A Book of American Martyrs(51)

Dr. Voorhees’s family. His children . . .

Always, there is curiosity about the abortionist’s children.

What was inside the package, the cardboard box, obscured by wadded newspaper pages, something small, mechanical, possibly an alarm clock, ticking?—we could not see.

Irritably, nervously our father was saying: “It’s nothing. It’s a false alarm. Rhoda, clear the office—please take care of Ellen. Let’s get back to normal, we’ve wasted enough time.”

False alarm. Bomb? But no, not a bomb.

Nor did the package contain what the greasy white box had contained, that my classmates in Saginaw had given me.

At least, we could not see anything like that in the box on the counter. Someone had shut up the box, stuffed in the newspaper pages. Should the police be called?—Dr. Voorhees did not think so.

False alarm, no need for police. No need to call attention to the Center.

We can handle this. Return to normal. In stride.

And so within minutes, it seemed to be so: most of the staff had left the room, and the middle-aged woman named Ellen who’d been sitting down, panicked, light-headed, was dabbing at her flushed face with a tissue, joking of hot flashes.

“Let me see that box”—inevitably, our mother would say these words.

We had known, without knowing that we knew, that, being Jenna Matheson, our mother would say Let me see that box.

And we’d known that our father would say sharply—No.

“You don’t think that you should call 911, Gus?”

And again our father curtly told her—No. The situation was entirely under control, and that was it.

Our father escorted us out of this room and into another, smaller room, that was his office. Clearly he wanted to speak with my mother, and he did not want his staff to overhear.

The desk in this office was heaped with papers, documents, manila folders. Aluminum bookshelves against the walls were crammed. Amid the clutter on the desk was a single family photo in a faux-leather frame—the Voorhees family of several years ago when Melissa had been a toddler, and Daddy’s beard had been darker.

Strange to see us smiling so happily at the camera—including little Naomi with shy shadowed eyes.

“That photo! I was wondering where it had gone.”

Our mother spoke with an air of pleasurable surprise. The tension between her and our father had not yet abated.

Haphazardly taped to the wall in our father’s office were newspaper articles and photos. These were mostly impersonal—

Ohio Legislature Votes to Restrict Abortion Rights, Michigan State Advisory on Women’s Reproductive Rights Drafts Resolution, US Supreme Court Ruling Jeopardizes Roe v. Wade?—but there was a grainy picture of our embarrassed-looking father in graduation cap, gown, hood above the caption Controversial Abortion Rights Advocate U-M Alum Voorhees Receives Honorary Doctorate, Public Service, U-M Commencement.

On a shelf was an upright glass rectangle commemorating an award to Dr. Gus Voorhees from the National Abortion Rights Action league, in 1992; on another shelf, partly hidden by a stack of pamphlets, a brass medallion issued by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, 1995.

Of our father’s public, professional life we knew little. While he was alive we were sheltered in a kind of benign ignorance.

You could see that in the outer wall of our father’s office there had been a single window at one time, now bricked over. You realized that windows would have left the interior of the Center and the individuals within vulnerable to attacks from outside.

“We’ll just wait here for a few minutes. We can shut the door.”

Our father spoke expansively, like one who is about to clap his hands together.

As if he wasn’t angry with our mother but only just relieved that we were all safe—and that the crisis was over—he seized our mother’s hand, and kissed it playfully; it was like him to squeeze our hands, our arms, run his fingers through our hair, stoop to brush his lips against our cheeks, to demonstrate that he loved us, and that we were his. Such gestures of fatherly affection were purely physical, instinctive.

Gus Voorhees was tall, imposing. He was thick-bodied, square-built, solid. His hair that had once been a warm gingery-brown (like the soft fuzz of Naomi’s teddy bear) was mostly gray and his short, wiry beard was a lighter shade of gray as if it were the beard of another man. The corners of his eyes were deeply creased from smiling, squinting, grimacing. In his forehead were odd, vertical lines and both his cheeks were lightly pitted, roughened. He had a look of being used, battered like a man who isn’t young, and has not the expectations of youth; a man you might trust, who would be kind to you.

Not at all accusingly, only inquisitively, with a clenched smile our father asked our mother why she’d come to the Center, instead of meeting him at the lake as they’d planned; and our mother said, just slightly on edge, “Why did I come here? It’s a public place, isn’t it? Why should I not come here?” and our father said, keeping his voice even, and still holding our mother’s hand, that seemed about to escape from his, “Well. Sometimes things happen here that are unexpected. Like today.”

“But today was unusual, I think?”—our mother asked; and our father said, “Yes. Today was unusual. That is so.”

And then, after a pause: “You might have called first, Jenna.”