Unfolding with perfect pacing and confidence, this chapter plunges us into the intersecting lives of two women—Josie and Radhika—whose lapsed friendship suggests some deeper, mysterious fracture from their past. I flew through these pages, compelled by the spontaneity of their meeting and the sheer desire to know where this reunion would lead. — Guest Judge Tania James
1
“I thought you were dead.”
They were the first words out of my mouth, after her name. What a thing to say to someone you haven’t seen in almost twenty years. Actually, by then I’d known for over a month that she was very much alive, and that she was living in San Francisco. I’d read it in the magazine. But I guess I didn’t quite believe it. I still remember the shock and the thrill I felt that day: Nothing was what I’d thought it was. Everything might still change.
We were in the Safeway in Laurel Heights. It was the day after Halloween, and I was shopping for, of all things, a pregnancy test. I spotted her a few steps ahead of me in the pharmacy aisle, peering at the cough-cold shelf with the intent gaze of someone who knows exactly what she’s looking for. She wore green scrubs, clogs, and an expensive-looking black coat belted at the waist. Her short hair was fashionably tousled on her narrow head. She was taller than I remembered her.
“Radhika.”
I thought she might not recognize or even remember me. But her face broke into a luminous smile and she said, “Josie.” She dropped whatever she was holding into her cart and wrapped her arms around me. She smelled like hospital soap and bergamot.
I whispered it into her shoulder, my eyes squeezed shut, the way you’d confess the dark, vivid details of a nightmare: “I thought you were dead.” She tossed her head back and laughed, showing her pretty throat. “Not me. Not yet.” Her eyes were fierce and brilliant. She held me in front of her like a doll: skinny neck and shoulders, glasses, pale freckles, dripping ponytail smelling faintly of chlorine. “You haven’t changed,” she said. And I suppose it was true, I hadn’t.
Then she said quietly, “I’ve thought about you so much.”
For a long time I wondered what she meant by this. What made her think of me, and when? What was there to think about?
I said, “I’ve thought about you, too.”
* * *
I fell into step beside her as she barreled down the aisle and into conversation, loading sensible groceries into her cart with the particular satisfaction of a mother deciding what her family will eat (bagged bagels, baby carrots) and what they won’t (junk cereals, juice). I noticed she selected certain items that seemed to be meant just for her (Manchego cheese, chocolate covered almonds, apple cider vinegar), placing them in the small, raised rectangle at the top of the cart, as though to keep them separate and safe.
She went through the checkout line first with her enormous cart of groceries, collecting her long, elegant receipt afterward like a prize. I followed with my little basket. As the cashier ran the pregnancy test over the scanner with a cursory red beep, I watched to see if she’d noticed. She hadn’t. She was still talking, leaning over her cart, her long body bending like a sunflower on its stalk. They lived just two blocks from here, she said. She worked a few miles away, at UCSF, where she was an Associate Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology, in the Family Planning department. I asked (although I already knew) what exactly this meant: “family planning.” She explained that she was a doctor who specialized in abortions and miscarriages. She cared for the women whose pregnancies, for whatever reason, would never become babies.
“Of course. That makes so much sense,” I said, feigning delighted surprise. She beamed with the satisfaction of a young talent fulfilling her early-recognized potential. I noticed how she’d said the word “abortion” without so much as a glance at the cashier or the other shoppers in line behind us.
She did not ask about me, which was fine. At that moment I wasn’t ready to tell her the truth: that exactly two weeks and two days earlier I’d been on my back, hips tilted to the ceiling, while a nurse practitioner inserted a long syringe into my vagina. (The NP told me afterward that I had a “very small and mobile cervix,” an odd description that made it sound like a compact car). The clinic had offered to test my blood for pregnancy hormones as soon as ten days after the procedure, but I’d told them I would test at home—I wasn’t sure when. So far I felt perfectly, physiologically unchanged. If the procedure had worked, I would have a baby in the first week of July. If not, then my life would continue just as it had been. I could accept either possibility, was even enjoying that state of blissful, extended-yet-ephemeral suspense, when anything could still happen.
