Fancy Pants (29 page)
The car started after only three attempts, which was nearly a record.
She backed around and headed out of the parking lot. A glance at the
rearview mirror showed pale skin, dull hair snared at the back of her
neck with a rubber band, and a red-rimmed nose from the latest in a
series of head colds. Her car coat was too big for her, and she had
neither the money nor the energy to improve her appearance. At least
she didn't have to fend off many advances from the male staff members.
There had been few successes for her these past six weeks, but many
disasters. One of the worst had occurred the day before Thanksgiving
when Clare had discovered she was sleeping on the station couch and
screamed at her in front of everyone until Francesca's cheeks burned
with humiliation. Now she and Beast lived in a bedroom-kitchen
combination over a garage in Sulphur City. It was drafty and badly
furnished with discarded furniture and a lumpy twin bed, but the rent
was cheap and she could pay it by the week, so she tried to feel
grateful for every ugly inch of it. She had also gained the use of the
station's Dodge Dart, although Clare made her pay for gas even when
someone else took the car. It was an exhausting, hand-to-mouth
existence, with no room for financial emergencies, no room for personal
emergencies, and no—absolutely no—room for an unwanted pregnancy.
Her fists tightened on the steering wheel. By doing without almost
everything, she had managed to save the one hundred and fifty dollars
the San Antonio abortion clinic would charge her to get rid of Dallie
Beaudine's baby. She refused to let herself think of the ramifications
of her decision; she was simply too poor and too desperate to consider
the morality of the act. After her appointment on Saturday, she would
have averted one more disaster. That was all the introspection she
allowed herself.
She finished running her errands in little more than an hour and
returned to the station, only to have
Clare yell at her for having gone
off without washing her office windows first.
The following Saturday she got up at dawn and made the two-hour drive
to San Antonio. The waiting room of the abortion clinic was sparsely
furnished but clean. She sat down on a molded plastic chair, her hands
clutching her black canvas shoulder bag, her legs pressed tightly
together as if they were unconsciously trying to protect the small
piece of protoplasm that would soon be taken from her body. The room
held three other women. Two were Mexican and one was a worn-out blonde
with an acned face and hopeless eyes. All of them were poor.
A middle-aged, Spanish-looking woman in a neat white blouse and dark
skirt appeared at the door and called her name. "Francesca, I'm Mrs.
Garcia," she said in lightly accented English. "Would you come with me,
please?"
Francesca numbly followed her into a small office paneled in fake
mahogany. Mrs. Garcia took a seat behind her desk and invited Francesca
to sit in another molded plastic chair, differing only in color from
the one in the waiting room.
The woman was friendly and efficient as she went over the forms for
Francesca to sign. Then she explained the procedure that would take
place in one of the surgical rooms down the hall. Francesca bit down on
the inside of her lip and tried not to listen too closely. Mrs. Garcia
spoke slowly and calmly, always using the word "tissue," never "fetus."
Francesca felt a detached sense of gratitude. Ever since
she had realized she was pregnant, she had refused to personify the
unwelcome visitor lodged in her womb. She refused to connect it in her
mind to that night in a Louisiana swamp. Her life had been pared down
to the bone—to the marrow —and there was no room for sentiment, no room
to build falsely romantic pictures of chubby pink cheeks and soft curly
hair, no need ever to use the word "baby," not even in her thoughts.
Mrs. Garcia began to speak of "vacuum aspiration," and Francesca
thought of the old Hoover she pushed around the radio station carpet
every evening.
"Do you have any questions?"
She shook her head. The faces of the three sad women in the waiting
room seemed implanted in her mind—women with no future, no hope. Mrs.
Garcia slid a booklet across the metal desktop. "This pamphlet contains
information on birth control that you should read before you have
intercourse again."
Again? The memory of Dallie's deep, hot kisses rushed back to her, but
the intimate caresses that had once set her senses aflame now seemed to
have happened to someone else. She couldn't imagine ever feeling that
good again.
"I can't have this—this tissue," Francesca said abruptly, interrupting
the woman in midsentence as she showed her a diagram of the female
reproductive organs.
Mrs. Garcia stopped what she was saying and inclined her head to
listen, obviously accustomed to hearing the most private revelations
pass across her desk.
Francesca knew she had no need to justify her actions, but she couldn't
seem to stop the flow of words. "Don't you see that it's impossible?"
Her fists clenched into knots in her lap. "I'm not a horrible person.
I'm not unfeeling. But I can barely take care of myself and a walleyed
cat."
The woman gazed at her sympathetically. "Of course you're not
unfeeling, Francesca. It's your body,
and only you can decide what's
best."
"I've made up my mind," she replied, her tone as angry as if the woman
had argued with her. "I don't have a husband or money. I'm barely
hanging on to a job working for a boss who hates me. I don't even have
any way to pay my medical bills."
"I understand. It's difficult—"
"You don't understand!" Francesca leaned forward, her eyes dry and
furious, each word coming out like
a hard, crisp pellet. "All my life
I've lived off other people, but I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm
going to make something of myself!"
"I think your ambition is admirable. You're obviously a competent
young—"
Again Francesca pushed aside her sympathy, trying to explain to Mrs.
