Precautions
Elly didn’t have Japanese 301 Wednesday morning. That meant she didn’t have to be at school until two o’clock to teach her Japanese 101 class. The success of her plan depended on one other variable. At breakfast she said to Melanie, “There’s something I have to take care of in Salt Lake. I was wondering—”
“Need the car?”
“Only for a few hours.”
Melanie mulled over the request. “Nope, my schedule’s open.” She got the keys and tossed them to Elly. “Going to see Kevin?” She grinned.
“Who?” and then, “No,” with a how-could-you-think-that expression.
“I should be back before noon.” She grabbed her backpack and left with a
“See you later.”
“Alligator,” Melanie replied.
Elly didn’t volunteer an explanation because she didn’t want to lie, and no way was she going to tell the truth. She blamed that kid Kevin, the RM from Two Cats, Nebraska. And she blamed Melanie. If you really want to go where no man has gone before, you can always get pregnant.
The possibility hadn’t occurred to her before. Now it occurred to her like crazy. She had no desire to test Mormon belief in immaculate conception. Not when her father was a mission president, her grandfather was a General Authority, and her uncle taught at BYU.
The night before at the library, she’d Googled “birth control” and got back fifteen zillion hits. Good grief. She eventually ended up on the Planned
Parenthood website. But even narrowed down, there was more information on the subject than she knew existed. Starting with: “Eighty-five percent of women who don’t use a contraceptive during intercourse become pregnant each year.” Well. That ratcheted up the fear factor. Though she couldn’t help wondering, What’s the pregnancy rate for intercourse that takes place in an alternate universe?
Still, she reasoned, since she only imagined she was having sex, couldn’t she imagine she was using a contraceptive? Except that she couldn’t shake the distant but vivid memory of Girl’s Camp and the snapshot that almost ruined her life. She wouldn’t be so lucky twice. Better safe than sorry. Never had she imagined, not in a billion years, that she’d visit Planned
Parenthood. But she sure as hell wasn’t going to the BYU Health Clinic. She set up the appointment from a payphone. Drug dealers must feel like this. Calling Salt Lake was long distance and she didn’t want it showing up on the phone bill. The part she’d dreaded most was borrowing Melanie’s car. She could take the bus, but worried about making it back to Provo on time.
The hard part turned out to be the easiest.
The clinic was located two blocks east of Trolley Square. Elly drove around the block, reconnoitering the scene of the crime. Planned Parenthood wasn’t on anybody’s evil-protesting radar screens that morning. Mormons were not by nature the protesting type, and the official Church position on birth control was one of those things everybody was sure about but nobody could articulate. The refrain, “It’s between you and the Lord,” covered a lot of ground.
If the Lord wanted different, He would have done something about her dreams.
She drove back to Trolley Square and returned to the clinic on foot. No hesitating, no second thoughts—she walked in as if she worked there.
And discovered that a waiting room is a waiting room. “I’d like to get a prescription for birth control pills,” she told the receptionist, who responded so nonchalantly Elly almost expected her to say, “You want fries with that?” She handed Elly a consent form to sign and a medical history to fill out.
Elly found a seat. She dug a pen out of her backpack and adjusted the forms on the clipboard. Did she smoke? No. Did she have high blood pressure, angina, or heart disease? No. Ever had a stroke? No. A bleeding or blood-clotting disorder? Breast, uterine, or any other hormone-related cancer? Liver disease or a history of jaundice? Abnormal vaginal bleeding? Migraines? Asthma? Seizures or epilepsy? No, No, No, No, No, No, No.
Checking off all those boxes made her feel much better about the state of her own health. She signed and returned the forms. The nurse escorted her to an examination room. Height, weight, blood pressure, temperature. More questions: Diabetes? No. Surgeries? Just wisdom teeth. Ever been pregnant? No. Any sexually transmitted diseases? Definitely No. (She left out the “definitely.”)
The nurse made the necessary notations and said, “Doctor Starley will be with you presently.”
Elly sat on the examination table, trying not to crinkle the white paper. The door opened and the doctor walked in. A woman, and how she was grateful for that.
“Elaine Packard? I’m Doctor Starley. Mary, if you wish. Now, you said you’d like to get a prescription for birth control pills. Have you ever used contraceptives before?”
“No.”
“Are you sexually active?”
“Not yet,” was the answer that came out.
Mary smiled.
I have BYU written all over my face, Elly thought. And suddenly she was on the verge of bursting into laughter. What was she thinking? That she was going to get pregnant from a dream? How dumb was that? So what was she doing here? What am I doing here?
Dr. Starley said, “You know that oral contraceptives don’t prevent sexually transmitted diseases?”
“It’s to keep from getting pregnant.” She hardly hesitated a beat. “I’m getting married.”
“Congratulations.” Mary handed Elly a pamphlet that described the hormones used in oral contraceptives, dosages and regimens, and ranked the common brands. In the end, they decided on Yasmin.
Mary opened a drawer and retrieved a sample blister-pack, four rows of seven tablets. “Take the first pink pill the Sunday after your period begins. The last row of white pills you take during menstruation.”
“They’re placebos, right?”
