A Book of American Martyrs(61)

There’d been talk of Darren going to visit Gus. But no weekend had been quite ideal for a visit, so far.

Perversely, as if to confound Jenna, Darren had said that he’d be willing for the family to move to Ohio, anytime. Saying with a smirk, “How much worse can cruddy-rural Ohio be than cruddy-rural Michigan?”—and Jenna said, “Ohio is a death-penalty state. Michigan has never executed in its history.”

Darren stared at her, startled by this rejoinder.

What did that mean? Why had she told him?

But he’d understood. Ohio was a more conservative state than Michigan. As a young child Darren had learned to narrow his eyes at the sight or sound of the word “conservative.”

Anti-black. Anti-women’s rights. Anti-equality. Anti-liberal. Anti-abortion.

The enemy.

“Ohio has yet to repeal the death penalty. Their legislature is not persuadable by rational argument. By contrast, Wisconsin executed just one person in its history, long ago; and capital punishment was banished in Minnesota in 1911. And Michigan has the most remarkable history of any state: not one execution.”

How passionately Jenna spoke! These little speeches she would make to her children from time to time, often startling them. You were made to realize (if you were a child of Jenna Matheson) that she cared deeply for things about which you knew very little, and that this suggested a Jenna Matheson who wasn’t only just Mom.

Meanly Darren said, “But Daddy is leaving anyway. So, who cares?” and Jenna said, stung, “Obviously, I care. And you should, also.”


IF YOU LOVED ME . . .

Of course I love you, darling. It isn’t that simple.

But—is love simple?

Don’t speak in riddles, Jenna. You know we have our work to do.

She wondered: was his departure a prelude to formal separation, divorce? Gus would not be the one to make such a suggestion but, if Jenna broached it, he might agree, with alacrity. She’d known men who had goaded their anxious wives/lovers into such rash suggestions . . . Emotional outbursts that can’t be retracted.

Since Gus had departed Jenna found herself in the habit of glancing out windows in the farmhouse, toward the road. Any movement she saw on the Salt Hill Road, or thought she saw, any glimpse of a random passing vehicle, stirred a childlike sort of anticipation: would the vehicle turn into the driveway? Was it Gus, coming home unexpectedly?

Darling, I’ve changed my mind.

It was a crazy idea. It was sheer hubris. You were right . . .

But she wasn’t right, she supposed. It was small-minded of her, it was craven and cowardly, to expect of her husband that he think of her and the children before thinking of his work that effected so many desperate women and girls.

And some of them adored him—of course. He had “saved” their lives—he had “made their lives possible.”

Not just women who’d desperately needed to terminate pregnancies but nurses, nurse-practitioners, fellow doctors with whom Gus Voorhees had worked. He’d insisted—(Jenna was ashamed to think that they had ever had such a conversation)—that he loved her; he would always love her; if there were other women whom he found attractive fleetingly, if there were other women who seemed to find him attractive—“That’s only natural, Jenna. But let me say again—I love you.”

She did believe this. She wanted to believe it. But how badly she missed him!

Driving into town was painful now that her husband was no longer at the Huron County Women’s Center and there was no (evident) reason for Jenna and the children continuing to live here. When she encountered acquaintances in the grocery store, or staffers from the Center, she was struck by their seeming to assume that “Dr. Voorhees” would be returning to St. Croix, and that the move to Ohio wasn’t permanent.

Vaguely Jenna said, she hoped so. Gus tended to go where he was most needed . . .

“We miss Dr. Voorhees! He always makes us laugh.”

“Does he! Yes.”

She went away feeling both slightly deceptive and yet cheered. Of course—Gus would return to St. Croix, in a year or two. Surely, he would return to Michigan.

Or by then, he’d have convinced Jenna and the children to join him in Ohio, after all.

Jenna thought of the poet Percy Shelley who’d boasted strangely of himself—I always go on until I am stopped. And I never am stopped.

Except of course, Shelley was stopped, at a young age.

And Gus Voorhees would be stopped—one day.


BUT NOW, ALONE. And elated to be alone. She told herself.

For the first time since Gus had moved to Ohio in the stifling heat of August she was feeling good to be alone.

Don’t say that I am abandoning you and the children, Jenna! I am not, you know I am not.

Come with me? In a few months . . .

But she would not. She was determined, she would not.

For she felt bitterly how he loved his work, essentially. Not his wife, and not his children.

His ideal of Gus Voorhees whom others so admired and revered.

Oh, she was grateful that he was gone! His hands touching her hair, stroking her cheeks, her neck, her arms—his murmurous voice—his mouth grazing hers. She was sick with love for him, she could not bear the thought of him. Waking in the night in the sunken crater of a mattress feeling his weight against her, feeling his breath—she wanted to die, she could not bear such loneliness. What a poor substitute the children were, needy for her! But she was needy for the husband, the man. In a delirium craving what only her husband could give her, and no one else.