Garcia—trying to explain to herself—what had brought her to this red
brick abortion clinic in the poorest part of San Antonio. The room was
warm, but she hugged herself as if she felt a chill. "Have you ever
seen those pictures people put together on black velvet with little
nails and different colored strings—pictures of bridges and
butterflies, things like that?" Mrs. Garcia nodded. Francesca gazed at
the fake mahogany paneling without seeing it. "I have one of those
awful pictures fastened to the wall, right above my bed, this terrible
pink and orange string picture of a guitar."
"I don't quite see—"
"How can someone bring a baby into the world when she lives in a place
with a string picture of a guitar on the wall? What kind of mother
would deliberately expose a helpless little baby to something so ugly?"
Baby. She'd said the word. Twice she'd said it. A painful press of
tears pricked at the backs of her eyelids but she refused to shed them.
In the past year, she'd cried enough spoiled, self-indulgent tears to
last a lifetime, and she wasn't going to cry any more.
"You know, Francesca, an abortion doesn't have to be the end of the
world. In the future, the circumstances may be different for you . . .
the time more convenient."
Her final word seemed to hang in the air. Francesca slumped back in the
chair, all the anger drained out
of her. Was that what a human life
came down to, she wondered, a matter of convenience? It was
inconvenient for her to have a baby right now, so she would simply do
away with it? She looked up at Mrs. Garcia. "My friends in London used
to schedule their abortions so they wouldn't miss any balls or parties."
For the first time Mrs. Garcia visibly bristled. "The women who come
here aren't worried about missing
a party, Francesca. They're
fifteen-year-olds with their whole lives in front of them, or married
women who already have too many children and absent husbands. They're
women without jobs and without any hope of getting work."
But she wasn't like them, Francesca told herself. She wasn't helpless
and broken anymore. These past few months she had proven that. She'd
scrubbed toilets, endured abuse, fed and sheltered herself on next to
nothing. Most people would have crumbled, but she hadn't. She had
survived.
It was a new, tantalizing view of herself. She sat straighter in the
chair, her fists gradually easing open in her lap. Mrs. Garcia spoke
hesitantly. "Your life seems rather precarious at the moment."
Francesca thought of Clare, of the ugly rooms above the garage, of the
string guitar, of her inability to call Dallie for help, even when she
desperately needed it. "It is precarious," she agreed. Leaning over,
she picked up her canvas shoulder bag. Then she rose from her chair.
The impulsive, optimistic part of her that she thought had died months
before seemed to have taken over her feet, seemed to be forcing her to
do something that could only lead to disaster, something illogical,
foolish. .. .
Something wonderful.
"May I have my money back, please, Mrs. Garcia? Take out whatever you
need to cover your time today."
Mrs. Garcia looked worried. "Are you sure about your decision,
Francesca? You're already ten weeks pregnant. You don't have much more
time to undergo a safe abortion. Are you absolutely sure?"
Francesca had never been less sure of anything in her life, but she
nodded.
She broke into a little run as she left the abortion clinic, and then a
skip to cover the last few feet to the Dart. Her mouth curved in a
smile. Of all the stupid things she had ever done in her life, this was
the stupidest. Her smile grew wider. Dallie had been absolutely right
about her—she didn't have a single ounce of common sense. She was
poorer than a church mouse, badly educated, and living every minute on
the
cutting edge of disaster. But right now, at this very moment, none of
that mattered, because some things in life were more important than
common sense.
Francesca Serritella Day had lost most of her dignity and all of her
pride. She wasn't going to lose her baby.
next few months. With her back pressed to the wall, a gun pointed to
her forehead, a time bomb ticking in her womb, she learned that she was
quite intelligent. She grasped new ideas easily, retained what she
learned, and having had so few academic prejudices imposed upon her by
teachers, never let preconceived notions limit her thinking. With her
first months of pregnancy behind her, she also discovered a seemingly
endless capacity for
hard work, which she began taking advantage of by
laboring far into the night, reading newspapers and broadcasting
magazines, listening to tapes, and getting ready to take a small step
up in the world.
"Do you have a minute, Clare?" she asked, sticking her head into the
record library, a small tape cassette pressed into the damp palm of her
hand. Clare was leafing through one of the Billboard reference books
and didn't bother to look up.
The record library was actually nothing more than a large closet with
albums lining the shelves, strips of colored tape affixed to their
spines to indicate whether they fell into the category of male
vocalists, female vocalists, or groups. Francesca had intentionally
chosen the location because it was neutral territory, and she didn't
want to give Clare the added advantage of being able to sit like God
behind her desk while she
decided the fate of the supplicant in the budget seat opposite her.
"I have all day," Clare replied sarcastically, as she continued to flip
through the book. "As a matter of fact, I've been sitting in here for
hours just twiddling my thumbs and waiting for someone to interrupt me."
It wasn't the most auspicious beginning, but Francesca ignored Clare's
sarcasm and positioned herself in the center of the doorway. She was
wearing the newest item in her wardrobe: a man's gray sweat shirt that
hung in baggy folds past her hips. Out of sight beneath it, her jeans
were unfastened and unzipped, held together with a piece of cord
crudely sewn across the placket. Francesca looked Clare squarely in the
eyes. "I'd like a shot at Tony's announcing job when he leaves."