Still, it all felt too close to what had happened in the past, and to her present area of expertise, to tell Radhika. But I must’ve known she would find out. Of course she would.
* * *
“I wish I could bring you to our house and we could catch up properly.” She paused near the Wells Fargo counter, still talking, apparently unconcerned about her melting frozen peas. “But unfortunately we’re hosting a Día de los Muertos party at our house right now, with all our kids’ little friends. Our amazing nanny put the whole thing together.” She shot me a guilty look. “I was actually sort of hoping to miss it. But of course, today of all days, Labor & Delivery is completely empty, and I’m off early.”
“Ah,” I said. “Hence the leisurely trip to the grocery store.”
“Exactly!” She glanced ruefully at her half dozen bags, nestled in the cart like eggs in a nest. “But even this must come to an end.”
Feeling suddenly panicked at the thought of her leaving, I said, “I actually kind of like kids’ parties.”
I’ve always thought one reason people appreciate having me around is that I’m quick to go along with what others want. This makes it seem like I don’t really care one way or another what happens, like I’ll be happy however things turn out. But that’s not true. I care very much about how things turn out. I want things to go well, and right. It’s just that I don’t often trust that I’m the best person to make that happen. How can you ever be sure one way is the right way? What if another way might be better? I suppose you could say I’m easily swayed by other people’s suggestions, by alternative possibilities. The kind of person who can happily tag along on someone else’s weekend plans.
Radhika shot me a sort of sly, bemused look. “Really?”
I shrugged. “Really.”
* * *
The late afternoon was already turning toward dusk when we pulled up to Radhika’s house, a large Edwardian on a quiet corner, a few blocks from the plush shopping and dining area of Laurel Heights. Lit up like a jewel box with landscape lights, Jack-O-Lanterns grinning on the porch, and paper lanterns lining the walkways and windows, it looked like something from the pages of a children’s book. But it was clearly a grown-up house, with a manicured low-water landscape, Japanese maples flanking the sides, a stately knocker stuck on a royal blue front door. A pale half-moon hung over the roof like a good omen.
An automatic door whirred open and we dipped into the garage. Radhika pointed me to an enormous spare fridge, its shelves empty except for a case of Pellegrino and an unopened jar of Dijon mustard. I shoved my single grocery bag inside.
From a narrow hallway off the garage, I thought she would lead me through one of the two doors on either side, but she pointed up a flight of stairs. “Brace yourself for the chaos.”
At the top of the stairway was a laundry room that opened into a lustrous kitchen: wide countertops glowing under banks of recessed lighting, stainless steel appliances, glass-fronted cabinets. On the other side of the counter, ten small children sat around a table covered in newspaper, paintbrushes in hand, heads bowed over plaster skulls, little brows furrowed in concentration. A few glanced up at us. Two smiling faces landed on Radhika. “Mama!”
She waggled her fingers at them. “Those are my two. Sachin and Saniya.” She sounded bemused, almost bored, but also proud.
“They’ve been asking about you.” A man slid behind us and touched a possessive hand to the small of Radhika’s back. His other hand landed, firm and welcoming, on my shoulder. I turned to look at him: tall, squarely built, handsome in the most unsurprising way. Adam. She leaned coyly, almost imperceptibly, into his hand, the chemistry between them arresting yet contained. For the briefest moment they stood there like that, stunning in their physical perfection, gazing upon their two beautiful children.
The girl, Saniya, looked like Radhika, with dark skin, long lashes and thick black hair cut short around a heart-shaped face. Sachin was a head taller than his sister, even seated. His shoulders were wide and boyishly athletic, and he had a bony jaw and deep-set eyes that made him look almost distinguished. His skin was fair, his hair a fine chestnut brown. He was not so obviously Indian, could even have passed as white—his father’s son.
