“Yes!” Abby said. “Exactly!” She pulled her knees up to her chest. “Except I’m not qualified to do any of that, except the biking. I can lead rides. But I thought maybe—I mean, I’ve got friends who are teachers, or therapists. I could find people—professionals, people with training—who work with girls. And I know it sounds ridiculous, about Planned Parenthood, but maybe there’d be some way to, you know, quietly spread the word, so that girls who needed to go there…” Abby closed her eyes. “It’s stupid.”
“No,” said Lizzie. “It’s not stupid at all. It’s actually sadly necessary. And kind of great.” Lizzie set Grover on the floor and got to her feet. She held her arms out, and Abby stood, and let her friend hug her. “My little girl is all grown up,” Lizzie said, and started humming “Sunrise, Sunset” as Abby giggled.
“Will you help me?” she asked.
Lizzie nodded. “You should talk to Neighborhood Bike Works.” Abby knew the group taught kids in low-income neighborhoods how to build bikes from donated parts and let them keep the bikes they’d built. She raked her hands through her hair, still thinking. “And as for the other part, the detour to Planned Parenthood part… if women in the 1950s and 1960s figured out how to spread the word about who to call and where to go, I don’t think your idea is crazy at all.”
“So you think it could work?”
“You’ll never know unless you try.”
And I’m going to hate myself if I don’t, Abby realized. She thought about Morgan, about how scared Morgan must have been, how alone she must have felt, even in the group, and the courage it must have taken her to tell Andy her secret. The Breakaway women had helped Morgan when Morgan needed help, and Lizzie had saved Abby, when Abby had been a girl in need of saving. There were other Morgans and other Abbys out there; a world full of girls and young women who needed friendship or support or skills or reliable contraception, and not enough people who’d risk their own comfort to help them. Someone had to take the risk. Why not Abby? Being a single lady could work to her advantage. If she ended up in jail, she wouldn’t be leaving a husband and children behind.
“You look like you’ve come to a conclusion,” Lizzie had said.
“I think I have,” Abby said. “I still have to talk to Eileen.”
“Into the lion’s den!” Lizzie cheered. “Do you have a will?”
“No,” Abby said. “If she kills me, you can have everything. Just get rid of anything embarrassing before Eileen goes to clean out my apartment.”
“Done and done,” Lizzie said, and gave her a hug, for good luck.
* * *
Abby spent Rosh Hashanah with her father, listening to him chant the prayers and deliver a sermon on tolerance and loving one’s neighbor in a practical, not merely theoretical, way.
The morning of Yom Kippur Abby went to Eileen’s synagogue. “You look wonderful,” Eileen said when Abby met her outside the sanctuary. Other congregants were streaming into the building. Some wore white, to resemble the angels, with canvas sneakers on their feet, obeying the edict about not wearing leather or animal products on the holiest day of the year. Eileen wore a chic black suit and red-soled black stilettos. She held Abby’s shoulders lightly and looked her up and down. Abby had always hated when her mother inspected her. It was like being appraised by a scale with a face, a machine-human hybrid that could tell her down to the ounce what she weighed, and whether it was more or less than what she’d weighed the last time she’d come home. Eileen had pursed her lips. “You look…”
Don’t say it don’t say it don’t say it, Abby thought.
“… healthy,” Eileen finally concluded. Which was, of course, code for thinner, but at least indicated that she was trying not to actively offend. They’d gone inside together, just the two of them. Marni was with her in-laws in New Jersey, and Simon had told her he was going to shul in New York City, although Abby had her doubts.
Abby stood with the rest of the congregants when the young female rabbi chanted the vidui, the collective confession, an alphabetical list of sins, all acknowledged in the first-person plural, because, according to Jewish tradition, every single person has fallen short of Divine perfection. The congregation chanted together.
We have trespassed
We have betrayed
We have stolen
We have slandered
We have caused others to sin
Abby found herself thinking of Morgan, how she and Eileen had helped Morgan lie to her mother. That, thank God, had worked out in the end. A week after the trip had ended, Lily had sent Abby an email, expressing regret that she hadn’t gotten to say goodbye in person, thanking her for keeping Morgan safe, for making sure Morgan hadn’t been alone.
I wish I could have been there myself, but I understand why she felt she couldn’t tell me (and I know that part of growing up means finding other adults in whom you can confide). I am thankful that Morgan had friends and other adults around her. She is healthy and well and enjoying her junior year of high school.
We have turned away
We have ignored our responsibilities
We have been perverse
We have acted wantonly
Abby looked at her mother. Eileen’s eyes were tightly closed. She was thumping one fist gently on her chest with each line of the prayer. Abby wondered what her mother was thinking, if any of this had any meaning to her, or if the High Holidays were just an excuse to show off a new outfit while surrounding herself with people who were also not eating. Then she scolded herself for not even making it to sundown without being judgmental and unkind. Do better, Abby told herself. Try harder. Even if Eileen doesn’t make it easy.
We have caused suffering
We have been stubborn
We have refused to see Hashem’s hand
We have rebelled
We have incited
We have sinned
We have strayed
On Yom Kippur, observant Jews confessed in public. They were also charged with personally asking forgiveness of people they had hurt. Abby knew what she needed to do. Just get it over with, Abby thought. When services were over, she went back home with her mother and said, “How can I help?”
“Come with me,” Eileen said, and Abby followed her into the kitchen, where every appliance and countertop gleamed. A white box with “apple cake” written on top stood on the cake stand. A paper bag full of bagels waited on the counter, breathing their warm, yeasty scent into the air.
Eileen began pulling vegetables and packets of smoked fish out of the refrigerator. Abby got a serrated knife, a cutting board, and the white porcelain platter her mother always used. The bagels were still warm, springy on the outside, pillowy in the middle. How many years had Abby laid out platters of bagels and watched her mother take a single half and eviscerate it, pulling out the soft white guts, filling it with vegetables and the tiniest dab of cream cheese?
Abby climbed onto a stool at the breakfast bar and got to work. Eileen went to the counter to select a knife, then walked the long way around the island before pulling a chopping board out of the drawer. Never sit when you can stand, never stand when you can walk, never hold still when you can be moving was one of Eileen’s mantras. She’d walk from the laundry room to her bedroom a dozen times, carrying a single piece of clothing with each trip, and at the mall or the supermarket, she would park as far as she could from the entrance, the better to sneak in a few extra steps.
Stop judging, Abby told herself as Eileen started slicing a cucumber into thin rounds. Her mom had changed into a simple linen shift. Abby saw, with a little amusement, the tan lines that her cycling shorts had left beneath the hem of her dress. And stop putting it off.
“The last day of the trip was interesting,” Eileen said, before Abby could begin. She finished up the cucumbers, arranged them neatly on the platter, and started in on the red onion. “Everyone asked where you’d gone. And Sebastian looked miserable.” Eileen paused, looking at Abby carefully. Abby stayed quiet, working hard to keep her face expressionless.
“And,” Eileen continued, “it turns out that Ted is married to Lou, and Ed is married to Sue.”
Abby felt her eyes get wide. “Wait, what?”
“They swap,” Eileen said, with a smug-looking smile. “On the bike trips. They told us all at brunch, before we went back. They say it keeps things fresh and exciting.”