Clare's eyebrows rose halfway up her forehead. "You are kidding."
"Actually, I'm not." Francesca lifted her chin and went on as if she
had all the confidence in the world. "I've spent a lot of time
practicing, and Jerry helped me make an audition tape." She held out
the cartridge. "I think I can do the job."
A cruel, amused smile curled at the corners of Clare's mouth. "An
interesting ambition, considering the fact that you have a noticeable
British accent and you've never been in front of a microphone in your
life. Of course, the little cheerleader who replaced me in Chicago
hadn't ever been on the air either, and she sounded like Betty Boop, so
maybe I should watch out."
Francesca kept a tight rein on her temper. "I'd like a chance anyway.
My British accent will give me a different sound from everyone else."
"You clean toilets," Clare scoffed, lighting a cigarette. "That's the
job you were hired for."
Francesca refused to flinch. "And I've been good at it, haven't I?
Cleaning toilets and doing every other bloody job you've thrown at me.
Now give me a shot at this one."
"Forget it."
Francesca couldn't play it safe any longer. She had her baby to think
about, her future. "You know, I'm actually starting to sympathize with
you, Clare."
"What do you mean by that?"
"You've heard the old proverb about not understanding another person
until you've walked a mile in his shoes. I understand you, Clare. I
know exactly what it's like to be discriminated against because of who
you are, no matter how hard you work. I know what it's like to be
denied a shot at a job—not from a
lack of ability, but because of the
personal prejudice of your employer."
"Prejudice!" A cloud of smoke emerged like dragon fire from Clare's
mouth. "I've never been prejudiced in my life. I've been a victim of
prejudice."
This was no time for retreat, and Francesca pressed harder. "You won't
even take fifteen minutes to
listen to an audition tape. I'd call that
prejudice, wouldn't you?"
Clare's jaw snapped into a rigid line. "All right, Francesca, I'll give
you your fifteen minutes." She snatched the cassette from her hand.
"But don't hold your breath."
For the rest of the day, Francesca's insides felt like a quivering mass
of aspic. She had to get this job.
Not only did she desperately need
the money but she absolutely had to succeed at something. Radio was a
medium that functioned without pictures, a medium in which sage green
eyes and a perfect profile held no significance. Radio was her testing
ground, her chance to prove to herself that she would never again have
to depend on her looks to get by.
At one-thirty, Clare stuck her head through the door of her office and
beckoned to Francesca, who set down the fliers she'd been stacking in a
carton and tried to walk into the office confidently. She couldn't
quite pull it off.
"The tape isn't terrible," Clare said, settling into her chair, "but
it's not much good either." She pushed
the cartridge across the desktop.
Francesca stared down at it, trying to hide the crushing disappointment
she felt.
"Your voice is too breathy," Clare went on, her tone brisk and
impersonal. "You talk much too fast and you emphasize the strangest
words. Your British accent is the only thing you have going for you.
Otherwise, you sound like a bad imitation of every mediocre male disc
jockey we've had at this station."
Francesca strained to hear some trace of personal animosity in her
voice, some sense that Clare was being vindictive. But all
she heard was the dispassionate assessment of a seasoned professional.
"Let me do another tape," she pleaded. "Let me try again."
The chair squeaked as Clare leaned back. "1 don't want to hear another
tape; it won't be any different. AM radio is about people. If listeners
want music, they tune into an FM station. AM radio has to be
personality radio, even at a rat-shit station like this. If you want to
make it in AM, you have to remember you're talking to people, not to a
microphone. Otherwise you're just another Twinkie."
Francesca snatched up the tape and turned toward the door, the threads
of her self-control nearly unraveling. How had she ever imagined she
could break into radio without any training? One more delusion. One
more sand castle she had built too near the water's edge.
"The best I can do is use you as a relief announcer on weekends if
somebody can't make it."
Francesca spun around. "A relief announcer! You'll use me as a relief
announcer?"
"Christ, Francesca. Don't act like I'm doing you any big favor. All it
means is you'll end up working an afternoon shift on Easter Sunday when
nobody's listening."
But Francesca refused to let Clare's testiness deflate her, and she let
out a whoop of happiness.
That night she pulled a can of cat food from her only kitchen cupboard
and began her nightly conversation with Beast.
"I'm going to make something of myself," she told him. "I don't care
how hard I have to work or what I have to do. I'm going to be the best
announcer KDSC has ever had." Beast lifted his hind leg and began
grooming himself. Francesca glowered at him. "That is absolutely the
most disgusting habit you have, and if you think you're going to do
that around my daughter, you can think again."
Beast ignored her. She reached for a rusty can opener and fastened it
over the rim of the can, but she didn't begin turning it at once.
Instead, she stared dreamily ahead. She knew intuitively that she was
going to have a daughter—a little star-spangled American baby girl who
would be taught from the very beginning to rely on something more than
the physical beauty she was predestined to inherit from her parents.