But Radhika and Adam were not the type of parents to stand there admiring their own offspring for long. “Have you been scrounging up party guests from the streets?” he said to her with a wink, then stepped back just enough to extend both arms, gripping my hand in his. Here was a man who clearly knew the splendor of his smile. And yet there was something unexpectedly humble, even vulnerable in his eyes. They told me everything I needed to know: he loved Radhika, and by extension he loved any friend of hers.
“Josie’s a dear friend from college.” Radhika gave my shoulders a little squeeze, and for a glorious moment I felt myself at the center of their combined, bodily attention. “We were serendipitously reunited in Safeway, of all places, and I convinced her to come over. Even though I warned her it would mean facing this zoo.” She flung a hand toward the skull-painting party.
Adam bestowed his smile on me once more and released my hand. “Brave of you to come, Josie. Even Radhika tried to get out of this one.” She gave him a jab in the ribs with her pointed elbow. Through a wincing grin he said, “Mercy’s got the kids in the palm of her hand, as usual.” He gestured toward the head of the table, where a young, dark-haired woman sat painting a skull and chatting with the children at her sides. I stared at her. She was girlishly athletic in jeans and flip flops, the sleeves of her white T-shirt rolled up to show her muscled arms. A few dark curls had pulled loose from her ponytail, framing her face: brown skin at her temples, a streak of green paint smudged across one cheek, thick eyebrows that fuzzed together over brown eyes, a small mouth.
“The nanny?” I heard myself ask, almost in a whisper.
Radhika sighed. “Only until July.”
“Where will she go in July?”
“Nowhere.” She picked up a bottle of white wine and a corkscrew. “We’re going to my parents’ in Chicago for a month. The kids will start Kindergarten when we get back.”
“Poor Rad.” Adam made a pouting face that wasn’t entirely mocking. “She really believes she won’t survive without Mercy.”
Radhika shook her head. “I’ve held onto her for too long. I have to let her go.”
“And we all know where she’ll end up,” said a voice behind us. A laughing, heavy-set woman ambled up from the table, where she’d been assisting with the art project. Adam introduced her as Mayra, and I could see immediately that she must be Mercy’s older sister. They had the same kind brown eyes and round cheeks, but this woman had fine lines at the corners of her mouth, large breasts, and the thick waist of a woman who had born children.
I wondered what she meant: Where Mercy was destined to end up after she left Radhika’s house? But I didn’t know how to put this question to her. Instead I said, “Which ones are yours?”
She pointed out two girls at the table, also dark-skinned and curly-haired, a bit older than Sachin and Saniya. “And yours?” she asked, her voice warm and inclusive.
“Oh, no, I…”
“Josie lives the intellectual life,” Radhika said, linking her elbow in mine. “She’s a writer.”
“Ah. One of your kind,” said Mayra.
Radhika held out a glass of white wine to me, but I shook my head. “Can I get you something else? A glass of red? A beer?”
“Thanks. I’ll stick with water.”
She shrugged and sipped from the glass herself. My eyes strayed back to Mercy, who was leaning over the shoulder of one of the children, a crescent of skin visible between the top of her jeans and her shirt. She was very young. I turned away, surprised by the dense heat of physical attraction that pulsed through me. The feeling was so strong that for a moment I almost forgot about that other, more complicated pull, the reason I was here: Radhika.
* * *
What if I’d never met her? Or what if I’d never run into her that day in Safeway? What if she were still dead? (That was actually how I thought about it: She’d been dead, and now she wasn’t anymore. Because that was how it felt.) Not that I wished this. But part of me wished, even then, that I could go back to when I’d still believed it.
Of course it’s never that simple. The counterfactual: what if this, what if that? That’s not a story. If I hadn’t read Radhika’s essay, then I might never have tried to get pregnant in the first place. And if I hadn’t seen her that day in Safeway, then I never would’ve met Mercy. These were harder realities to wish away, even as an experiment.
