Ohio Legislature Votes to Restrict Abortion Rights, Michigan State Advisory on Women’s Reproductive Rights Drafts Resolution, US Supreme Court Ruling Jeopardizes Roe v. Wade?—but there was a grainy picture of our embarrassed-looking father in graduation cap, gown, hood above the caption Controversial Abortion Rights Advocate U-M Alum Voorhees Receives Honorary Doctorate, Public Service, U-M Commencement.
On a shelf was an upright glass rectangle commemorating an award to Dr. Gus Voorhees from the National Abortion Rights Action league, in 1992; on another shelf, partly hidden by a stack of pamphlets, a brass medallion issued by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, 1995.
Of our father’s public, professional life we knew little. While he was alive we were sheltered in a kind of benign ignorance.
You could see that in the outer wall of our father’s office there had been a single window at one time, now bricked over. You realized that windows would have left the interior of the Center and the individuals within vulnerable to attacks from outside.
“We’ll just wait here for a few minutes. We can shut the door.”
Our father spoke expansively, like one who is about to clap his hands together.
As if he wasn’t angry with our mother but only just relieved that we were all safe—and that the crisis was over—he seized our mother’s hand, and kissed it playfully; it was like him to squeeze our hands, our arms, run his fingers through our hair, stoop to brush his lips against our cheeks, to demonstrate that he loved us, and that we were his. Such gestures of fatherly affection were purely physical, instinctive.
Gus Voorhees was tall, imposing. He was thick-bodied, square-built, solid. His hair that had once been a warm gingery-brown (like the soft fuzz of Naomi’s teddy bear) was mostly gray and his short, wiry beard was a lighter shade of gray as if it were the beard of another man. The corners of his eyes were deeply creased from smiling, squinting, grimacing. In his forehead were odd, vertical lines and both his cheeks were lightly pitted, roughened. He had a look of being used, battered like a man who isn’t young, and has not the expectations of youth; a man you might trust, who would be kind to you.
Not at all accusingly, only inquisitively, with a clenched smile our father asked our mother why she’d come to the Center, instead of meeting him at the lake as they’d planned; and our mother said, just slightly on edge, “Why did I come here? It’s a public place, isn’t it? Why should I not come here?” and our father said, keeping his voice even, and still holding our mother’s hand, that seemed about to escape from his, “Well. Sometimes things happen here that are unexpected. Like today.”
“But today was unusual, I think?”—our mother asked; and our father said, “Yes. Today was unusual. That is so.”
And then, after a pause: “You might have called first, Jenna.”
“Yes! I might have called.”
It was not clear if our mother spoke repentantly, or defiantly. She seemed about to say more, but did not.
“It’s just that, this is a place where things might happen that are unexpected. Not often, in fact rarely, but—the unexpected can happen here. As it did today.”
In the adult faces was a fever of excitement, as if each had caught the other in subterfuge. We children might not have been present, each of our parents was so captivated by the other, and by what the other might say.
“I wanted the children to see where you work, I think. I want them to be properly proud of you, as I am.”
“Are you being sarcastic, darling?”
“No! My God, no.”
Our mother laughed, uneasily. Our father was kneading her hand, the delicate bones of the back of her hand, harder than he meant to do, so that she pulled away from him, but not emphatically enough to free her hand.
There was a sexual heat between them, the strain of things not-said, and the strain of playing out a scene in front of (child) witnesses.
Speaking carefully our mother was explaining why we’d come to St. Croix instead of driving to The Cove: there’d been the “domestic crisis” of the station wagon and the five-months expired sticker. Like a TV Mom she laughed, baring her teeth. “Your sharp-eyed son discovered it—fortunately. He thinks I might have been arrested.”
Darren protested, “I didn’t say that.”
“Five months expired! Christ. Good for you, Darren.”
Darren shifted his shoulders uncomfortably as if he thought our father might be teasing him. Slyly I said, “You did say Mom might be arrested. I heard you.”
“I did not.”
In her subdued voice, in her chastised voice, our mother was telling our father that if he thought it was a better idea, he should remain at the Center, and not trouble to take us to lunch. “It’s been upsetting here. Even a false alarm is upsetting. You might want to assure your staff . . .”