“But there’s only so much we can do.”
Rosie thought of Bennett with his head in her lap, weeping about his dead mother. She loved him, and she wanted to heal him.
Hobie was speaking, she tried to listen. After all, he’d invited her here so that he could speak to her, at her. So that he could say things like: “I don’t know who you think he is, though I can see he might be attractive to someone like you.” And: “The family has cut him off. Though it would be indiscreet of me to say more.” And: “Please take this in the spirit of my concern, you’re very young, very inexperienced. You should ask yourself why he isn’t married and why he isn’t married to someone of his own age and background, or at least dating —”
“I’m pregnant,” she said because it was the only thing she had in her head to make him stop.
Hobie was quiet for a moment, considering. His voice was surprisingly gentle. “Do you want to be?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you told him?”
She shook her head, bewildered, suddenly, as to why she’d confessed to this man.
Hobie said: “Go back to school, Rosie. Figure yourself out. You’ll have other chances with a far better man.”
She heard herself sob, and then sniffle.
They sat for a moment. At last, he picked up the thread. “I just wanted to warn you.”
“Warn me?”
“He’s just —” Hobie searched the ceiling. But within the filigree plaster was neither the word nor a speck of dust.
“I love him.”
“You love him. Oh dear. You’re like a peasant girl in a 19th century novel. He’s a rake. He’ll ruin you.”
“Isn’t he your friend?”
“Mitzi and his mother were great pals at Groton, you see.”
She did not see. What was Groton? Groton, fish forks, shoe horns. Hunters. Hunters were a type of horse that you rode with hounds. Shooting was not hunting even though you shot animals, birds and killed them. Hunting was something rich Texans who owned car dealerships did. Rosie regarded the van Eyck now, the pompous man, the precocious young woman, perhaps younger than her. Fastened into her winter clothing, fastened into her life with all the windows shut, she had not yet realized her predicament. But the artist had: the dead hare in the maid’s hands.
“Do you need money?”
“For what?”
“To get rid of the baby.”
“And how would that look if I took your money for an abortion?”
“No one is looking.”
Hobie was holding his money clip. Because the very wealthy don’t have wallets, they have crisp-as-fresh-lettuce cash or accounts or chits.
Rosie walked from the boathouse toward Southport train station where she could get a taxi. She hoped to assume the casual air of someone out strolling. The road along Sasco Hill was lined with huge maples and high walls. It was poorly paved, rutted with potholes, belying the wealth on either side. The road also cut cleanly between two types of money, for the WASPy wealth occupied the sea-side and the aspirational rich the land-side. Their houses were just as large — perhaps larger; but the sea was the premium status: the inherited money, the old money. Here lived the Daughters of the American Revolution, Bennett had explained, the debutantes, the members of the Pequot Yacht Club and the Country Club of Fairfield who knew the difference between Fishers Island and Block Island, Aspen and Vail, Palm Beach and West Palm Beach. On the other side: those who thought a scull was a Halloween decoration.
Cars drove past. Mercedes, BMWs, Jaguars did not stop. She didn’t mind, the walking felt surprisingly good, the striding. There were squirrels in the trees, they chided her, and unknown birds. Who might know their names? She could smell the sea and fresh-cut grass, for the wealthy kept their lawns meticulously mown. A trickle of sweat worked its way down her spine as her leg muscles lengthened and contracted. She was even a little out of breath when she came to the bridge that crossed the Mill River. Beyond, the road tilted uphill and inland, past ornate Victorian homes on small, carefully tended plots. This was still pricey real estate, yet Rosie wondered at the panoply of money, the way the rich — and the wealthy — must self-order. Like files in a cabinet. Where did Bennett fit in? He always told her not to worry about money, he seemed not to worry about it himself. Yet his family had cut him off.
A tradesman’s truck honked twice, whether the honker intended to flatter or to warn her out of the way, she couldn’t know. The road went downhill only a short distance to the station. In five minutes she was there, knocking on the window of a cab. The driver didn’t want to go to Bridgeport.
“Please,” she said.
“You gonna tip?”
He grumbled most of the way there, a diatribe against black people and Puerto Ricans. Rosie knew she should tell him she didn’t agree, but she was afraid he’d stop and make her get out.
The clinic was a low-slung building in a neighborhood turning sour. “Can you wait for me?” she asked the driver.
“Sure. But you gotta pay me now.”
“I don’t know how long I’ll be.
“Honey, you know how many times I sit waiting for a fare and they never come back?”
She thrust a hundred at him.
Inside, behind the bullet-proof glass and the bullet-proof steel doors, a dozen women were sitting on hard mustard-colored chairs, focusing on the tattered back copies of Good Housekeeping and Time as if these contained stories of deep interest. Rosie had thought it would be mostly young women like her who didn’t want to mess up their lives with a baby. But there were older women, too; one had a child with her, a boy who incessantly banged his toy car on the floor.
No one looked up, the women seeking invisibility, for even here, among strangers in a similar situation, Rosie felt their weary shame. The fault was theirs — as it was hers: the missed pill, the slippery diaphragm, the sexual abandon. The consequence was absolute, a hard, singular fact in a foamy, relative world. You’re either pregnant or not pregnant, Rosie thought as she sat.
Had any of these women been raped? Rosie didn’t see any obvious signs, black eyes or bruises. Katya and May went to protests, STOP VIOLENCE AGAINST WIMIN. They’d stuck fliers under her door that said “No, means NO.” And in smaller print: “My body, my consent. YES, PLEASE. Otherwise, it’s rape, asshole.” Was it, though? Wasn’t it something else — some other word, like the co-pilot taking over the plane? A kind of duty?
One by one, women were called, meekly following a nurse through a door. Nothing could be heard, though Rosie imagined machines sucking and sucking, vacuuming out women’s wombs. She wondered where the contents went, the waste. Down the sink? Into a special vat? Ten minutes passed and the boy began driving his car into Rosie’s foot. His mother grabbed him roughly by the shoulder. “Quit it, Michael.”
“It’s OK,” Rosie said. Their voices were loud in the quiet room.
The boy didn’t quit, he moved the car up her leg.
“Can you imagine bringing a child somewhere like this?” The woman sighed, pulling him back. “It’s the only time I can get here.”
With dark, solemn eyes, Michael looked up at Rosie and began licking his car, extravagantly rolling the wheels against his tongue. The other women were glancing furtively over their magazines. Suddenly, the woman gathered up her boy and her giant handbag and hurried to the door. The handbag slipped off her shoulder, almost causing her to lose her balance. With one hand on her child and the other hand dragging the bag, she crabbed around the reinforced steel door.