“Yes. Try it for two months and see how you react, menstrual flow, tenderness in the breasts, and any other side effects. It takes about two months for the body to adjust to the hormone levels in an oral contraceptive. I can give you a one-month prescription. You’ll have to get a pap smear before getting it refilled.”
“Thanks,” Elly said. “I will.”
At the back of her mind—perhaps because of the association with female reproduction—she had made a connection between Planned Parenthood and Relief Society. The difference was, Planned Parenthood only cared about Elaine Packard, here and now. Nothing else. Her soul was her own business. And so the unexpected answer came to her in this atmosphere of nonjudgmental amity, so casually that at first she thought she was lying. But she knew she couldn’t lie that glibly.
An hour ago, she couldn’t have explained what she was doing there. Now she knew exactly what she was doing there, and for that she was truly and deeply grateful.
“You’re welcome,” said Dr. Mary Starley.
Elly arrived back in Provo a little after eleven. The entire adventure had taken less than three hours. In her room, she took the cellophanewrapped box out of the white plastic bag. Begin the Sunday after her period started—the Sunday after next. They’d get married in August then.
Connor spent Thursday morning at the library. He didn’t go home for lunch. He ate at the Cougareat, something he rarely did. He didn’t see Elly. Afterward he went up to the mezzanine. She wasn’t there either.
He paced the walkway, watching the summer camp kids mill about the courtyard. I didn’t cause this, he said to himself again. I didn’t do anything wrong.
But you always leave. As if leaving was all his fault. As if they were doing something wrong.
But it was wrong. Dammit, now he was contradicting himself. He got up and walked down the steps and across the Quad to the JKHB. He had to get to work. Besides, he knew a better place to wait.
In so many words, Darlene said she’d had a change of heart. Elly wasn’t convinced, but she couldn’t resist the call to redeem the prodigal. Maybe Darlene had multiplied a 2.0 times a four-hour class and didn’t like what the arithmetic told her. Whatever the reason, she was eager for extra credit. And that meant more work for Elly.
So now Darlene and Bradley followed her down to the basement of the JKHB. Bradley was asking her why the continuative form of iku wasn’t “going,” as in, “I’m going to the store.” She was letting him talk because her answer was: Just because. It was difficult keeping a chapter ahead of the class when some of her students kept racing to the end of the book.
They filed into the TA office. Someone was sitting at the carrel in her cubicle. It was Connor McKenzie. “What are you doing here?” she asked in Japanese. Tomoko peered over her carrel. Elly realized that this was the one place where Japanese provided no more privacy than English.
Connor answered in Japanese, “I wanted to talk.”
“So call me.”
“You’re not in the book.”
The student directory, he meant. She said to Bradley and Darlene (in English), “This won’t take long,” and walked out.
He caught up with her in the hallway. “Hey,” he said.
“Not here.” She shook her arm free.
He let go as if he’d grasped a hot iron. He followed her up the stairs, out the doors into the hot sunlight.
“So, talk.” She continued down the sidewalk to the triangle of lawn at the north end of the Quad, pulling him along in a wake of repressed fury. “Look, I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on, okay?”
“What is there to figure out?”
“What’s not to figure out? You think this is normal?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“The other day, it sounded a whole lot like you were blaming me.”
“I wasn’t blaming you.”
“Do you want me to leave? Put enough distance between us—”
“I didn’t say that. That isn’t what I want.”
“Then what are you saying? What do you want?”
“I don’t want you to leave me.” She spoke with enough emphasis to attract the attention of passers-by.
Connor leaned in close, an effort to create a small sphere of privacy between them. “I’ve never even dated you, so how can I leave you?”
“You every time. You leave me every time.”
Now her meaning was obvious. He flushed and stepped back. “What alternatives are there? Don’t you want this to stop?”
The silence that ensued betrayed a mutual uncertainty about the honest answer to that question. Elly said, “It’s not about stopping anything. It’s about what you are trying to prevent.”
“You know—”
“I don’t know, Connor. Whatever is happening between us can’t be undone. I have to know what comes next.” She came close to shouting at him.
“You must have given that question future some consideration.” The look on his face made it clear he didn’t have a clue. “Forget it,” she said, pushing him away from her. “Just forget it.”
He stood there, a statue rooted in the green grass.
She stopped in the lavatory before going back into the TA office. She splashed cold water on her face and stared at herself in the mirror. She reached deep down in her gut and found the anger. At him. It wiped away the confusion, smothered the pain. There, that’s better.
Now back to work. Darlene and Bradley were waiting.
Brilliant job, genius, Connor told himself. Two steps forward, a thousand miles back. What did she want? And how in the world was he supposed to give it to her?
Yeah, you’re giving it to her, Billy Bragg’s alter-ego barged in. Shut up.
But wasn’t that exactly the point? How could he leave her? They had never been together. What did she think this was, an arranged marriage?
The girl he’d pretended to be in love with Winter semester—Julie— when he figured out that a bunch of warm feelings didn’t mean he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, he’d ended up in Osaka. Maybe love could conquer all, but it could also fool him pretty good. Get far enough away and he realized that. But running away wasn’t the right solution this time around.
He headed back to the JKHB, praying that his schedule would be booked. Or at least busy enough to keep Alicia off his case.