“That poor child is getting married next month. She’s terrified she’ll get her period on her honeymoon, because her fiancé would freak.”
“She said that?”
“Her exact words. ‘My fiancé would freak.’” Naomi gave her Edvard Munch look, mouth open in a parody of screaming. “And I’m thinking, Sweetie, you’re sure you want to marry this guy? Every month, you’re going to worry about him freaking?”
Claudia said, “It sounds like a long life.”
Naomi rose, stretched, glanced out the window. “It’s snowing,” she reported.
“Again?” How was it even possible? Across the river in Somerville, Claudia’s Subaru—its trunk packed with a shovel, blankets, and a bag of kitty litter to provide traction—was still encased in the snowbank where the plow had buried it. Digging it out would take a solid hour. It hardly seemed worth the effort.
“There’s another system blowing in,” said Naomi. “The Weather Channel is calling for a foot.”
“Ugh. I was supposed to run up to Maine this weekend. To check on my mom’s house.” Claudia had long referred to the trailer this way—aware, always, that she was being deceptive. Her mother had used the same word, without hesitation; to her, house and trailer were interchangeable. Deb, when she said it, would have passed a polygraph. To her it wasn’t a lie.
Naomi looked dumbfounded. “You’re driving?”
If there was another way to get to Clayburn, Claudia didn’t know about it. “I want to make sure the place is still standing. That last storm packed a wallop.”
“That’s crazy,” said Naomi. “Can’t you just call your tenant?”
“The tenant isn’t reliable.” Tenant was another approximation. Here, again, there was no right word. Nicolette had been the final foster, a sulky, unappealing girl who’d taken advantage of Claudia’s mother and was now taking advantage of her. Nicolette had cornered her at Deb’s funeral, asking if she could stay on in the trailer—rent-free—with her young daughter. A temporary arrangement, or so it had seemed at the time.
“The tenant is unreachable,” Claudia said. “Her number isn’t receiving calls.”
Naomi said, “That doesn’t sound good.”
It didn’t sound bad. To Claudia, it sounded normal: to the Birches of Clayburn, Maine, this sort of thing happened all the time. No one had a landline, or regular cell phone service; they relied on cheap, disposable Tracfones. When you made or received a call, you were charged by the minute. When your minutes ran out, the phone was unusable until you bought more of them at Walmart. Claudia didn’t explain this to Naomi. To a Harvard anthropologist, aboriginal fertility rites would be less exotic.
The hotline rang again. As Claudia was reaching for her headset, Mary Fahey stuck her head in the doorway.
“Claudia, I need you. We’ve got an Access patient out front.”
THE PATIENT WAS WAITING IN THE COUNSELING OFFICE—A cramped closet next to the waiting room, just big enough to hold a desk and three chairs. Vanessa M. was a cute round-faced girl with box braids and a wispy, timorous voice. According to her file she was seventeen years old, and ten weeks pregnant.
“Everything you tell me today will be kept confidential here at the clinic,” Claudia began, “unless you tell me someone is hurting you or not taking care of you, or if you are going to hurt yourself or someone else. If you tell me any of those things, I have to tell someone outside the clinic so we can make sure you’re safe.” With minors, this was standard protocol. Every staffer at the clinic was a mandated reporter. Once or twice a year, sometimes more, Claudia placed a call to DCF to initiate a 51A report.
Vanessa answered her questions in monosyllables. Yes, she was aware of all her options. No, no one had pressured her to have an abortion. When asked about her plans for the future, she was more expansive. In September she would begin classes at UMass Boston, to study communications and later, speech pathology. Her sister was raising a deaf son. Someday, Vanessa would teach the boy to talk.