“Yes.”
“Have you ever met Jane before?”
Silence. Nancy isn’t sure how she’s supposed to answer. Is this some kind of test, a second stage of the code she hadn’t been told about? “No, I haven’t. This is my first time.”
“Okay. What’s your name, miss?”
“Nancy. Nancy M—”
“No, no! No last names, Nancy.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Okay,” the woman continues. “So, I understand you’re running late. What time is it where you are? And by that, I mean, between one p.m. and nine p.m.”
What?
The silence stretches the tension even tighter.
“Think about my question for a moment, Nancy.”
She does, and starts to feel anxious again. And stupid. The butterfly has returned. She rakes her fingers through her hair, her ragged, chewed fingernails catching on the brown strands. And then two pieces snap into place in Nancy’s mind.
“Oh! Yeah, I guess I’m—I’d guess it’s about one o’clock or so.”
“Very good, we can definitely accommodate that timeline. I’d like to have you over to visit Jane fairly soon. Are you free to come in to the office…” The voice trails off, and Nancy can hear the riffling of pages. “At seven-thirty next Saturday night?”
The butterfly is in her throat, flapping against her tonsils. “Saturday?”
Her major paper is due the following Monday and she hasn’t even started it. But this can’t wait, can it? No. She’s certain in her decision. She just wants it done. She takes a deep breath.
“Yeah, I can do Saturday night. Seven-thirty, you said?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Do I need to bring anything, or…？”
“No, just you. It’s better that you come alone, actually. Do you have a pen?”
Nancy jots down the address the woman gives her. “All right. And how much is the fee?” Nancy braces for it. She’ll just have to eat nothing but Kraft Dinner for the next few months.
“There is no fee. I do this for free for those who need it.”
“Oh, wow. Okay, thank you. That’s really helpful, honestly.”
“I’m happy to help. But one last thing, Nancy: it’s important that you knock seven times, loudly, when you arrive. Make sure you are here precisely at seven-thirty, okay? My nurse will come let you in. What do you look like?”
“Dark brown hair, brown eyes. I’m about five-six. I’ll be wearing a red coat.”
“Wear a black one.”
Nancy shakes her head. “I’m sorry?”
“Wear a more discreet colour, and knock seven times. We’ll see you next Saturday night. Take care.”
And with a sharp click, the line goes dead.
* * *
Saturday has arrived. The Day.
A chill, damp March 21 smothered in steely grey cloud cover. It hasn’t stopped raining all week, unless you count the hour of sleet and hail that lashed down on the city on Wednesday in the middle of afternoon rush hour. The pathetic remnants of winter are still evident along the street gutters: the ugly brown crust of dirt and salt and car exhaust that signals the end of winter’s death grip and—finally—the beginning of spring.
Nancy hates winter. The end of it is usually a significant cause for celebration in her book. But not today. She can’t ever remember feeling more unlike herself, and utterly unfocused on anything but the task at hand. And she’s decided to think about this ordeal as exactly that: a task, a chore. She’s packaged it up in her mind as something that she just needs to get through to move on to the Next Step, whatever that might be. If she’s being honest with herself, she has no idea. She can’t see much beyond the grey cloud of this evening.
Len tried calling her three times this week, looking for a “date.” Susan loyally came up with various excuses for why Nancy couldn’t come to the phone, but Nancy thinks she’s starting to suspect she might be pregnant. Twice this week she asked how Nancy is feeling, and Nancy’s sure she stopped outside the bathroom door on Wednesday morning, listening in as Nancy hurled her guts out into the toilet.
In a coat she borrowed from Susan, a heavy, scratchy grey wool mackintosh that falls past her knees, Nancy weaves her way through the crisscrossing paths and skeletal bare trees of Queen’s Park. A couple of blocks later, she turns down Yonge Street, past the dazzling red, white, and yellow neon lights of Sam the Record Man that look as though they’d be more at home in Las Vegas than Toronto. She pulls back the sleeve of the coat to check her watch. It’s only a quarter after seven. She slows her pace.
It’s Saturday night, which means all the students and other carefree young people are out for dinner and drinks, dodging into basement bars for artsy poetry readings and billiards. The Leafs are playing Buffalo, and Susan invited Nancy to the game; her boyfriend’s family has season tickets. Normally, Nancy would have jumped at the offer. But Susan had also hinted heavily that it was intended to be a double date with one of her boyfriend’s fraternity brothers.
“You need to upgrade from that idiot Len, Nancy,” Susan said, eyeing her friend shrewdly as she handed over her old grey coat.
“I know,” Nancy replied. “That’s what I’m heading out to do, actually.”
“Mm. Special date?”
Nancy nodded, avoiding Susan’s eyes. “Something like that, yeah.”
She’s swimming upstream now against a current of blue hockey jerseys and umbrellas all flooding toward the Gardens as she turns left onto Shuter Street and past Massey Hall. She passes underneath a streetlamp, the light reflecting in the damp pavement. Suddenly she’s eighteen again, waiting for Clara underneath the lamp outside Ossington Station. A chill creeps up her neck at the thought.
This will be different, she reminds herself. This is a real doctor who knows what she’s doing.
Nancy is so engrossed in the memories of that night as she winds her way toward Seaton Street that she overshoots the address. By the time she looks up, she’s at number 103. Doubling back, she scans the line of houses for the right number until she arrives at the front gate.
This is it. There’s nothing else for it. She checks her watch again.
7:29.
Nancy pauses on the sidewalk, hiking the collar of the coat with its unfamiliar smell farther up her neck. She stuffs her gloved hands deep into the pockets.
After a moment’s consideration, Nancy nods in agreement with herself and reaches over the low iron gate to release the latch. She steps through, then guides it carefully shut behind her with a deafening creak.
Seaton is a quiet street, several blocks over now from the bustle of Yonge. She glances over her shoulder. The street is deserted. But when she turns back toward the house, Nancy sees movement on a porch several doors down. There’s an older man outside, shoveling slush off his steps. He turns toward Nancy, leans on the shovel for support. She can’t see his features in the dark, but the fact that she’s about to—once again—do something illegal hits her more forcefully than she’d like.
But you have to do this, she tells herself. She’s built this up in her mind as the keystone of her future. The abortion is the first step to setting herself back on track. After that, she hopes, everything else will fall into place. And surely there’s no way this stranger would know why she’s here. She could just be a friend visiting Dr. Taylor for drinks on a Saturday night.