Plan a, p.32
Plan A, page 32
39
On a morning in the latter part of May, I drive Mr. Smiley over to Lorenzo’s place, a small studio apartment above the Beach Bum, a burger bar where, day or night, you always smell frying meat and onion rings. I knock. When Lorenzo answers, I step inside, and he pulls me close, and we kiss. It’s only kissing for now, because I have to study, and he’s got to be at the clinic before it opens. Still, I grab his butt a good one.
I sling my backpack down. I sink into his couch, which is as saggy as the back of an old horse. And then I spot it.
“Is that a ukulele?”
“Didn’t I tell you I played?”
“No.” I smile. I’m still finding out so much about him.
He’s rushing around. He grabs the keys to the Triumph, and his own pack, and then remembers his water bottle. He hurries to the sink to fill it up.
“Okay,” he says. “Keep the place warm for me.”
It’s a joke. The place is always warm. You have to keep that one window open all the time, and even though he also runs a fan, it’s better to hang out here with as few clothes on as possible; don’t ask me how I know.
“Wait. Your vest,” I say. It’s hanging over a kitchen chair—a rainbow vest, with the words Clinic Escort on the front. This is what he wears on Saturdays, on the days he isn’t working at Rockaway Auto Supply and Repair. On weekdays he’s in class at Tillamook Bay Community College, studying things like airway management and trauma assessment and what medication to administer when.
“Ah, thanks!” he cries. He snatches it, then gives me a quick kiss. “Abortion road trip love story,” he says.
“Abortion road trip love story,” I say back.
I say the word: abortion. That’s what I do now, say it. Me, I’m strong by getting through what I got through, and I’m fierce by enduring. Lorenzo, he’s strong by putting that vest on, and he’s fierce by walking beside the women as they go through the doors of the Tillamook clinic.
I lean out the window to wave goodbye to Lorenzo.
“Hey, boyfriend,” I shout.
“Stop being so gorgeous,” he shouts back.
I was wrong, so wrong, about prefaces and prologues, and that’s the problem with easy opinions—you can be wrong until you know more. It’s impossible to understand the whole story, any story, without knowing the beginning before the beginning, without acknowledging the long, buried roots that have led us here, held us here. Outside on the street below me, I see a family emerge from Rae’s Waffle Hut after a Saturday morning breakfast. A mom and a dad, a grandma, two daughters, one son. Three middle-aged women go inside, too. A car parks, and several young couples pile out. I count. One, two, three, four. See those women? And those and those? Her and her and her and maybe even him. I imagine their mothers and their grandmothers and their great-grandmothers. Her and her and her and her, in Paris or Paris, Rome or Rome, Florence or Florence, big city or small, across every continent over the world, and across the generations. Layer upon layer, unspoken stories embedded in earth, embedded in the layers of our body, gone and not gone. Her and her, facing other people’s will, facing commands of Here’s what you will do and saying, I get to choose. I do. Saying, Even if I have to do it unlawfully, even if I have to do it in shame and in secret, I do. Saying, I have to, or I can’t, no matter what you think of me or what happens next.
Her and her and her, staying silent and holding secrets, or quietly whispering, or loudly shouting. Saying it, the last unspoken word, abortion, or doing what I am doing now, after I’ve moved away from the window—writing it down right here for you, Ms. La Costa. Why history matters. You said it could be however long it needs to be, and it needs to be long. Very long. Four hundred and two pages long. Thirty-nine chapters.
There’s something new in the apartment, or maybe I just haven’t noticed it before. It’s Lorenzo’s passport, twin to mine propped on his bookshelf, a record of all the places we’ve been so far. The places I’ve been so far—despair and fury and wonder and awe, bliss and the Pillars of Rome. I am the one and only Ivy DeVries, but I am also Betty, and Tess, and Esilda, and Olivia Kneeley, even. I am the women on the branches of my tree; I am the women outside that window, as I write this story.
As I write my story, a real one, not something from the movies with clear villains and heroes. It’s a complicated story, with pain and shame, with support and love, with both hard decisions and hope, where the plotline has struggle, but also peace and relief. No wonder it’s long and heavy, and why it’s taken me forever to set it down here, on my mom’s secondhand, thirdhand laptop with the Arcade Fire sticker on it. It’s the secret story of so many people, whether we know it or not, one, two, three, four. An old, old and ongoing story, with a foreword and an explanatory note. With a preface and a prologue and an introduction to the 109th edition.
Acknowledgments
I’m incredibly grateful, as ever, to two cherished people: my agent and friend, Michael Bourret, and my editor and friend, Liesa Abrams. There are just not enough words of love and thanks for you both, and I appreciate you every single day. My sincerest and heartfelt thanks also go to Emily Harburg, Rebecca Vitkus, Barbara Bakowski, Angela Carlino, Liz Dresner, Megan Shortt, Shannon Pender, and Sarah Lawrenson, as well as the entire RHCB marketing group, the school and library team (with special gratitude to Adrienne Waintraub, Katie Halata, and Erica Stone), our sales force, our entire production and supply chain, and, truly, the whole remarkable group of people at Random House Children’s Books/Labyrinth Road, led by Barbara Marcus. I’m so abundantly fortunate that all of you have shared your talent and your time and your hearts with me.
Readers, librarians, teachers, booksellers, reviewers: We’ve been doing this together for over twenty years now, and I am so honored that you’ve held and shared my words with such affection and thoughtfulness. I’m deeply grateful for each one of you. Extra thanks to the early, enthusiastic librarian readers of Plan A: Laura Lutz and Danielle Jones-Cartwright.
So very much love and thanks to my parents and my sister: Evie Caletti, Paul and Jan Caletti, Sue Rath—your support and enthusiasm for my books (and for me!) over all these years has meant more than I can ever, ever express. Endless and forever love to my husband, John; to my beloved sunshines, Sam and Nick and Erin and Pat and Myla; and to the little joys of my heart, Charlie and Theo and Riley. You are the light and the meaning, the humor and the sparkle, the all and the everything.
What’s next on
your reading list?
Discover your next
great read!
Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.
Sign up now.
_145068698_
Deb Caletti, Plan A