But all along it had been something I was supposed to do alone, with no one else’s help. That was the whole point. Of course Radhika’s influence had been at work from the beginning, and I knew it. But for that brief sliver of time, while my grocery bag was still tucked in the cold, dark cavern of Radhika’s fridge, my decisions and their consequences belonged entirely to me. That secret uncertainty, the solitary unknown. I loved that feeling. I still sometimes long for it.
2
After cupcakes and a piñata, everyone migrated to the front door to say their goodbyes. “But not you, Josie.” Radhika wrapped her long fingers around my wrist. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Within ten minutes the house was empty. Mercy had disappeared, I didn’t know where. Adam was hustling the twins upstairs for their baths. Radhika and I were seated at the kitchen table, a bouquet of paintbrushes soaking in a mason jar on the counter, a row of painted skulls watching us from the windowsill.
Before she could open her mouth, I told her, “Rad. I read your essay.”
“Oh!” she said, looking up from pouring the tea. “That essay. It was good of you to read it.” She’d sliced an apple for us to share, and made a pot of tea. Now she looked up from pouring the tea into two mugs.
“It was… incredible,” I said. “I learned so much about you. And there’s so much more I want to know.”
“Well, you’re going to get your wish. I got a book deal out of that essay.”
I swallowed. “You’re writing a book?”
“Yeah, like I didn’t have enough on my plate already. But I’m not complaining. I’m happy, obviously.” She pushed a mug toward me that read: OF ALL THE VAGINAS IN THE WORLD, I’M SO GLAD I TUMBLED OUT OF YOURS. HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!
I pointed to the mug. “From the kids?”
She rolled her eyes. “Adam. He really is the best husband in the world.”
I laughed and blew on my tea. “So what’s the book about?”
“They just want more of what’s in the essay: motherhood, abortion, hard choices.” She flicked a hand dismissively. “My agent and I came up with a chapter-by-chapter outline. Now I’ve just got to write it.” She looked at me, a smile playing on her lips. “And what about your writing? The great novel?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know if that’s ever going to happen.”
“Why not?”
“I guess you could say I have trouble with endings.”
“That’s funny. I always think of the ending as the easiest part. In college I always used to start with the ending, and then go back and write the rest.”
“I guess that’s one way to approach it.” I was remembering Radhika’s short stories in college, their formulaic simplicity. I remembered, too, the detailed notes she scribbled in the margins of each of my stories, annotating furiously with her red pen until the very last minute of class. And the lengthy, single-spaced critiques stapled to the back—not only for me, but for every single one of our classmates.
She peered at me now, through narrowed, smiling eyes. “So when can I see it?”
“The novel?”
“Yes, the novel.”
“Um, anytime. I mean, I can show you the most recent draft…”
“That’s what I mean.” She waved a hand through the air. “The draft. Will you send it tonight? When you get home?”
She had always been generous in that way—not with praise, but with a willingness to look closely enough at the most flawed and amateur piece of writing to find some merit, even some beauty in it. Radhika’s true talent, I’d known even in college, wasn’t as a writer. She was an editor.
“Yes,” I said.
She actually rubbed her hands together. “I can’t wait to read it.” Before I could respond with some self-deprecating caveat, she went on. “So what’s your process? When do you get your writing done?”
“Early mornings and evenings mostly, after I get home from work and a swim. I write a lot on the weekends.”
She grinned. “You’re still swimming.”
I nodded and told her about the pool at the JCC.
“That’s just a few blocks from here.”
Because I was afraid she’d ask me more about my writing, I started telling her about the late-afternoon pool crowd: The elderly ladies with their pool noodles, the men with their water-walking belts, the quiet, familiar routine. But I could see she was only half-listening. She seemed deep in thought.
“Hey,” she said after a moment. “I’ve got a great idea.” I held my breath. “Why don’t we workshop each other’s manuscripts? Like in college, only it’ll be just the two of us. We can swap our writing back and forth, a little bit at a time. You can finish your novel. And maybe I can write a draft of this damn book.”
