24

THAT SAME DAY, driving home down the highway, I get a message from an old classmate. I stopped seeing my school friends years ago, so hearing from one of them is surprising. The message says could you come over, please, I need you, it is an emergency—the formality of her tone and the reason I’ve stopped seeing them is a story for another time, it isn’t worth the tangent. I get to her house, which is surrounded by other houses in a suburb that looks like it’s from another world. They’re immense houses with huge windows and both private and shared pools. I ring the doorbell and am greeted by a woman in a white uniform who says the lady asks that you wait on the porch. I walk over to the porch, and the desolation of the immense place brings me to tears, then I make out a sign next to a pool this house shares with others that says entrance prohibited to maids, chauffeurs, and nannies. I feel a heave I cannot contain and run to the pool and vomit into it. I watch my bile dirty the fake blue; more crust now floating in a pool. I wipe my mouth and say, what the hell am I doing here, I’m leaving! But that’s when my friend comes out; though emaciated, her elegance remains intact. I sit at her side and behind her appears the nanny wearing a uniform with little bears holding the hand of her youngest son, both move away while she pulls out her vape and says help me, and I say of course I’ll help you. She says I’m pregnant, I need an abortion, no one else will help me, it isn’t my husband’s, I fell in love, and she tries to explain a twisted story with a gym trainer that I can’t follow and that starts to make me nauseous again. I feel the deadly anguish in this woman and think to myself, I don’t recognize her, but I adore her, and I think maybe we got pregnant on the same day, and I tell her of course I’ll help you, and I send a few messages, and the next morning I pick her up and take her to a clinic in the middle of the city. We walk in holding hands and she says never, please, never tell anyone about this. I tell her no worries and watch her fill out forms and answer questions posed by a doctor who has also treated me and who has a shiny tooth. I wait for a couple hours until the procedure—that’s what the nurse calls it—is over. In the waiting room painting there’s a Virgin holding a boy in her arms, the Virgin is looking at him and crying, and that image, again, makes me nauseous, and I say out loud that face reminds me of someone, and I keep trying to figure it out, trying to decipher the association until it comes to me and in that moment the doctor says discharge is at five, everything went well, come back for her. I return in the afternoon and in the car, on the way back to her house, she tries to give an explanation, I tell her it’s fine, I’ve gone through this too, you’ll bleed for a few days and then you’ll feel better, but she knows the matter is more complicated and asks how can I repay you, you saved my life, and I answer I’m getting a divorce and going on a trip, if I need something I’ll write you, and she insists, of course, I have friends in Spain, and she tells me about hotels, vacations, and offers random things. But before that, before that tedious moment, we reminisced about our high school days, we talked about our friends, and she says she always thinks about my brother, and this confession fills me with a strange feeling, something like gratitude. We get to her house and say goodbye with a long hug, both with tears in our eyes, and I tell her to rest up, and she gets out. And then boom, reality, the Virgin, the face, again the nausea. I can’t have a baby, and I can’t have an abortion.