Maritimes. His parents were pissed off, but he loved Montreal.

He came to the park to have lunch, to listen to the musicians if they were there, and to watch people. Writing programs, he said when Kathy asked what he did. In COBOL, he explained, and he told her how to spell it, all capitals. He worked for Northern Electric and his programs were transcribed onto punch cards that operators fed into computers. The computers were enormous, he told her, as big as a gymnasium, but the programmers weren't allowed in the computer room. When he smiled, his teeth were crooked and very white.

He said he was heading over to Phantasmagoria, a record shop, did she want to come? There was a balcony that ran around the upper level. He could listen to records and visit his friends there. She told him no, she had an appointment and he said, too bad, but she should go there some other time anyway. Maybe they'd run into each other.

“Another terrorist?” Donny asked when they walked back to the car.

“Pretty good disguise for a terrorist,” Darlyn said.

“A computer programmer,” Kathy told them.

“Way of the future,” Donny said. “I think you should marry him.”

They joked about Kathy living in the suburbs with a dope-smoking computer programmer, a nice station wagon instead of the shit-box Valiant they had come in, a dog, probably a retriever called Ringo. Kathy'd wear polyester pantsuits, a different colour every day, and there'd be a couple of kids. At the mention of kids they all stopped talking and headed back to the car.

“We'll be right here when it's over,” Darlyn told Kathy as she got out of the car at the clinic. They'd circled the block to make sure there were no police. Darlyn got out and stood beside Kathy. Kathy took her hand.

“You're shaking,” Darlyn said.

“Hmm,” Kathy mumbled. Kathy squeezed, then let go of Darlyn's hand.

“Thanks,” she said, and she started the walk to the clinic door. Halfway there she turned. Donny waved. Darlyn leaned into the car and came out with her baton. She twirled it, threw it in the air, spun around, dipped onto one knee and caught it. She threw both arms out and grinned, then stood and bowed. She lifted the baton in the air and shook it.

“It'll be this easy,” Darlyn called, twirling the baton faster and faster. Kathy opened the clinic door and went in.

Kathy presses her fingers into her eyelids so that colours spark behind them. Sleep. Sleep. She needs to sleep. Donny is still snoring. While Kathy was at the clinic Darlyn and Donny found the room and decided they could share it. When they arrived after the abortion, Kathy could tell they'd had sex on the bed, which had the happy, rumpled look of lovemaking.

The room smells like cigarette butts and dead fish. And bleach. Kathy's lying on the outside edge of the bed in case she needs to get to the bathroom quickly. To pee, she told them, but really so she can check her pad. Small dense clots of blood slip like wee wet plums from between the lips of her vulva into the pad that lines her underwear.

She's bleeding only as much as she was told to expect, so she's not too alarmed. Not scared shitless or anything. She massages her fundus as instructed, or what she hopes is her fundus (she never knew she had a fundus until now) to keep her uterus firm and contracted to control the bleeding.

Yesterday she
was
scared shitless, but everyone was nice to her, the three nurses at the clinic so gentle and kind, though businesslike. No guilt trips. Kathy went from terror to something resembling calm once she was settled in a change room.

“Nobody gets pregnant on purpose just so they can have an abortion,” one of the nurses said to her, then asked what Kathy intended to do for birth control when she left the clinic. She was given a brochure, in French and in English, with birth control options and information.

One of the nurses gave Kathy a routine physical — blood pressure, heart rate, listened to her lungs, prodded her abdomen, and asked some basic questions about her medical and menstrual history, and confirmed the dates of her last menstrual period. The doctor came in and asked why she wanted the abortion and why she hadn't been able to get one in her hometown. He asked who had referred her and nodded when she told him about the abortion referral line in Toronto. He asked for the money and she gave it to him, money she'd withdrawn from her bank in fifty dollar increments over the last two weeks, as if she was a criminal and was doing something wrong, something she had to hide. Which she was, of course.

“You understand you won't be getting a receipt?” he asked, and Kathy nodded.

The operating room was clean and well equipped. At least Kathy thought it was. She'd never had an abortion before. Except for having her tonsils out when she was five, she'd never been in an operating room. The nurse gave her a tour: here was the operating table covered in crisp clean white cotton; there were the stirrups where she'd place her feet. These were the stainless steel bowls and the wrapped gauze pads. And there on a stainless steel table was a parcel of sterilized instruments covered in green linen and tied closed with white string. This was the light they'd shine on Kathy's perineum. It was all so orderly and simple.

The room smelled faintly of Lysol, and a pleasant sweet smell that reminded her of the ether that had dripped through a strainer over gauze above her face before her tonsils were removed. Kathy had removed her jeans and underwear, washed her perineum the way the nurse had instructed, rinsed in a solution so cold it made her nipples erect. She wrapped a sheet around her waist, and walked into the operating room.

The doctor arrived in hospital scrubs and gloves. The nurse tied a mask over his face. The mask moved in and out with his breath. He told Kathy to get up on the table and the nurse helped her. The nurse placed her legs in the stirrups and her feet in sterile slippers. She told her they were going to wash her again, this time with disinfectant. Freezing solution flowed over her bottom into a basin. It made her anus contract and she was embarrassed that they should see it. They draped her legs and began.

“I'm inserting the speculum,” the doctor told her.

“I'm dilating the cervix,” he told her next.

“I'm cleaning the inside of the womb,” he said after that. “It's called curettage.”

It was painful, but bearable.

There was clanking and instructions to the nurse. Kathy stopped listening. She became aware only of her abdomen, the cramping, which was no worse at first than a period might be. She focused on it, needed to feel each twinge and scrape.

“Lie here for a few minutes,” the doctor told her and he snapped off his gloves, then the overhead light, and he left. She never saw him again.

The nurse brought Kathy a warmed flannel blanket — it felt like heaven — and told her to rest while she cleaned up. When everything was tidied, she helped Kathy get her legs out of the stirrups and asked her to lift her bottom while she placed a clean pad between Kathy's legs. She helped Kathy sit up and bring her legs to the side of the table.

“Hold the pad,” she told Kathy. “You can use the belt and one of the pads you brought when you get changed to go home.”

Kathy rested, dozing for a time, shivering off and on — nerves, not cold, as they renewed the warmed blankets regularly. When she was told she could, she got dressed. The nurse gave her some pills, antibiotics, she said, and told her about her fundus. Then she told her she could go, and that her friends were waiting for her outside.

Darlyn and Donny met her at the door and held her elbows as she walked. She didn't need them to, but their touch calmed her and she suddenly felt so relaxed, so tired, she just wanted to sleep, which is what she did while they went out to sightsee Montreal. Kathy, bleeding and no longer pregnant, wrapped herself in a grey wool blanket and lay on the bed pushed under the dirt-caked window, and slept.

After Darlyn and Donny returned, a bit drunk, after they crawled into bed and fell directly to sleep, Kathy lay awake and listened to water drip from a leaky shower head, listened to pots and pans clang in the kitchen below, listened to Donny snore. Then finally, when despair at ever sleeping again had exhausted her, Kathy drifted off and dreamed of doctors in masks, and drummers making music. She dreamed a long-haired man in a brown duffle coat asked her to marry him. She dreamed that on the day the Beatles broke up she lay naked in a park. People milled around her, oblivious, which was a surprise, because lying between her legs was a pile of small, shiny red plums arranged in the shape of a baby.