ROSIE studied the sunlight streaming onto Natalie’s long blonde hair. She usually wore it in a ponytail for matches, or clipped to the back of her head, and even sometimes in a ballerina’s bun, but today it fell loose down her back like drapes. Flaxen was the word, like someone’s hair in a fairy tale, thick and straight, four or five colors of yellow, from yellow white like early morning sun to the yellow of a parakeet or a lemon’s deep yellow. It was the most beautiful hair Rosie had ever seen, multicolored like those skeins of yarn going from white through each shade along the way to the darkest hue. The sun sparkled in all of those strands of yellow, like it was dancing with its own family.
Rosie was sitting in the back seat of Natalie’s car, an old powder-blue Mustang. They were listening to oldies on the radio, although Natalie kept pushing the buttons, trying to find better songs.
In the passenger seat next to Natalie, Simone sat staring straight ahead, so teary and grave and full of herself and her hardship that it was almost like bragging. It was like they were taking her in to find out if she had cancer, instead of for a pregnancy test.
They had told their mothers that Natalie was taking them down to Menlo Park for the day to practice with her and her doubles partner at the convent, which was so lovely you could hardly concentrate at first for the beauty of the trees and the old buildings. Of course the mothers had said yes. Veronica always just needed for Simone to have somewhere to be so she could work at her salon, and Elizabeth had gone back to bed that morning, claiming to have a headache. But a lot of mornings lately she had gone back to bed with one excuse or another.
Natalie had a wonderful father, a tennis pro of great renown who loved his daughter so much; they always stood together at tournaments, watching his students, like Natalie was his wife, so tall and well developed, so tan, so accomplished, so pretty.
“Trust me,” said Natalie. “You’re not going to be pregnant.”
They drove the ten miles to San Rafael to the local Planned Parenthood office. Natalie had had an abortion here a few years ago when she was fifteen, and her boyfriend, who had been ranked number one in northern California, had been with her. They had gone steady for three years. He was as handsome as a Greek statue, but tan, really tan, beautiful as Natalie. They always were the first to dance slow dances, and you could see they were really in love and that you would never be in the arms of such a handsome guy who loved you so much. His name was Bill Shephard, and she called him Billy, in this way that sounded like she had a slight Southern accent. But he went back east to college on a tennis scholarship and had stayed there for the summer.
She had been on the pill ever since her abortion.
“We’re going to get you taken care of,” she said to Simone after she’d picked the two girls up this morning. “If you’re pregnant, I can help you get the money together. Don’t even worry about it now. Jason will contribute, I give you my word on that.”
Simone had gotten it into her head that Jason would come today, be there with her, be there with her next week if she needed an abortion. But he was heading up to the Pacific Northwest in a few days for the circuit there, which was for the kids who were not quite good enough for the eastern nationals but too good to hang around playing the lesser tournaments here. And he couldn’t take time off from practice.
So Rosie had been dragged along, like a pet hunchback, in the back seat behind these blonde girls—not really girls but not women yet either—who sat in the front seat of the Mustang, talking about birth control pills and abortions like Rosie and Simone used to sit in back seats and talk about their lessons and the dogs they would have one day.
THERE was no one outside the clinic when the three girls went in, Simone with an artichoke-hearts jar of the morning’s first urine hidden in her purse. Rosie and Natalie sat in the waiting room with three black girls and dozens of old magazines. Natalie was reading an old Mademoiselle with such poise you could picture her waiting for her hair to dry at a beauty salon. Rosie’s stomach was racing, like it was filled with lightning bugs, like she was about to get diarrhea. Mostly she was praying for Natalie to be right, for Simone not to be pregnant. But there was a part of her, too—the mean narrow-eyed part, the demon-field part—that hoped she was, that said she deserved to be, that said she was bad and deserved an abortion, deserved to have sharp cutting things inside her. And Rosie squinted back guilty tears, tears of hating herself, of being sorry, so when Simone came out, white as a ghost and weak like after people give blood, holding some papers, Rosie’s heart both sank and soared in guilty flight. A middle-aged woman walking with Simone touched her shoulder gently, pointed to something on one of the pieces of paper, and reached into the pocket of her white jacket for Kleenex. She handed the tissue to Simone and disappeared.
Rosie and Natalie stared at Simone, who wouldn’t look at them, and walked out the door of the clinic without saying anything. Rosie and Natalie looked at each other.
