The diaphragm turned into a fiasco.
“You’ll like this lady,” Paige Allen told her. “She’s not a doctor but some sort of nurse or midwife. She fits you and shows you how to use it.”
She hadn’t used anything the first few times with Jason but she had been at the beginning of her cycle so she considered herself safe. She wouldn’t use birth control pills. She used them with Michael and they made her gain weight. She also believed, half-believed, they might have had something to do with her breakdown.
The woman who measured Debbie chatted as she worked.
“You see, most doctors, most male doctors anyway, don’t take the time to measure correctly. That’s why there are so many pregnancies with diaphragms, but if they are fitted correctly …” Her voice trailed off as her fingers poked and probed Debbie’s vagina.
“I haven’t had one unplanned pregnancy and I have been fitting diaphragms for three years.
“Here, you want to look?” she asked, her fingers still inside Debbie.
“No, not really,” Debbie said. She was sweating with embarrassment.
“You should, you know,” the woman said. “And remember to examine the diaphragm for thin spots or breaks before you use it.”
Arranged by size, a line of diaphragms was displayed on the counter. Debbie giggled at the largest one.
“No, it has nothing to do with that,” the woman said with annoyance. She picked up the diaphragm from the middle of the line.
“Now, this is the way you put it in. You pinch it together and insert. Many women do it while sitting on the toilet or with one leg up on the toilet seat. See this?”
She led Debbie to the large clear plastic model of the vagina and uterus. She wiggled one long thin finger up the plastic opening.
“This is where you put it, open it, so it lays flat across here. Do you see?”
Debbie nodded. The model fascinated her. The parts appeared to be removable.
“Now, you take this in there.” The woman handed her the rubber disc and pointed her to the bathroom. “You wash it off and put it in. You don’t leave here until you get it right. When you think you have it in right, I’ll check it.”
In the tiny bathroom, Debbie tried, carefully folding the disc as the woman had but when she started to insert it the disc sprang out of her fingers and bounced off a wall. She rushed to retrieve it from behind the toilet.
On the second try, it exploded again and bounced away. Good grief, she asked herself, what kind of woman was she? She couldn’t even do this simple womanly thing.
Quietly, cautiously, she opened the door and peeked into the examination room. She took the smallest diaphragm from the display. She folded it and started to insert it into the plastic vagina. If only she could see how it should work, how it should fit.
Suddenly, the diaphragm snapped open, blowing the model apart. The clear plastic stomach cover flew to the floor, the pink ovaries bounced, the two red fallopian tubes jumped in opposite directions.
She cried out and fell to her knees, scrambling for the pieces. She was wet with sweat. How could she tell this woman she couldn’t do this, didn’t want to do it. She put the pieces she found on the counter.
Back in the bathroom, sweating and shaking, she tried again and this time the diaphragm stayed inside her.
“Perfect,” announced the woman. “Perfect. Feel it.”
Debbie reluctantly inserted a finger.
“Feel that? Do you? Do you remember how you put it in?”
Debbie nodded quickly.
“Remember how it feels once it’s in there. It’s important that it lays flat.”
Debbie nodded again. She had no idea how it felt or how it was supposed to feel. She doubted she would ever put it in the right way again.
“I sort of broke your thing,” she said before she left the room. She nodded toward the counter.
The woman said nothing.
At the pharmacy, while the druggist was finding her size, Debbie did feel some relief. At least she didn’t have to ask for the big one.
“For an elephant,” she whispered to Paige Allen. “I would rather die.”
*
Jason didn’t ask her those first weeks if she was using anything. She knew what she was doing and it was soon obvious she had a diaphragm. He didn’t care what she used. It all felt good to him.
Debbie didn’t want to use the diaphragm. She didn’t like touching it, folding it, putting it in. She felt embarrassed by her trips to the bathroom. She did it for Jason. He was good for her. He held her back from the worry and the tears.
“Stop thinking about it,” he would order when he saw her start to react to a story on the national news.
“Think about something else. Think about how great everything else is. Come on, big ‘un.” He’d pull her close. “You worry too much. What are you going to do, feed all the starving kids? Save all the elephants?”
“It’s not that, Jason. It’s …”
“It’s all hype, Debbie. We call it news but it isn’t. You know that.”
He made sure the movies they saw were funny, that the television they watched, with the exception of national news on the weekends, didn’t include PBS documentaries on war or concentration camps or anything about animals. They watched, when they watched, situation comedies and old movies.
He could watch the documentaries in his own apartment. That was his business, photography and editing. He had to watch, wanted to, but she didn’t. And, he liked being able to keep her from the bad crap. He liked making her happy, making her laugh. He liked everything about these days except for the time he spent wondering when he would be able to make his move to a bigger market.
