"Hi, Mom. What’s up, Hillary?"

"Jeffrey!" When my son stepped into the elevator, his daughter turned her face to the wall, and I snatched the shawl I was wearing across my chest, protectively. He was the last person either of us wanted to see today.

"Where are you two headed?" Jeffrey said, and hitched up his jeans slightly. "You didn’t tell me at breakfast you were going anywhere today."

"We’re fine, dear," I said. "What floor do you need?"

"Twelve."

I pressed the number. When we got there, I would just have to hide in the restroom until Jeffrey got to wherever he was going. He couldn’t see me going to the clinic which was on the same floor. He couldn’t. The elevator lurched upward. Jeffrey pulled at the inseams of his jeans, close to the crotch. "You’re getting too big for your britches," I said, trying to keep my voice casual.

"Same as ever," Jeffrey replied. "One eighty-five." He glanced at Hillary who was crouched in the right corner of the elevator, a cassette player’s thin wires plugged into her ears. Her curly blonde hair framed her face softly; she looked like an angel, even though she was dressed completely in black-jacket, shirt, pants, boots. Jeffrey smiled at her, and she closed her eyes. In a moment, she was knocking her head from side to side with hard jerks.

The light above the door clicked to eight. There was a sudden loud grinding noise and the elevator thudded to a stop. "Damn," I said. "What now?"

"Beats me," Jeffrey said.

"Feels like we’re stuck," Hillary said, opening her eyes.

I don’t like surprises. I pressed the red button marked EMERGENCY. Nothing happened. I tried again. Same result. "Damn," I said, again. I was more concerned with being late for my appointment than I was with the thought of imminent danger. I had to make this appointment. I had to make it today.

Jeffrey scratched himself next to the zipper of his jeans. "It’s jammed," he said. "Kaput. We’re not going anywhere."

"I don’t think Hillary should see you scratch yourself there," I said, distracted, momentarily, from my own personal dilemma by my son’s uncouth gesture. "Where’s your self-control?"

"Sorry. I can’t help it." He studied the trap door in the ceiling of the elevator. "Maybe I should try to climb through there to get help." He scratched again.

"Stop that scratching at once!" I didn’t shout, but I wanted to. He was uncomfortable in an area where I had washed him hundreds of times as a child, but at the moment he was my son and a man pawing his private parts in a public place. "Stop it," I said, quietly, but still stern.

Jeffrey hung his head. "Ma, " he said. "I’ve got.....you know...it itches all the time and, you know....."

"No, I don’t know," I said. But then a word came to me, a word which I didn’t even realize I remembered from a very long time ago, something my ex-husband had told me about his young days in the army, before I’d met him. Something to do men on leave? Unclean women? Constant irritation? I remembered, and leaned closer to Jeffrey. "Do you have crabs?" I whispered. The word sounded raunchy and contagious on my tongue.

"Right." He scratched again.

"Jesus Christ, Dad, I’m starting to itch just looking at you!" Hillary pulled out her headphones. "What’s the matter, did you your jeans shrink?" She opened the cassette player, extracted a tape, and flipped it over.

"We’ll be out of here soon," Jeffrey said. He leaned against the wall, crossed his legs and rubbed his thighs together, like two meaty matchsticks he was trying to start a fire with. I found this gesture almost as grotesque as the handling of his crotch. "I guess," he said, ineffectively.

"Dad, you look like you’re about to pee in your pants," Hillary said. "You look gross." She glared first at her father and then at me. "What’s wrong with this freakin’ elevator? I don’t want to be in here the rest of my life. I’ve got things to do."

"You never told me where you two were going," Jeffrey said. His legs stilled, and he shoved both hands into the side pockets of his jeans, in an effort, I hoped, at proper restraint.

Here it comes I thought. Just take it easy. "I have an appointment," I said. "and so does-"

"Grandma’s having an AIDS test," Hillary said. "My Grandma, the swinging single." She shoved the tape into the player, hit a button, and poked the wires back into her ears. I watched her, incredulous, as she removed her black jacket, bunched it up, and, using it to cushion her head, lay down on the floor. The last thing I ‘d expected Hillary to do was blurt out where I was going, and why. When I had told her I was having the test done, proud of my uncharacteristic openness with her, she hadn’t, I thought, judged me for being sexually active and having a desire to be safe, not sorry. She’d only asked to come along "to get some information." I hadn’t planned on telling Jeffrey about the test until I had the results back. It was too late for that now. My son was looking at me, as the cliché goes, eyes wide and mouth open.