“God,” Rosie whispered.
There were protesters shouting outside the clinic when they left, protesters with enormous signs, one woman holding a huge photograph of a tiny fetus, the size of your thumb, attached to the umbilical cord, so perfectly humanly formed that it might have just been born. Natalie took Rosie’s hand like she was her big sister and pulled Rosie past the crowd to the car.
Rosie felt wild on the inside, jazzed, like she was on something, although the only thing she had ever been on was a cup of Veronica’s leftover coffee, lukewarm with lots of cream and sugar.
When they caught up with Simone, she wasn’t crying, but mascara was smeared like shadows below her eyes. “I’m going to have an abortion in a couple of weeks,” she said. “I think.” Rosie put her arms around her. They hugged for a long time, while Natalie got in the car and reached over to unlock the passenger door. When Rosie had climbed into the back seat and Simone into the front, Natalie reached into her purse for something and handed it to Simone. It was a hundred-dollar bill.
“I got it for graduation,” she said.
“I have eighty-seven,” said Rosie.
They both looked at Simone. “I have thirty,” she said.
“We’re halfway there,” said Natalie. “We’ll get the rest.”
“Do you have to tell your mom? Does she have to sign—like—a permission slip?”
“Rosie, duh. You don’t get permission slips for abortions.”
“Ask Jason for two hundred,” said Natalie.
SOMEHOW Jason got the money a few days later. Simone called Rosie to tell her in a whisper one morning, and Rosie felt her heart sink with disappointment. She felt ashamed and dirty to admit it, but she was mad at Simone for lying and saying she hadn’t gone all the way, for making it seem like if the guy only put it in an inch, it didn’t count as going all the way. Rosie had finally figured it out. Simone had gotten drunk and gone all the way. And they could never again be as close as they had been. There was something more important to her than Rosie, their friendship, and their tennis life together. Now Rosie was like this little kid with skinny little legs, and Simone was half like a woman. Simone had crossed over. And Rosie felt she should be punished. Natalie had crossed over too. She was on the same side of the river as Simone. They should both be punished. Rosie was standing on the bank alone, a warty river gnome.
So Rosie rode her bike into town with Simone to meet Jason in front of the pharmacy on the boardwalk. The girls got off their bikes and sat waiting on a wooden bench. There were flower boxes everywhere, with geraniums and every color of impatiens. You could see the mountain, the slope of the Indian maiden’s breast. Jason had said he’d be there at two, and Rosie imagined him getting out of his dad’s car, walking into Simone’s arms, telling her how sorry he was that he couldn’t be there, but he loved her and would call. And they would embrace like newlyweds, while Rosie sat on the wooden bench, acting vaguely bored while they kissed passionately, and she would stare at the mountain and watch the fog roll in. But people came and went in a parade of tanned faces, well-dressed little children, mothers mostly in tennis clothes but a few in business suits, men mostly in suits but a few in tennis clothes, teenagers on bikes and skateboards. Finally Simone asked someone the time. It was 2:35, and she turned to Rosie, looking like a dog you’re playing a trick on with hidden cheese, and a moment later Jason’s tennis partner, Mark Evers, pulled up on a mountain bike. “Hi!” said Simone. “Is Jason with you?” Mark shook his head. He was trying to be cool, but his eyes looked fearful or angry. He reached into the back pocket of his perfectly faded jeans and took out a folded-up envelope. Simone cocked her head and peered into his face.
“Isn’t Jason coming?” she asked.
He flung the envelope at her, but she was too surprised to catch it. It fluttered to the ground like a paper airplane and landed at her feet. She bent forward to study it, as if something alive had fallen from the sky. Rosie looked into Mark’s sharp brown face, and before her very eyes, his face softened.
“Pick it up, Simone,” he said, but she didn’t.
“Where’s Jason?” she asked in a scared, small voice. Mark sighed, got off his bike, lay it on the ground, and retrieved the envelope. “Here,” he said, not unkindly. Rosie’s heart pounded in her ears. After a long moment, Simone took it out of his hand. Mark stared down at his sneakers and then looked over his shoulder. Simone started to say something but stopped. Rosie watched Mark get back on his bike and whip the handlebars around, as though he were riding off on a horse.
“Could you tell him to call me?” Simone asked, and Mark said sure, and pedaled away without looking back.