Looking for Jane (91)
When the waitress returns with Evelyn’s sandwich a short while later, the skin between her brows is pinched with concentration.
“You look kind of familiar to me, you know,” she says.
This isn’t the first time this has happened to Evelyn. She smiles and looks the girl squarely in the face. “I have a medical practice over on Seaton Street.”
It only takes a moment.
“Ohhhhh!”
Evelyn can see the red patches creeping up the waitress’s neck over the collar of her yellow uniform.
Jane? she mouths.
Evelyn nods. She expects the young woman to scurry away, but she glances over her shoulder, then sits down in the chair across from Evelyn, setting the coffee pot between them on the sticky table.
She exhales, shakes her head. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I honestly don’t know how you do it.”
Evelyn considers the comment. “Do you mean it was unclear to you how the procedure was done, or do you mean you don’t know how I do it from a moral perspective?”
The girl shrugs. “Neither. I just mean it’s such an awful thing. No one should have to go through it, but because, you know—things happen—it’s amazing that you and, uh, Jane were there to help. I imagine it can’t be easy for you.”
Evelyn stuffs two fries into her mouth. “It’s not about me, it’s about my patients.”
“Jesus, can’t you take a compliment?” The girl smirks.
Evelyn laughs out loud. It feels good. “Point taken. I guess my answer is: I do it because few people can. I’m in a privileged position, and I’m able to provide something that women need. It’s something that would have changed my own life a long time ago, but it wasn’t an option for me. So, I do it. Is it easy? No. Does it keep me up at night?” She shakes her head. “Honestly, it doesn’t.”
The young woman listens with an impassive face, then nods. “Well, I should get back to it,” she says, getting to her feet and lifting the coffee pot. “But thanks again. I can’t believe I ran into you, today of all days.”
“You pay attention to the news, then, eh?”
“Yeah. It’s on the TV back at the bar. It’s been hard to ignore. Not that I wanted to,” she rushes to clarify. “But it’s everywhere. It’s a big day.”
“That it is.”
“So, what are you going to do now that it’s legal?”
Evelyn eats another fry. “The same thing I’ve been doing for years.”
“Really?”
“Well, yes. Just because it’s legal now doesn’t mean no one needs it anymore, right? I’ll do it as long as they need me.”
The girl cocks her head to the side. “I guess you’re right. But do you think they’ll always need you?”
Evelyn’s coffee mug is halfway to her mouth when she pauses. She sets it back down on the table. She takes in the waitress’s youthfulness. She doesn’t remember whether this girl ever told her why she came in for an abortion. She never enquires, of course. Their services are on-demand, no questions asked. But many of the women willingly tell her why, either to remind themselves for the twelfth time that day that this is the right decision, or to alleviate a persistent sense of guilt. All the stories her patients have ever told her run through her mind like a film reel. Their reasons are numerous and varied and hardly any two are exactly the same.
Suddenly she feels tired. “Yes. There will always be a need.”
CHAPTER 25 Nancy
WINTER 2010
Nancy opens the front door of her parents’ house and enters a space that still smells like the mother she’ll never see again. She surveys her surroundings.
The house is silent except for the tick tock tick tock of the antique grandfather clock in the hallway. He forges on, resolutely counting down the seconds for no one in particular. Nancy feels an odd stab of pity for him, at his lack of awareness that his mistress doesn’t need him anymore. His usefulness has ended, and he doesn’t even know it.
No one told Nancy how difficult this part was going to be. That when your last parent dies, everyone around you is focused on helping you cope with the grief of their passing and plan all the details of the funeral. They send casseroles for the nights when you’re too exhausted and heartbroken to even shower, let alone cook for yourself. Flowers for something bright and pretty to look at before they wither into brown, crispy, rotted stems, leaving you with one more reminder that death is inevitable. As if you didn’t already know.
And no one told her what it would be like after the funeral was over, how it would feel to paw through her mother’s personal effects and clear out her home. A decade older than Frances, Nancy’s dad died years ago, but there wasn’t a lot for Nancy to do then, since her mother refused to move out of the house. Nancy had helped plan the funeral, of course, and gave the eulogy, but Frances’s stubbornness and need to maintain normalcy meant that she didn’t want a fuss and didn’t want help. She planned to trek on as though nothing had changed.
Nancy gave herself a full three days after Frances’s funeral before she bit the bullet, grabbed the keys to her mother’s house, and drove over here with a stack of moving boxes to deal with the inevitable. She knew Michael wouldn’t be any help with this. Since their divorce, things between them have been chilly but civil. He attended the funeral, at their daughter Katherine’s insistence, but he made it clear he was there to support their daughter’s grief, not Nancy’s.