A. Homes - In A Country Of Mothers

“I have tickets to a screening of Tin Beard tomorrow night and was wondering if you might want to go.”

“I saw it already, last week‚” Jody said. “It’s not great.”

“There’s a party at the Ark afterwards — would you want to go to that?”

“All right,” Jody said, as if she’d been talked into something.

“Pick you up at ten-thirty.”

Jody hung up, curious how come Peter Sears had to dig up strangers from college in order to get a date. She tried to remember which Anns he’d been friends with. There were four of them — interchangeable as far as Jody was concerned — Ann Weinstein, Ann Salzman and Anns Bankowsky and Willers.

The phone rang again. It was either Peter Sears calling to say he’d come to his senses and there was no way he was going anywhere with Jody, or the guy at the phone booth on the corner had finally found her number. She peeled back the shade and looked outside again. The phone booth was empty.

“Hello,” Jody snapped, turning on the answering machine even though it was after the fact.

“Is everything all right?”

Jody was silent, terrified.

“Jody, are you there? It’s Claire Roth.”

“Yeah, I’m here,” Jody said.

“Sorry to call you at home. I was looking at my book and realized I made a mistake. I have to change our appointment time for tomorrow. Would four-forty-five be all right?”

“Yeah, sure, fine.”

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Positive,” Jody said, banging her knee against the filing cabinet nervously, again and again. Tomorrow it would be black and blue and she’d look at it and wonder if it meant something, leukemia or hemophilia.

“Good. Then I’ll see you tomorrow,” Claire said. “’Night.”

Her voice was as soft as they pretended Kleenex was on television. It floated down over Jody and she breathed it in like a kiss.

C laire sat in her office, hoping Polly would cancel. When the buzzer went off, she let Polly into the waiting room and, feeling obligated to offer Polly a chance to talk herself out of it, opened the office door and asked, “Do you want to come in?”

“Could we just go?”

Claire locked the door and they stood silently in the hall, waiting for the elevator. Without the structure of the office, the two chairs, the fifty minutes, Polly didn’t know what to do. Claire wasn’t supposed to step out of context, much less out of the office. She was supposed to live within the walls, waiting for her patients, sitting near the phone twenty-four hours a day in case of emergency.

“Is it still raining?” Claire asked, casually, but making it clear that while this wasn’t a session, it wasn’t a social event, either.

“I don’t know,” Polly said.

Outside, Claire flagged a cab, and Polly gave the driver the address. Sitting in the backseat with Polly, Claire started thinking about what people she met at parties did when they found out she was a shrink. Men told every therapy joke they’d ever heard and eventually ran off to the bar for a refill and never returned. Women pretended to understand. They looked at Claire, smiled, and eventually they’d whisper something about their children and a problem. Claire inevitably said, “It’s perfectly normal. It’ll pass,” and the women would seem relieved.

The reactions were always based on the person’s feelings about therapy. The worst were those who had been “in” for a long time. Analysands refused to speak to her — as if Claire were responsible for all the shrinks throughout history. If Freud was wrong, it was her fault. Therefore it was mostly true that shrinks hung out with other shrinks or, more likely, didn’t hang out at all.

Polly was mute, acting as if she’d regressed to a preverbal stage and was expecting Claire to take care of her. When Polly smiled at her, Claire felt she was waiting for her to do something, say something, that would indicate her willingness to be the mother.

“Do you feel all right?” Claire asked.

“Yeah. I took two Valiums this morning.”

“Were you supposed to do that?” Claire asked, surprised.

Polly didn’t answer.

“Make sure you tell them when we get there.”

Claire could picture Polly not saying anything, and during the procedure the doctor would give her another drug that would cause a horrible reaction. They’d call an ambulance and take the comatose, brain-dead, half-aborted girl to the hospital. It would all be Claire’s fault.

“I don’t really need you to do this,” the girl said after a while. “I can take care myself.”

Claire simply nodded. They got out at the corner. Polly paid the driver and, without waiting, started off down the street towards the clinic.

“Let’s stop for a second,” Claire said, and Polly stopped. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“Well, I want you to know that if at any point you change your mind, it’s okay. I won’t feel as though you’ve wasted this time. It wouldn’t bother me at all.”

“Great,” Polly said, and started walking toward the clinic again.

Inside, all of a sudden Polly got shy. She sat in the chair closest to the door and looked up at Claire, pleadingly, indicating her wish for Claire to handle everything.

“I think you’re supposed to check in at the desk,” Claire said calmly, and then tried not to watch as Polly fumbled with the forms, the questions, pretending not to be nervous. When she watched her, she started hating her. It wasn’t productive. She focused on the nature posters taped on the walls. Someone had tried to make the clinic look like a pleasant place. Claire could picture the decorations being ripped down during an anti-abortion protest. She could see the receptionist ordering not one duck-pond poster but two or three, maybe half-dozen at a time. It was all very clean and neat. It could have been a podiatrist’s office. Claire found it hard to believe anything happened there. The room offered no clues, no sounds, no signs, nothing.

She glanced at Polly. Claire hadn’t heard her say anything about the two Valium.

“Did you tell them about the Valium?” Claire called across the office.

Polly turned around and flashed her an annoyed look.

“How many milligrams?” the nurse asked.

“Two blue ones,” Polly said.

“Ten milligrams?”

“Yeah.”

If Claire had taken two blue Valiums that morning, she’d be on the floor by now. The difference between what a body could take at twenty and at forty-three was amazing.

“Have a seat and well call you.”

“Why did you tell them?” Polly asked.

“Because you didn’t,” Claire said.

Five minutes later, when the nurse stepped out from behind her desk, Claire wondered if she should talk to her, explain who she was. She felt like an undercover agent. “Polly?” the nurse said. “You can come in now.”

Polly stood up.

“Your friend can come with you, if you like.”

“She’s not my friend,” Polly said, “she’s my shrink.”

And she’s a blabbermouth, Claire expected her to add.

“She can come with you, if you like,” the nurse repeated as if she hadn’t heard. Claire was the girl’s shrink. Didn’t that mean anything? Was it every day that a shrink brought someone in?

Polly turned around and looked at Claire, “It’s okay. Just wish me luck.”

“I do,” Claire said.

For a second, she’d seen herself in the operating room — if that’s what they called it — holding Polly’s hand and seeing more of her, literally and figuratively, than she ever wanted to. She saw herself forced to watch the whole thing, the unborn sucked in bits and pieces into a glass jar.