Her
daughter would be the fourth generation of Serritella females—and the
best. Francesca vowed to teach her child all the things she had been
forced to learn on her own, all the things a little girl needed to know
so that she would never end up lying in the middle of a dirt road and
wondering how she'd gotten there.
Beast disturbed her daydreams by batting her sneaker with his paw,
reminding her of his dinner. She resumed opening the can. "I've
absolutely made up my mind to call her Natalie. It's such a pretty
name—feminine but strong. What do you think?"
Beast stared at the bowl of food that was being lowered toward him much
too slowly, all his attention focused on his dinner. A small lump
formed in Francesca's throat as she set it on the floor. Women
shouldn't have babies when they had only a cat with whom to share their
daydreams about the future. And then she shook off her self-pity.
Nobody had forced her to have this baby. She had made the decision
herself, and she wasn't going to start whining about it now. Lowering
herself to the old linoleum floor, she sat cross-legged by the cat's
bowl and reached out to stroke him.
"Guess what happened today, Beast? It was the most wonderful thing."
Her fingers slipped through the animal's soft fur. "I felt my baby
move. . . ."
Within three weeks of her interview with Clare, a flu epidemic hit
three of the KDSC announcers and Clare was forced to let Francesca take
over a Wednesday morning shift. "Try to remember you're
talking to
people," she barked as Francesca headed for the studio with her heart
beating so rapidly she
felt as if the blades of a helicopter were
chopping away at her chest.
The studio was small and overheated. A control board lined the wall
perpendicular to the studio window, while the opposite side housed
cubbyholes filled with the records that were to be played that week.
The room also contained a spinning wooden rack for tape cartridges, a
large gray file box for live commercial copy, and, taped to every flat
surface, an assortment of announcements and warnings.
Francesca seated herself before the control board and clumsily settled
the headset over her ears. Her hands wouldn't stop
shaking. At small stations like KDSC, there were no engineers to
operate the control board; announcers had to do it for themselves.
Francesca had spent hours learning how to cue records, operate
microphone switches, set voice levels, and use the three tape
cartridge—or cart— decks, only
two of which she was tall enough to
reach from the stool in front of the mike.
As the AP news came to an end, she looked at the row of dials on her
control board. In her nervousness, they seemed to be changing shape in
front of her, melting like Dali watches until she couldn't remember
what any of them were for. She forced herself to concentrate. Her hand
flicked to the AP selector switch. She pushed the lever that opened her
microphone and potted up the sound on the dial beneath. A trickle of
perspiration slid between her breasts. She had to do well. If she
messed up today, Clare would never give her a second chance.
As she opened her mouth to speak, her tongue seemed to stick to the
roof of her mouth. "Hello," she croaked. "This is Francesca Day coming
to you on KDSC with music for a Wednesday morning."
She was talking too fast, running all her words together, and she
couldn't think of another thing to say even though she had rehearsed
this moment in her mind a hundred times. In a panic, she released the
record she was holding on the first turntable and potted up the sound,
but she had cued it too close to the beginning of the song and it wowed
as she let it go. She moaned audibly, and then realized she hadn't
turned off her mike switch so that the moan had carried out over the
air. She fumbled with the lever.
In the reception area, Clare watched her through the studio window and
shook her head in disgust. Francesca imagined she could hear the word
"Twinkie" coming through the soundproof walls.
Her nerves eventually steadied and she did better, but she had listened
to enough tapes of good announcers over the past few months to know
just how mediocre she was. Her back began to ache from the tension.
When her stretch was finally up and she emerged from the studio limp
with exhaustion, Katie gave her a sympathetic smile and muttered
something about first-time jitters. Clare slammed out of her
office and announced that the flu epidemic had spread to Paul Maynard,
and she would have to put Francesca on the air again the following
afternoon. She spoke so scathingly that Francesca wasn't left
with any
doubt about how she felt concerning the situation.
That night, as she used one of her four bent kitchen forks to push a
clump of overcooked scrambled eggs around her plate, she tried for the
thousandth time to figure out what she was doing wrong. Why couldn't
she talk into a microphone the way she talked to people?
People. She set down her fork as she was struck by a sudden thought.
Clare kept talking about people, but where were they? Impulsively, she
jumped up from the table and began leafing through the magazines she
had lifted from the station. Eventually, she cut out four photographs
of people who looked like the sort who might listen to her show the
next day—a young mother, a white-haired old lady, a beautician, and an
overweight truck driver like the ones who traveled across the county on
the state highway and picked up the KDSC signal for about forty miles.
She stared at them for the rest of the evening, making up imaginary
life histories and personal foibles. They would be her audience for
tomorrow's show. Only these four.
The next afternoon she taped the pictures to the edge of the control
board, dropping the old lady twice because her fingers were so clumsy.
The morning disc jockey flicked on the AP news, and she sat down to
adjust the headset. No more imitation deejay. She was going to do this
her own way. She looked at
the photographs in front of her—the young
mother, the old woman, the beautician, and the truck driver. Talk to
them, dammit. Be yourself, and forget about everything else.
The AP news ended. She stared into the friendly brown eyes of the young
mother, flicked the switch on her microphone, and took a deep breath.
