A Book of American Martyrs(60)

In sixteen years of marriage she’d never ceased working except when she’d had very young children, and when they’d flown to Shanghai to adopt Melissa, which had involved nearly three weeks. But her work was executed in the interstices of her husband’s more complicated schedule. The life of the household centered upon him, and upon the children; to herself, Jenna had become a sort of blur, a figure in motion.

So long as she loved Gus Voorhees, none of this mattered. Rarely had she thought of career, life. So long as he’d seemed to love her.

But often, Gus was away. If indeed he was living with his family he was frequently away on weekends.

In May 1997 they’d moved from Saginaw, Michigan, to Huron Township, when Gus Voorhees had taken over the administration of the floundering Huron County Women’s Center. Not long after the St. Croix center had stabilized, Gus had been approached by the Ohio Board of Medicine to take over a floundering women’s center in a rural township in Ohio, where anti-abortion agitators had vandalized the Center, forced out the director, and hounded out many of the staff. It was to be an emergency appointment, and a highly publicized appointment, made in the face of local opposition, given media attention in Ohio and in such national publications as USAToday. Jenna had been astonished when Gus hadn’t declined overtures from the Board at once. How could he be serious?—moving again?

He explained to her: if the Broome County Women’s Center closed women in the area would have to drive at least one hundred miles just for contraceptive prescriptions, still farther for abortions.

That anti-abortion opponents in Ohio were taking a particular stand against Gus Voorhees had seemed, perversely, to provoke and stimulate him.

She’d told him no! He was needed right here in Michigan.

He’d told her he was needed more in Broome County, Ohio.

This was true, she supposed. But why did it matter? How many counties in the United States might have been described as needing Gus Voorhees, or someone very like him.

Wasn’t it dangerous in Broome County, Ohio?—Jenna had demanded; and Gus had said, as she might have known he would say, that it was dangerous everywhere, and he wasn’t going to factor in his personal comfort.

“‘Personal comfort’!—I hate you.”

She’d wanted to scream at him. She’d wanted to push him from her. She’d wanted to harden her heart against him, that he had not the power to hurt her further.

Despite her pleas Gus had said yes to the Ohio offer which was to include security provisions—protection for the Center, and the staff, by armed law enforcement. Gus would also have the power of hiring a completely new medical and support staff for the Center. Several young doctors, female and male. There was money for a radiology lab. For the first three years at least, there was the promise of more money from the state of Ohio than he’d had at his disposal in Huron County.

She wasn’t sure if Gus really wanted her to relocate to Ohio with him. If he really wanted to bring the children into a potentially dangerous environment. Yet, Gus asked. Gus asked repeatedly. Jenna responded adamantly no.

Another move! Another house! New schools for the children! It would be a nightmare.

I think you really don’t mean this. You’re begging us to come because you know we will not. Should you be married at all, Gus? Should you have had children?

That’s ridiculous! That’s a terrible accusation, Jenna.

Is it? Ask the children.

You ask the children—when they’re grown up and can judge.

Any criticism of Gus as a father stung him, infuriated him—Jenna could see the rage in his eyes.

He would pit the children against her, she thought. If it came to a separation, divorce.

Even if the mother were awarded primary custody, it would be the father whom they revered, whom they knew so less intimately than they knew the mother.

You’re making me hate you. And I’m afraid of you.

Ridiculous! This subject is closed.


ON TIPTOES Melissa stood to whisper to her mother—“Don’t make us move, Mommy! I will want to die.”

This disturbing plea, Jenna pretended not to hear. Not entirely.

“Of course we’re not moving again, Melissa. Anyway—not so soon.”

Bizarre to hear the word die on the lips of a seven-year-old. Even if Melissa was a precocious child.

Knowledge of dying, death seemed to be trickling down to ever-younger children. Jenna and Gus had been stunned to hear that the sixteen-year-old son of friends in Ann Arbor had committed suicide by hanging himself in his room, on the night of the first day of school in September—no note, no (evident) warning, a total surprise to high school friends as to the family. They’d known the boy since he’d been an infant and could only say to each other numbly—But Mikey had always seemed so normal . . .

Jenna communicated best with her youngest child by hugs and kisses, she thought. Words were supplemental.

After an interlude of (evident) misery and resentment Darren had begun at last to make friends at St. Croix High School. (Jenna had had glimpses of these “friends”—she wasn’t sure what she thought of the sulky-faced boys who barely mumbled H’lo Mz V’rhees when Darren had no alternative but to introduce them. Involuntarily came the cruel adolescent term—losers.) Darren had grown lanky-limbed and evasive, with ironic eyes, prone to moods; quick to lash out to hurt (his mother, his sister Naomi) at the slightest provocation. If his grades at the St. Croix school were high, he shrugged in adolescent embarrassment; if his grades were less than high, he was stricken with adolescent shame. He’d been dismayed and angered by his father’s decision to work in Ohio but he’d seemed to blame Jenna as well, which she understood: for Darren was one to blame.