Debbie knew Jason was taking care of her, keeping her safe. He was smart in a way Michael had never been smart. He had a good job. He had a future. This wasn’t another Michael. No way. She was, Debbie knew, very, very lucky.
“He’s so great,” she told Ellen.
“Right,” was Ellen’s response before she changed the subject.
*
“Afraid there’s no Grand Canyon trip in our immediate future,” Jason told her.
“Oh, no. Why not?” She was looking forward to leaving the city and seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time.
“I’m going to work with Ferguson on the breast cancer series. It’s going to take two weeks of shooting. We may end up going to California or New York, maybe both.”
“I thought Clifford was working with Richard.”
“Not on this one.” He reached to stroke her arm. “I guess we’ll have to put the Canyon on hold for a while.”
“Hey, it’s no big deal. It ain’t going anywhere. Come on, give us a smile.” He chucked her under the chin.
She laughed in spite of herself. They would still be together most of the time.
Brown made the decision that paired Jason and Ferguson.
“I think you should do this one with Jason,” he told the medical reporter.
“Well, okay, but Clifford has been doing some good work with me.”
“He’s a good man, but let’s go with Jason on this one. I think it would be better.” He nodded as though they both agreed on the choice.
Ferguson said nothing until he was back in his cubicle. He leaned out to talk to Jack Benton.
“Says he wants Jason on the breast thing instead of Clifford.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter to me.”
“Maybe it’s because he’s black,” said Benton. “You know, white women’s titties and all that.”
“Come on,” laughed Ferguson.
“You never know,” said Benton.
Charles Adkins was in the photographers’ room drinking a can of soda and talking with Steve when Clifford slammed in.
“I hear Jason’s doing the series with Ferguson,” he told them. “Does anybody here have something against me?”
Charles Adkins shook his head. He honestly didn’t know.
“Happens all the time,” he offered. “Probably Harding’s fault.”
“Shit, I don’t know,” Clifford said, shaking his head in frustration. “I don’t even know who to talk to about it. Ferguson said it wasn’t his decision.”
“Ah, let it go,” Charles Adkins advised.
Steve nodded a vague agreement from his seat at the equipment bench. He had taken apart his old CP16 to clean it. Brown gave him the film camera when they changed over to videotape.
“You deserve it,” Brown said.
He could tell Clifford how it felt to be one of the best in the business and have the business change around you and some mealy-mouth punk hands you an old camera and says, “You deserve it.”
He could tell him how it felt to be working with kids who didn’t know the beauty of film, didn’t know the feel of it, the weight of it, who didn’t know how to open a camera and see in a second what was wrong. Now they brought the equipment back to the station and called an engineer to fix it.
“I’m sure it’s nothing personal,” Charles Adkins was saying to Clifford.
“Well, fuck, man,” Clifford shouted, “sometimes I think this nigger is too black for the Fat Boy. Is that it? Is this nigger too black?” he drawled.
Charles Adkins gave a short laugh.
“No, man, that’s it and it ain’t making me laugh.” Clifford gave a hard shake of his head as he picked up his equipment. “No, I ain’t laughing,” he said, and left the room.
“You know,” Charles Adkins said to Steve after a slight pause, “Across the Street they give out ice-cream cones when somebody leaves.” He took one last slug of soda. “Isn’t that strange?
“Good old George is leaving,” he chanted, “and here’s an ice cream cone. I think that is perverse.”
“More than we get,” Steve said, his head bowed to his work.
He cleaned the old camera at least once a month and kept it in the back of his van. Sometimes he would say he was going to take it out and shoot a few hundred feet but he never did. Why bother? Who was going to develop it? The processor hadn’t been used in two years. Sooner or later they would get around to tossing it.
“It’s not the same. The quality is all wrong,” he had argued about videotape. “Film has a texture to it, a depth. Videotape is flat.”
They didn’t know what he was talking about. The only ones who were into film wanted to go to Hollywood to make movies. Of course, they didn’t want to shoot the camera. They wanted to direct.
He also had a sweet little DR. Best little camera every made. They covered the war in Korea carrying that camera. Hell, they were using them for news right up until about five years ago. Sometimes he’d bring it in. Some of the guys liked to look at it. It was so damn simple. Fit right into your hand. Made for it. Cappy knew. Cappy started with a DR. Neatest, tightest little camera ever made.
Well, he’d keep his CP16 in the back of the van, ready to go. There might be that one time when he would need it, reach for it and it would be there, taking those beautiful film pictures. He sighed and Charles Adkins made a clean shot into the trashcan with his empty red soda can.