I felt a brief tug. I thought of my quiet evenings at home with my laptop and my notebooks. The pan cooling on the stove, curling with the lacy edges of a fried egg. The ocean under a blanket of fog. My solitary, beloved writing time.
“It’ll be perfect,” she went on, breaking me out of my trance. “You’re exactly what I need: a writing buddy.” I smiled weakly at her. “And”—she gave the back of my hand a little slap—”I’m exactly what you need. A cheerleader, someone to read your work and tell you how good it is, but also show you how it could be better. Someone to keep telling you you’re going to finish this novel, you’re going to publish it, it’s going to be great.”
“Is that what I need?” I smiled despite myself.
“Yes, it is,” she said, and frowned. “And I need to finish this book before my deadline.”
“When’s your deadline?”
She chewed on her lip. “July.”
“When your nanny leaves.”
“Exactly.”
I thought about this for a moment. “That’s the publisher’s deadline? Or your own deadline?”
“Ha! See how smart you are.” She looked at me as though I were a precocious child. Then with a shrug, she said, “It’s both.”
I swallowed. Then I heard myself say. “Rad. There’s something else I haven’t told you.”
I explained all of it: The months of vague longing followed by a sudden certainty—making a point to emphasize the role of her essay in that decisive moment. The fertility clinic (the same one where her own frozen embryos were stored, as it turned out), the hastily chosen sperm donor. I watched her take it all in. I suppose I feared, or maybe hoped, that this news would change everything: who she thought I was, what she thought I was capable of.
“Just so I’m clear,” she said. “You’re doing this alone. Without a partner.”
“Yes.” My heart pounded in my throat.
“And—you’re gay, right?”
“Yes,” I said again, then added, “I know it might seem weird, because… I mean what happened in college…”
She held up a hand. “Josie. Do you know how many queer pregnant patients I take care of every week? I get it. Nothing in life is simple. Context is everything.”
I faltered, feeling at once deeply understood and categorically dismissed. Before I could respond, she said, “So… Are you saying what I think you’re saying? Have you actually been sitting here listening to me go on about my stupid book contract for the past hour when you could be pregnant? Right now?”
I laughed nervously. She clutched her hair in both hands. “I would be going crazy if I were you. When we were doing IVF I used to check a pregnancy test approximately four times a day.” This was one of the great paradoxes I would come to know about Radhika: I often got the feeling, and later she even said, that she didn’t particularly like being a mother. And yet it seemed—at least that night, and over the next few months—that nothing would make her happier than for me to become a mother, too.
She leaned back in her chair. “You know, at work we’ve got pregnancy tests lying around everywhere. I find them in the bottom of my purse the way other people find ball-point pens.” I laughed, but she looked me straight in the eye. “I’m serious. Do you want me to see if I’ve got one?”
“Actually,” I said, smiling a little, “I have one in my grocery bag.”
She leaned forward and grabbed my shoulders. “In my fridge?”
I blushed and laughed, beaming in the glow of her excitement.
“Go check!”
“Now?”
“Why not? When did you say your insemination was?”
“Sixteen days ago.”
“Josie.” She pulled me toward her, looking straight into my eyes. “What are you waiting for?” She pointed to a door off the kitchen. “The bathroom is right there.”
That was how I learned, for the second time in my life, that I was pregnant: the same two blue lines, the clear drops of urine on my thumb. Only this time, instead of vomiting in a dorm room wastebasket, I lay the white plastic stick face up on Radhika’s porcelain sink, washed my hands, and opened the door. I called out to her.
3
When Radhika was in medical school, I used to send her drafts of my short stories. Though she must have been incredibly busy, she always responded, sometimes the same day, with her astute comments and suggested revisions. These were more helpful than anything I could have gotten from my grad school classmates, even from most of my professors.
She assured me she loved doing this. It kept alive a part of her brain that would otherwise slowly wither away in medical school. “I miss thinking about words and stories. I’m jealous of you, Josie, truth be told. It turns out medicine isn’t for the faint of heart.”