She backed around and headed out of the parking lot. A glance at the
rearview mirror showed pale skin, dull hair snared at the back of her
neck with a rubber band, and a red-rimmed nose from the latest in a
series of head colds. Her car coat was too big for her, and she had
neither the money nor the energy to improve her appearance. At least
she didn't have to fend off many advances from the male staff members.
There had been few successes for her these past six weeks, but many
disasters. One of the worst had occurred the day before Thanksgiving
when Clare had discovered she was sleeping on the station couch and
screamed at her in front of everyone until Francesca's cheeks burned
with humiliation. Now she and Beast lived in a bedroom-kitchen
combination over a garage in Sulphur City. It was drafty and badly
furnished with discarded furniture and a lumpy twin bed, but the rent
was cheap and she could pay it by the week, so she tried to feel
grateful for every ugly inch of it. She had also gained the use of the
station's Dodge Dart, although Clare made her pay for gas even when
someone else took the car. It was an exhausting, hand-to-mouth
existence, with no room for financial emergencies, no room for personal
emergencies, and no—absolutely no—room for an unwanted pregnancy.
Her fists tightened on the steering wheel. By doing without almost
everything, she had managed to save the one hundred and fifty dollars
the San Antonio abortion clinic would charge her to get rid of Dallie
Beaudine's baby. She refused to let herself think of the ramifications
of her decision; she was simply too poor and too desperate to consider
the morality of the act. After her appointment on Saturday, she would
have averted one more disaster. That was all the introspection she
allowed herself.
She finished running her errands in little more than an hour and
returned to the station, only to have
Clare yell at her for having gone
off without washing her office windows first.
The following Saturday she got up at dawn and made the two-hour drive
to San Antonio. The waiting room of the abortion clinic was sparsely
furnished but clean. She sat down on a molded plastic chair, her hands
clutching her black canvas shoulder bag, her legs pressed tightly
together as if they were unconsciously trying to protect the small
piece of protoplasm that would soon be taken from her body. The room
held three other women. Two were Mexican and one was a worn-out blonde
with an acned face and hopeless eyes. All of them were poor.
A middle-aged, Spanish-looking woman in a neat white blouse and dark
skirt appeared at the door and called her name. "Francesca, I'm Mrs.
Garcia," she said in lightly accented English. "Would you come with me,
please?"
Francesca numbly followed her into a small office paneled in fake
mahogany. Mrs. Garcia took a seat behind her desk and invited Francesca
to sit in another molded plastic chair, differing only in color from
the one in the waiting room.
The woman was friendly and efficient as she went over the forms for
Francesca to sign. Then she explained the procedure that would take
place in one of the surgical rooms down the hall. Francesca bit down on
the inside of her lip and tried not to listen too closely. Mrs. Garcia
spoke slowly and calmly, always using the word "tissue," never "fetus."
Francesca felt a detached sense of gratitude. Ever since
she had realized she was pregnant, she had refused to personify the
unwelcome visitor lodged in her womb. She refused to connect it in her
mind to that night in a Louisiana swamp. Her life had been pared down
to the bone—to the marrow —and there was no room for sentiment, no room
to build falsely romantic pictures of chubby pink cheeks and soft curly
hair, no need ever to use the word "baby," not even in her thoughts.
Mrs. Garcia began to speak of "vacuum aspiration," and Francesca
thought of the old Hoover she pushed around the radio station carpet
every evening.
"Do you have any questions?"
She shook her head. The faces of the three sad women in the waiting
room seemed implanted in her mind—women with no future, no hope. Mrs.
Garcia slid a booklet across the metal desktop. "This pamphlet contains
information on birth control that you should read before you have
intercourse again."
Again? The memory of Dallie's deep, hot kisses rushed back to her, but
the intimate caresses that had once set her senses aflame now seemed to
have happened to someone else. She couldn't imagine ever feeling that
good again.
"I can't have this—this tissue," Francesca said abruptly, interrupting
the woman in midsentence as she showed her a diagram of the female
reproductive organs.
Mrs. Garcia stopped what she was saying and inclined her head to
listen, obviously accustomed to hearing the most private revelations
pass across her desk.
Francesca knew she had no need to justify her actions, but she couldn't
seem to stop the flow of words. "Don't you see that it's impossible?"
Her fists clenched into knots in her lap. "I'm not a horrible person.
I'm not unfeeling. But I can barely take care of myself and a walleyed
cat."
The woman gazed at her sympathetically. "Of course you're not
unfeeling, Francesca. It's your body,
and only you can decide what's
best."
"I've made up my mind," she replied, her tone as angry as if the woman
had argued with her. "I don't have a husband or money. I'm barely
hanging on to a job working for a boss who hates me. I don't even have
any way to pay my medical bills."
"I understand. It's difficult—"
"You don't understand!" Francesca leaned forward, her eyes dry and
furious, each word coming out like
a hard, crisp pellet. "All my life
I've lived off other people, but I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm
going to make something of myself!"
"I think your ambition is admirable. You're obviously a competent
young—"
Again Francesca pushed aside her sympathy, trying to explain to Mrs.
