Windfalls: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

another part wanted to stop and rage at them. But instead she focused all her attention on walking.
    When she realized that she would somehow have to pass through those people to reach the building where her appointment was, a new confusion fluttered through her chest. But as she was hesitating, the crowd parted grudgingly in front of her, creating a rough corridor down which she might pass. Her shoulders cringed in anticipation of the blows it seemed would surely come if she tried to reach the doors at the far end, but she forced herself to start walking, passing so close to the bodies of the protesters that she could smell the spice of aftershave and the acrid musk of nerves, so close she could hear the censure in their breathing. She kept her eyes down, watching the fringe of weeds that was already beginning to grow in the cracks in the sidewalk, watching the toes of her boots as her feet propelled her on.
    “I’ll raise your baby,” a man said to her when she came abreast of him.
    His voice was low, insinuating. Glancing in his direction, she saw his shiny face and the way his belly distorted the plaid of his shirt beneath his jacket, and she looked away, repelled at the thought of giving anything of hers to him. The doors loomed ahead, double doors with metal handles like twin halves of a moon. She stretched out an arm as though she were an exhausted swimmer floundering to reach a dock. But suddenly a child darted between her and the doors, a girl of ten or twelve.
    “Miss?” the girl asked. “Would you read this?” She kept her face twisted away from Anna so that she seemed to be speaking back over her own shoulder as she thrust a pamphlet blindly in Anna’s direction. Anna reached out to take it from her only because the girl seemed so uncomfortable—more miserable, even, than Anna herself. Then, in an attempt to reassure the girl and to prove to the watching crowd that she was no monster, Anna tried to smile.
    But the muscles in her face trembled so violently it seemed she had forgotten how a smile was made. A sound came from the back of her throat, involuntary as a glob of coughed-up phlegm, and the child shot a startled look at Anna’s face. Their glances met and held. The girl’s eyes were blue and somehow strangely familiar. For a crazy second Anna had the sensation she was looking into a mirror, although Anna’s eyes were brown and she was twice the girl’s age.
    From somewhere in the crowd a man’s voice rang out, “Remember Jesus.” The girl’s eyes filled with fear, and Anna glanced down at the pamphlet in her hands as a way of protecting them both. But the photograph on the cover of the pamphlet was so appalling that even before Anna could react to its lack of contrast, bad focus, and cluttered composition, she was staring aghast at the image itself.
    It was a photograph of a newborn baby, an infant even younger than Dylan had been at Christmastime. Only instead of lying in its mother’s arms, this baby was sprawled lifeless on top of a trash-filled can of garbage. It was as sickening and fascinating as pornography, and for a second, as she stared at it, Anna forgot about the crowd. A moment later she felt the horror of it slap her, and she flung the pamphlet to the ground.
    “That’s your baby,” she heard the male voice boom as she reached the clinic door. “Don’t throw your baby away.”
    She was shaking when she entered the waiting room. Her legs felt porous, too frail to bear her weight. She sank into the scoop seat of the plastic chairs that ringed the room, and for a hysterical second she wondered if she had wet her pants. The thought came to her that she should leave. She could catch the bus back to the university and deal with everything tomorrow, but her fear of the crowd outside kept her rooted where she was.
    There were other people in the waiting room, six or eight women and several men. Anna snuck a quick check of their faces to assure herself that they had not witnessed