Emergency Contact(20)
He thought about the A word.
A-B-O-R-T-I-O-N
AH BORSH SHUNN
BORSCHT
As in the beet-red soup with soft bits in it.
Borscht. Borscht. Borscht.
“I don’t know if I could terminate,” she said.
TERMINATE.
Sam’s mind glommed on to the glimmering red light in the Terminator’s eye at the end of the movie, when the cyborg refused to die.
“I’m not a child, Sam,” she said. “I’m not some knocked-up fifteen-year-old. I’m twenty-three. That’s old enough to know better. My mom had me at twenty-four. . . . I can’t.”
He stared at her. Just drank her in. Blond hair. Small hands. Blue blouse. Black slacks.
It was a fair response.
It seemed exactly the sort of thing you’d know about yourself. Except Sam didn’t know anything anymore.
PENNY.
When Penny was in ninth grade, two events of great portent occurred. One, she read Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus. Two, she figured out that she wouldn’t be popular until she was a grown-up and that was fine because life was a long con.
Penny had Amber Friedman’s birthday party to thank for this wisdom. Amber Friedman was a girl from French class who famously woke up at five forty-five every morning to straighten her curly hair only to set it in differently shaped curls. Everybody figured she was well off since her dad was a music journalist for Rolling Stone. And while life was tough for Penny as the daughter of a MILF, having a dad with more Instagram followers than God was also a monumental suck. Amber’s dad cast a long shadow. It didn’t help that his daughter wasn’t cute. Not that she was ugly. She simply had one of those faces where the features were crowded into the middle like a too-big room with tiny furniture.
Then there was her personality. Amber loved butting in to finish other people’s sentences—even with teachers—and sneezed with a high-pitched “tssst” at least a half-dozen times. To Penny it seemed a bid for the wrong kind of attention. Anyway, Penny hadn’t been properly invited to the get-together. Amber’s mom and Penny’s mom were friendly from an Ethiopian cooking class they’d taken years ago and happened to run into each other at the market.
“But, Pen, Amber’s going to be so disappointed,” said Celeste, adding, “I got you both the new nail gel kits from Sephora.” Celeste dangled two shiny black bags.
Penny was more susceptible to bribery then. She rode her bike over and figured there’d at least be snacks and cake and enough people that she could bail inconspicuously.
When she arrived, six pairs of eyes bored into her from the living room of the pokey ranch house. It smelled as if cat pee had been doused liberally with Pine-Sol, and Penny couldn’t help thinking about how if you could smell anything it was because you were breathing particles of it into your body. Penny encouraged her face not to betray her thoughts as she said hi to Melissa and Christy from school and two girls Amber knew from temple. Huge silver Mylar balloons that spelled out AMBER clung to the ceiling except for the B that hung about midroom and kept sticking to the back of Amber’s hair.
Over the next two hours, they made personalized pizzas that Amber’s mom baked in the oven and sundaes for dessert. When clear plastic boxes of beads were presented so they could make earrings with fishing wire, Penny discovered her limit for boredom. She excused herself to go to the bathroom, listened carefully for anyone else in the house, and quietly began canvassing the area. Amber’s room featured no less than five black-and-white posters of Audrey Hepburn, and atop her canopied bed lay an orange cat grooming itself. It stopped to glare at Penny before deciding the intruder wasn’t worth the attention. When Penny poked her head into what she figured was Amber’s dad’s office, she hit pay dirt. Mike Friedman, music critic, had every graphic novel ever. Ever. EVER. Stacks. From Spider-Man to Superman to huge volumes of collected editions with shiny hard covers, organized by subject.
Penny couldn’t believe it. Mere feet from the inane small talk (“isn’t it, like, so awk how some people say caramel and other people say carm-el?”) and bullshit pizza toppings like (gag) cubed pineapple were thousands of hours of genuine entertainment. He had everything. From Swamp Thing to V for Vendetta and Persepolis, from We3 to Runaways.
Mr. Friedman’s room smelled of new books—pulp and varnish. After a whole shelf filled with a cute, pudgy character called Bone, Penny found Maus.
Penny had wanted to read Maus ever since she learned that it was the first comic to win the Pulitzer Prize, and upon realizing that Mr. Friedman had two copies—a hardcover and a soft—Penny did what any kid would. She stuck the soft down the back of her jeans, slid her sweatshirt over it, pretended she had a stomachache, and hightailed it home.
It was among the most shameful moments of her life. Never mind the karma of a total non-Jew stealing a book about the Jewish Holocaust from a Jewish person.
Except that the book changed her life.
Penny knew Maus was going to be formative. Not that she was going to become a career criminal, more that she felt destined to make something that made someone else feel how she did when she read it.
Penny believed with her whole heart that there were moments—crucial instances—that defined who someone was going to be. There were clues or signs, and you didn’t want to miss them.