Garcia—trying to explain to herself—what had brought her to this red
brick abortion clinic in the poorest part of San Antonio. The room was
warm, but she hugged herself as if she felt a chill. "Have you ever
seen those pictures people put together on black velvet with little
nails and different colored strings—pictures of bridges and
butterflies, things like that?" Mrs. Garcia nodded. Francesca gazed at
the fake mahogany paneling without seeing it. "I have one of those
awful pictures fastened to the wall, right above my bed, this terrible
pink and orange string picture of a guitar."
"I don't quite see—"
"How can someone bring a baby into the world when she lives in a place
with a string picture of a guitar on the wall? What kind of mother
would deliberately expose a helpless little baby to something so ugly?"
Baby. She'd said the word. Twice she'd said it. A painful press of
tears pricked at the backs of her eyelids but she refused to shed them.
In the past year, she'd cried enough spoiled, self-indulgent tears to
last a lifetime, and she wasn't going to cry any more.
"You know, Francesca, an abortion doesn't have to be the end of the
world. In the future, the circumstances may be different for you . . .
the time more convenient."
Her final word seemed to hang in the air. Francesca slumped back in the
chair, all the anger drained out
of her. Was that what a human life
came down to, she wondered, a matter of convenience? It was
inconvenient for her to have a baby right now, so she would simply do
away with it? She looked up at Mrs. Garcia. "My friends in London used
to schedule their abortions so they wouldn't miss any balls or parties."
For the first time Mrs. Garcia visibly bristled. "The women who come
here aren't worried about missing
a party, Francesca. They're
fifteen-year-olds with their whole lives in front of them, or married
women who already have too many children and absent husbands. They're
women without jobs and without any hope of getting work."
But she wasn't like them, Francesca told herself. She wasn't helpless
and broken anymore. These past few months she had proven that. She'd
scrubbed toilets, endured abuse, fed and sheltered herself on next to
nothing. Most people would have crumbled, but she hadn't. She had
survived.
It was a new, tantalizing view of herself. She sat straighter in the
chair, her fists gradually easing open in her lap. Mrs. Garcia spoke
hesitantly. "Your life seems rather precarious at the moment."
Francesca thought of Clare, of the ugly rooms above the garage, of the
string guitar, of her inability to call Dallie for help, even when she
desperately needed it. "It is precarious," she agreed. Leaning over,
she picked up her canvas shoulder bag. Then she rose from her chair.
The impulsive, optimistic part of her that she thought had died months
before seemed to have taken over her feet, seemed to be forcing her to
do something that could only lead to disaster, something illogical,
foolish. .. .
Something wonderful.
"May I have my money back, please, Mrs. Garcia? Take out whatever you
need to cover your time today."
Mrs. Garcia looked worried. "Are you sure about your decision,
Francesca? You're already ten weeks pregnant. You don't have much more
time to undergo a safe abortion. Are you absolutely sure?"
Francesca had never been less sure of anything in her life, but she
nodded.
She broke into a little run as she left the abortion clinic, and then a
skip to cover the last few feet to the Dart. Her mouth curved in a
smile. Of all the stupid things she had ever done in her life, this was
the stupidest. Her smile grew wider. Dallie had been absolutely right
about her—she didn't have a single ounce of common sense. She was
poorer than a church mouse, badly educated, and living every minute on
the
cutting edge of disaster. But right now, at this very moment, none of
that mattered, because some things in life were more important than
common sense.
Francesca Serritella Day had lost most of her dignity and all of her
pride. She wasn't going to lose her baby.
Chapter
20
Francesca discovered something rather wonderful about herself in the20
next few months. With her back pressed to the wall, a gun pointed to
her forehead, a time bomb ticking in her womb, she learned that she was
quite intelligent. She grasped new ideas easily, retained what she
learned, and having had so few academic prejudices imposed upon her by
teachers, never let preconceived notions limit her thinking. With her
first months of pregnancy behind her, she also discovered a seemingly
endless capacity for
hard work, which she began taking advantage of by
laboring far into the night, reading newspapers and broadcasting
magazines, listening to tapes, and getting ready to take a small step
up in the world.
"Do you have a minute, Clare?" she asked, sticking her head into the
record library, a small tape cassette pressed into the damp palm of her
hand. Clare was leafing through one of the Billboard reference books
and didn't bother to look up.
The record library was actually nothing more than a large closet with
albums lining the shelves, strips of colored tape affixed to their
spines to indicate whether they fell into the category of male
vocalists, female vocalists, or groups. Francesca had intentionally
chosen the location because it was neutral territory, and she didn't
want to give Clare the added advantage of being able to sit like God
behind her desk while she
decided the fate of the supplicant in the budget seat opposite her.
"I have all day," Clare replied sarcastically, as she continued to flip
through the book. "As a matter of fact, I've been sitting in here for
hours just twiddling my thumbs and waiting for someone to interrupt me."
It wasn't the most auspicious beginning, but Francesca ignored Clare's
sarcasm and positioned herself in the center of the doorway. She was
wearing the newest item in her wardrobe: a man's gray sweat shirt that
hung in baggy folds past her hips. Out of sight beneath it, her jeans
were unfastened and unzipped, held together with a piece of cord
crudely sewn across the placket. Francesca looked Clare squarely in the
eyes. "I'd like a shot at Tony's announcing job when he leaves."