"My mother might have AIDS!" Jeffrey said. His expression was a cross between concern and amazement. "My mother!"

"It’s a long shot," I whispered. I had slept with ten men in the same number of years since I had divorced Jeffrey’s father. Ten fine, decent members of the community.

Ten morally upright men. Church goers all. It had certainly never occurred to me to worry about becoming infected with the HIV virus until Gary, number eleven, insisted that we have the tests. I had balked, and Gary told me we would never have sex. I made an appointment the very next day.

I wished the elevator would start.

Jeffrey spoke again, slowly. "I guess this means Pop might have AIDS too."

"There were other men after your father," I said, smoothing my braids, which were pinned to the sides of my head. If the time had come for my son to hear about his mother’s promiscuous behavior, then so be it. "He is not at risk. Don’t worry. This is between me and," I paused, "The men I’ve been with, if it comes to that."

"The men you-" All at once, Jeffrey grinned. "All those nights you were gone, I thought you were out with the girls playing mah jong or something boring like that," he said. "And you were really out doing the wild thing!"

It was my turn to be shocked, but I said, "Of course I was doing more than- that, Jeffrey. We went to movies, and museums, and-" I searched my memory. "Car shows. State fairs." But surely you realize, I thought suddenly, that doing the "wild thing" as you call it with these men is what brought me here in the first place? I tried to think of a simple way to end this very, very, complex conversation.

As if on cue, Hillary sat up, slapped her hand against the side of the elevator and said, "Come on, you. Start! Start!" The elevator lurched and began to ascend. The lights above the door blinked to ten and then eleven, and finally, twelve. I wanted go back down to the lobby and somehow reverse the last ten years and start all over again. The elevator jolted to a stop and the door slid open. The raised blue letters of the clinic sign, "Public Health and Family Planning Center" greeted our eyes simultaneously.

Hillary was the first one out. "Maybe it should be called pubic health," she said to Jeffrey and me. Her features were tight with determination or disgust, I couldn’t tell which. I didn’t like her choice of words, but who could blame her? Her father had been within two feet of her for a full ten minutes, unable to keep his hands off his fetid crotch. Because of my own irresponsibility, I might be carrying a lethal disease. I watched as Hillary bounded over to the registration desk. "I’d like to make an appointment for a pelvic exam," she said, loud enough for everyone in the crowded waiting room to hear. "And a Pap smear. I’m thinking about going on the Pill." Her requests to the nurse sounded to me like orders for fast food.

Jeffrey and I signed in and we sat down, side by side, in two blood red chairs. Hillary filled out a stack of forms and then lounged on the floor next to the wall near us, ear plugs back in, head gyrating maniacally.

"She reminds me of Mona when she’s like that," Jeffrey said, and laughed. "Kind of wild. Out of control. Devil may care."

Lucky for Mona she can’t see us here today, I thought. Unless she’s got a good view from heaven. How would Mona feel about her daughter having sex at the age of sixteen? Or a husband with a groin louse? Or a wanton mother-in-law? I wanted to say something wise to mitigate the licentious revelations of the day, but instead exclaimed, "When I was her age, the Pill hadn’t even been invented yet!"

"Probably not. And I guess rubbers don’t keep a guy from getting crotch rot."

He rubbed his jeans zipper with the palm of his hand, up and down, up and down. I stared at the hand and he stopped. That’s what you get for sleeping with whores, I wanted to say.

I heard my name called.

"Good luck," Jeffrey said, and patted my arm. Hillary gave me a thumbs up from the floor. As I crossed the lobby, I felt like I was caught up in an insalubrious game of carnal serendipity with my boyfriend, my child, and my grandchild; it was a game that I had the best chance of losing; it had never occurred to me that the fulfillment of need could lead to the possibility of struggle and suffering. The nurse, resembling Countess

Dracula, beckoned me. I followed her down a dark corridor, shuddering with apprehension, ungrateful for the loves of my post-marital life.