Ally had as tough a time that spring and summer as Kath did. Jeff, concerned about the drug Ally was taking, went into the hospital the evening after the Derby party for the express purpose of “bumping into” a colleague in obstetrics, who referred him to a group of doctors in Boston. When Linda telephoned Ally about it that Sunday afternoon, she started slowly, explaining what Jeff had told her about why a woman sometimes miscarried repeatedly: because of an abnormality in her uterus or cervix, or because her reproductive cycle wasn't working right somehow or there were other undiagnosed problems with her health. But Ally didn't want to hear about it. “I'm perfectly healthy, Linda,” she said. “I've practically never been sick a day in my life.”
That Wednesday in the park, Linda brought it up again, saying, “These Boston doctors Jeff talked to, Ally, they think there's a link between this drug you're taking and some kind of rare vaginal cancer. I'm not sure I quite understand exactly what Jeff was saying, but he definitely thinks you ought to stop taking it.” Ally's stare would have turned anyone else away—to Davy barreling headfirst down the slide or Arselia clearing J.J. from the bottom, or to the mansion's porch light burning dimly against the dull morning—but Linda met her gaze.
“What does Jeff know about it?” Ally said. “My doctor says it's a magic bullet, that I'll have a baby.”
Linda rolled her lips together, her multicolored eyes kind and sad and determined, still fixed on Ally.
Ally looked away, toward the palm tree to the right of the mansion door, a single dead frond hanging down along its trunk. “How can you know? You have no idea what it's like not to have a baby.” Her voice even softer now: “Do you think I care if I might have some higher chance of cancer when I'm eighty?” She met Linda's gaze again, her eyes moist. “Jeff isn't even a gynecologist. He has no idea what he's talking about.”
“But the drug won't help,” Linda said, so gently you might not even have believed it was Linda. “It's just marketing. The drug companies are making a lot of money on disproved research and false hope.”
“You don't know,” Ally whispered. “Maybe you just don't want me to have a baby.”
The tension at that picnic table was palpable, but Kath jumped right in. “We've just got to get us one of those banyan trees and do our midnight jig, ladies,” she said, and even Ally laughed.
“Asparagus, mangos, and carrots,” Ally said, clearly relieved to take the conversation in a lighter direction. “That's the latest from my mother-in-law. That's what I'm supposed to be eating now. Jim, too. And listen to this: She sent Jim some concoction made from white lilies—Jim thinks you make a tea with it or you blend it in goat's milk or something, even he's not sure. It's supposed to enhance the quality of his output, if you know what I mean!”
Linda let the whole matter of the drugs go that day, but the next week she came armed with a fat medical textbook. Ally wouldn't even look at it, though. And two weeks later, she started bleeding, right there in the park. She didn't notice at first—none of us did. It wasn't until we stood to leave that we saw the red stain on her white slacks.
“Oh Lordy, Ally,” Kath said, and Ally looked down at herself, and what little color she had in her face drained away.
I hurried her to her car and drove her to the hospital, leaving Maggie and Davy and Carrie with Linda, telling Ally the whole way that it was going to be okay. The moment they whisked her from the emergency waiting room, I called Jim at his office. By the time he arrived, though, it was too late—the baby was lost.
We took our casseroles and fried chicken again, and wished there was something more we could do. Ally turned away every offer of help, though, and when Kath asked if she wanted to talk about it, Ally answered, “About what?” Which—we talked about it endlessly—seemed like a pretty loud no. None of us had any idea what she was going through, we knew that. We couldn't imagine. And poor Linda: you could see her wondering if her warnings had somehow brought this on, if Ally's losing her baby had been her fault.
ON THE FIFTIETH anniversary of the suffrage movement one warm August Wednesday, while fifty thousand women marched in New York and thousands more marched in ninety cities in forty-two states in a Women's Strike for Equality, the Wednesday Sisters sat huddled at our picnic table, with Arselia watching our children for the same inadequate pay those women were marching about.
“Ladies,” Linda kept saying, “you know we really ought to go to town”.
The area chapters of the National Organization for Women were staging a noon rally in Lytton Plaza.