Clare's eyebrows rose halfway up her forehead. "You are kidding."
"Actually, I'm not." Francesca lifted her chin and went on as if she
had all the confidence in the world. "I've spent a lot of time
practicing, and Jerry helped me make an audition tape." She held out
the cartridge. "I think I can do the job."
A cruel, amused smile curled at the corners of Clare's mouth. "An
interesting ambition, considering the fact that you have a noticeable
British accent and you've never been in front of a microphone in your
life. Of course, the little cheerleader who replaced me in Chicago
hadn't ever been on the air either, and she sounded like Betty Boop, so
maybe I should watch out."
Francesca kept a tight rein on her temper. "I'd like a chance anyway.
My British accent will give me a different sound from everyone else."
"You clean toilets," Clare scoffed, lighting a cigarette. "That's the
job you were hired for."
Francesca refused to flinch. "And I've been good at it, haven't I?
Cleaning toilets and doing every other bloody job you've thrown at me.
Now give me a shot at this one."
"Forget it."
Francesca couldn't play it safe any longer. She had her baby to think
about, her future. "You know, I'm actually starting to sympathize with
you, Clare."
"What do you mean by that?"
"You've heard the old proverb about not understanding another person
until you've walked a mile in his shoes. I understand you, Clare. I
know exactly what it's like to be discriminated against because of who
you are, no matter how hard you work. I know what it's like to be
denied a shot at a job—not from a
lack of ability, but because of the
personal prejudice of your employer."
"Prejudice!" A cloud of smoke emerged like dragon fire from Clare's
mouth. "I've never been prejudiced in my life. I've been a victim of
prejudice."
This was no time for retreat, and Francesca pressed harder. "You won't
even take fifteen minutes to
listen to an audition tape. I'd call that
prejudice, wouldn't you?"
Clare's jaw snapped into a rigid line. "All right, Francesca, I'll give
you your fifteen minutes." She snatched the cassette from her hand.
"But don't hold your breath."
For the rest of the day, Francesca's insides felt like a quivering mass
of aspic. She had to get this job.
Not only did she desperately need
the money but she absolutely had to succeed at something. Radio was a
medium that functioned without pictures, a medium in which sage green
eyes and a perfect profile held no significance. Radio was her testing
ground, her chance to prove to herself that she would never again have
to depend on her looks to get by.
At one-thirty, Clare stuck her head through the door of her office and
beckoned to Francesca, who set down the fliers she'd been stacking in a
carton and tried to walk into the office confidently. She couldn't
quite pull it off.
"The tape isn't terrible," Clare said, settling into her chair, "but
it's not much good either." She pushed
the cartridge across the desktop.
Francesca stared down at it, trying to hide the crushing disappointment
she felt.
"Your voice is too breathy," Clare went on, her tone brisk and
impersonal. "You talk much too fast and you emphasize the strangest
words. Your British accent is the only thing you have going for you.
Otherwise, you sound like a bad imitation of every mediocre male disc
jockey we've had at this station."
Francesca strained to hear some trace of personal animosity in her
voice, some sense that Clare was being vindictive. But all
she heard was the dispassionate assessment of a seasoned professional.
"Let me do another tape," she pleaded. "Let me try again."
The chair squeaked as Clare leaned back. "1 don't want to hear another
tape; it won't be any different. AM radio is about people. If listeners
want music, they tune into an FM station. AM radio has to be
personality radio, even at a rat-shit station like this. If you want to
make it in AM, you have to remember you're talking to people, not to a
microphone. Otherwise you're just another Twinkie."
Francesca snatched up the tape and turned toward the door, the threads
of her self-control nearly unraveling. How had she ever imagined she
could break into radio without any training? One more delusion. One
more sand castle she had built too near the water's edge.
"The best I can do is use you as a relief announcer on weekends if
somebody can't make it."
Francesca spun around. "A relief announcer! You'll use me as a relief
announcer?"
"Christ, Francesca. Don't act like I'm doing you any big favor. All it
means is you'll end up working an afternoon shift on Easter Sunday when
nobody's listening."
But Francesca refused to let Clare's testiness deflate her, and she let
out a whoop of happiness.
That night she pulled a can of cat food from her only kitchen cupboard
and began her nightly conversation with Beast.
"I'm going to make something of myself," she told him. "I don't care
how hard I have to work or what I have to do. I'm going to be the best
announcer KDSC has ever had." Beast lifted his hind leg and began
grooming himself. Francesca glowered at him. "That is absolutely the
most disgusting habit you have, and if you think you're going to do
that around my daughter, you can think again."
Beast ignored her. She reached for a rusty can opener and fastened it
over the rim of the can, but she didn't begin turning it at once.
Instead, she stared dreamily ahead. She knew intuitively that she was
going to have a daughter—a little star-spangled American baby girl who
would be taught from the very beginning to rely on something more than
the physical beauty she was predestined to inherit from her parents.