This sounded like false modesty to me. Who would ever call Radhika “the faint of heart?”
Somewhat to my surprise, the story collection I completed as my master’s thesis won a First Book Award with a small, reputable press based in New Mexico. The stories all dealt with the same themes: a young girl who had lost her ambitious, energetic parents to a terrible accident, the vacuum of what it meant to go on living in their absence.
I wrote to Radhika immediately:
Hi Rad. Good news: Some stories I wrote won a small prize and are going to be published—my first book! (Not a novel yet. Maybe someday….) Can I ask you a huge favor? My editor and I are going through one more round of revisions before publication. I want it to be as good as it can be. Would you read the complete manuscript and tell me what you think?
A full two months passed. While I waited for her reply, I fiddled with the manuscript, making small edits here and there. I truly believed I would hear from her. When my editor nudged me for a third time, asking for my final edits, I wrote to her again.
Hi Radhika,
It’s been a while. You must be getting ready to graduate from med school. A brief update: the book is done and ready for publication! So please don’t worry about my earlier request to read it. I’ll send you a copy when it comes out—which won’t be for several months, anyway. In the meantime, when you have a moment, please tell me about what’s going on in your life. I’ve been thinking of you.
Your friend,
Josie
She responded within an hour:
Josie,
Thanks for your note, and sorry for being out of touch.
I’ve rather suddenly been diagnosed with breast cancer—it seems to be quite advanced. So life has been a bit topsy turvy. The Ob-Gyn residency director at Northwestern is holding a spot for me, hopefully for next year. In the meantime my family and my boyfriend, Adam, are tremendous sources of support. I’ll do all that I can, and plan to be back with you before too long.
And Josie, congratulations on the book. I’m sure it’ll be a smashing success.
xoxo
Rad
I hit REPLY and sat staring at the blank email window. I thought of how impatient and self-centered I’d been, sitting here all these weeks waiting for Radhika’s praise and congratulations, wondering if I’d done something to upset or offend her. I thought of all the things I could write to her now—that I owed the completion of this book to her, that in a way I felt my life was inseparable from hers, tangled up in a knot of admiration and appreciation and need. But it all seemed inadequate and too much at the same time. She had her family, and her boyfriend. She was a doctor, or practically a doctor. What could she possibly need from me?
After a long time, I wrote her the shortest, simplest note I could, telling her I would be thinking of her. I couldn’t bring myself to use the word “pray,” even though I wanted a word like that, bigger than “hope” or “future.”
* * *
At our five-year college reunion that spring, I ran into a classmate who happened to be an oncology fellow at Northwestern. When I inserted Radhika’s name into our conversation, he mentioned that he’d been involved in her diagnosis and care. “Best case scenario,” he said, brimming with his secret, specialized knowledge, “she’s got seven to ten years.”
I kept track of her for a while. She was an intern, then a second-year resident. In a photo on the Northwestern Ob-Gyn website, I could see the markings of her illness: hair cropped close to her hollowed temples; cheekbones like birds’ wings. But I could also see the fire in her. Even in a blurry internet photo, it burned hotter than ever.
The following year there was a short New York Times wedding announcement:
Radhika Radhakrishna, 27, daughter of Harini and Prashanth Radhakrishna of La Grange, Illinois, will be married to Adam Chevalier, 28, son of Margaret and Richard Chevalier of Los Angeles, CA.
So, she had survived. At least for now. But I kept thinking of our classmate’s grim prognosis. Seven to ten years.
After a while I stopped typing her name into my internet search field, too afraid I would find her obituary.
Christine Henneberg is a practicing physician and award-winning memoirist whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. Her memoir, Boundless: An Abortion Doctor Becomes a Mother, was the winner of the 2022 Publisher’s Weekly BookLife Prize in Non-fiction, and her essay, “Why I Provide Abortions,” was selected by Robert Atwan as a notable essay in Best American Essays of 2022. I Trust Her Completely is her first novel.