Her
daughter would be the fourth generation of Serritella females—and the
best. Francesca vowed to teach her child all the things she had been
forced to learn on her own, all the things a little girl needed to know
so that she would never end up lying in the middle of a dirt road and
wondering how she'd gotten there.
Beast disturbed her daydreams by batting her sneaker with his paw,
reminding her of his dinner. She resumed opening the can. "I've
absolutely made up my mind to call her Natalie. It's such a pretty
name—feminine but strong. What do you think?"
Beast stared at the bowl of food that was being lowered toward him much
too slowly, all his attention focused on his dinner. A small lump
formed in Francesca's throat as she set it on the floor. Women
shouldn't have babies when they had only a cat with whom to share their
daydreams about the future. And then she shook off her self-pity.
Nobody had forced her to have this baby. She had made the decision
herself, and she wasn't going to start whining about it now. Lowering
herself to the old linoleum floor, she sat cross-legged by the cat's
bowl and reached out to stroke him.
"Guess what happened today, Beast? It was the most wonderful thing."
Her fingers slipped through the animal's soft fur. "I felt my baby
move. . . ."
Within three weeks of her interview with Clare, a flu epidemic hit
three of the KDSC announcers and Clare was forced to let Francesca take
over a Wednesday morning shift. "Try to remember you're
talking to
people," she barked as Francesca headed for the studio with her heart
beating so rapidly she
felt as if the blades of a helicopter were
chopping away at her chest.
The studio was small and overheated. A control board lined the wall
perpendicular to the studio window, while the opposite side housed
cubbyholes filled with the records that were to be played that week.
The room also contained a spinning wooden rack for tape cartridges, a
large gray file box for live commercial copy, and, taped to every flat
surface, an assortment of announcements and warnings.
Francesca seated herself before the control board and clumsily settled
the headset over her ears. Her hands wouldn't stop
shaking. At small stations like KDSC, there were no engineers to
operate the control board; announcers had to do it for themselves.
Francesca had spent hours learning how to cue records, operate
microphone switches, set voice levels, and use the three tape
cartridge—or cart— decks, only
two of which she was tall enough to
reach from the stool in front of the mike.
As the AP news came to an end, she looked at the row of dials on her
control board. In her nervousness, they seemed to be changing shape in
front of her, melting like Dali watches until she couldn't remember
what any of them were for. She forced herself to concentrate. Her hand
flicked to the AP selector switch. She pushed the lever that opened her
microphone and potted up the sound on the dial beneath. A trickle of
perspiration slid between her breasts. She had to do well. If she
messed up today, Clare would never give her a second chance.
As she opened her mouth to speak, her tongue seemed to stick to the
roof of her mouth. "Hello," she croaked. "This is Francesca Day coming
to you on KDSC with music for a Wednesday morning."
She was talking too fast, running all her words together, and she
couldn't think of another thing to say even though she had rehearsed
this moment in her mind a hundred times. In a panic, she released the
record she was holding on the first turntable and potted up the sound,
but she had cued it too close to the beginning of the song and it wowed
as she let it go. She moaned audibly, and then realized she hadn't
turned off her mike switch so that the moan had carried out over the
air. She fumbled with the lever.
In the reception area, Clare watched her through the studio window and
shook her head in disgust. Francesca imagined she could hear the word
"Twinkie" coming through the soundproof walls.
Her nerves eventually steadied and she did better, but she had listened
to enough tapes of good announcers over the past few months to know
just how mediocre she was. Her back began to ache from the tension.
When her stretch was finally up and she emerged from the studio limp
with exhaustion, Katie gave her a sympathetic smile and muttered
something about first-time jitters. Clare slammed out of her
office and announced that the flu epidemic had spread to Paul Maynard,
and she would have to put Francesca on the air again the following
afternoon. She spoke so scathingly that Francesca wasn't left
with any
doubt about how she felt concerning the situation.
That night, as she used one of her four bent kitchen forks to push a
clump of overcooked scrambled eggs around her plate, she tried for the
thousandth time to figure out what she was doing wrong. Why couldn't
she talk into a microphone the way she talked to people?
People. She set down her fork as she was struck by a sudden thought.
Clare kept talking about people, but where were they? Impulsively, she
jumped up from the table and began leafing through the magazines she
had lifted from the station. Eventually, she cut out four photographs
of people who looked like the sort who might listen to her show the
next day—a young mother, a white-haired old lady, a beautician, and an
overweight truck driver like the ones who traveled across the county on
the state highway and picked up the KDSC signal for about forty miles.
She stared at them for the rest of the evening, making up imaginary
life histories and personal foibles. They would be her audience for
tomorrow's show. Only these four.
The next afternoon she taped the pictures to the edge of the control
board, dropping the old lady twice because her fingers were so clumsy.
The morning disc jockey flicked on the AP news, and she sat down to
adjust the headset. No more imitation deejay. She was going to do this
her own way. She looked at
the photographs in front of her—the young
mother, the old woman, the beautician, and the truck driver. Talk to
them, dammit. Be yourself, and forget about everything else.
The AP news ended. She stared into the friendly brown eyes of the young
mother, flicked the switch on her microphone, and took a deep breath.
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