The Unfinished Child (12 page)

“Barry,” she whispered. “Are you awake?”

“Hmm.”

“Wake up. I need to talk to you.”

“What time is it?” He squinted into the dark and ran his tongue over his chapped lips.

“This is serious, Barry,” she said. “I need you to listen.”

“Okay, okay. I’m awake.” He rolled onto his side and propped himself on one elbow. His right cheek was deeply lined with pillow creases. White flakes of saliva had dried onto his bottom lip. “Okay,” he said again, suppressing a yawn. “I’m listening.”

“I think there’s something wrong with the baby.” She put her hands over her face to stifle her sobs.

“What are you talking about?”

“Something woke me up and suddenly I had this feeling that something’s wrong.”

He looked dazed. “Are you in pain?”

“No, it’s nothing physical. I mean, it
is
physical, but there’s nothing specific that happened. I just feel it, that there’s something wrong.”

Barry sat upright in bed and let the covers slide from his bare chest. He rubbed at his eyes. “Jesus, Marie. What do you mean by wrong?”

Marie couldn’t pinpoint the problem. It was free-floating and unidentifiable.

“I don’t know. I just know something’s not right.”

Goosebumps formed on Barry’s arms. Marie drew him back under the covers and rested her head on his chest. His heart beat a strong rhythm. He put his arm around her and held her close.

“How far along are you?”

He should know this, she thought. He shouldn’t leave it all up to me.

“I’m not exactly sure. If this had been planned, I’d know, but I’m guessing it’s eight weeks. Give or take a little.”

They lay quietly together. A car drove by, its headlights straffing the bedroom ceiling.

“You should call Dr. Cuthbert.”

“And tell her what? That I’m pregnant?”

“No, tell her you think there’s something wrong. Maybe she could run a test or something.”

Marie didn’t respond. She knew it was too early for tests.

“But there’s no sense getting worked up about this. We don’t have any real evidence to say we should be concerned,” Barry added.

“Other than I never had this feeling with the other pregnancies.”

She cast her mind back to the early years of having an infant. Changing soiled diapers and walking with a crying baby seemed like a lifetime ago. Nicole had been such an easy baby; she’d just nursed and slept for the first few months of her life. And two years later, when Sophia was born, they realized just how lucky they’d been. Suddenly, when she was ten days old, Sophia started to cry. At first, Marie assumed she had eaten something she shouldn’t have, and that the offending food had worked its way into her breast milk. But the crying didn’t stop. Day and night Sophia cried, her face red and scrunched up, her legs kicking in anger and pain. A week went by. And then another. Dr. Cuthbert shook her head in sympathy.
We don’t know what causes colic, exactly, but we do know that it usually ends at the three-month mark. Give or take a few days.
She and Barry had gone home and marked a big red X on the calendar on a date three months down the road. Then they continued to take turns passing the screaming baby.

It had been the longest three months of her life. When Barry left for work in the morning, Marie cried because she was afraid she might harm the baby. She remembered holding Nicole in her arms, tears streaming down her own cheeks, while Sophia screamed in another room. And she remembered how mad she was that no one in her family offered to help. Frances, still single at the time, was busy at university and never thought to drop by and relieve her sister. Her brother, Joe, was already married and had two kids of his own. She didn’t expect any help from him. Or from her father, for that matter, who was in his final years of working and preparing for retirement. But she was very disappointed that her mother never stepped in to offer a hand. Mothers were supposed to
mother
, but Fay had made it abundantly clear that she’d already done her parenting. It was unspoken, but she had raised three children, with little help from her husband, or anyone else for that matter, and her job was done. Finally she was free to travel and do things for herself.

Elizabeth had been the only one to show up with a meal.

No, the baby stage wasn’t easy. Seen in the distance it loomed like Everest.

“We need to talk,” Marie said, glancing at the clock. “Do you know what you want?”

“I was slowly getting used to the idea of having a baby in the house again. But if there’s something wrong with it . . .” He hesitated. “If you said you didn’t want this baby, then I’d say don’t have it.”

Tears stung her eyes. “And if
you
said you really didn’t want another baby, then I’d say the same thing. Or at least I
would
have, but it’s a bit late now, isn’t it?”

Barry had closed his eyes. The whiskery half of his face had disappeared into the shadows.

“Remember how easy it was with Nicole?” she said. “We couldn’t wait to have a baby.”

Barry smiled and nodded.

“And it was the same with Sophia.”

“We wanted Nicole to have a sibling,” he said.

“Yeah, someone to talk about her parents with. But maybe now, if we’re both so ambivalent, then maybe we’re not supposed to have another child.”

“Being ambivalent doesn’t mean we won’t love it,” Barry said.

“I know,” Marie said, but she was older now. She didn’t have as much energy. And she was scared now too.

Barry laughed softly. “We’ve jumped rather quickly into imagining ourselves with a disabled child.”

“It’s not funny.” She bristled as she stepped out of bed. “Anyway, it’s not like we’re
deciding
whether or not to get pregnant. That part’s already done.” She had always been so careful in her life. What insurance would cover this? Genetic mutation insurance? Fear of having an imperfect child insurance? Your life has been wrecked insurance?

She shivered in the chill air. She felt caught in someone else’s life, having the kind of conversation that teenaged lovers have when they discover an unwanted pregnancy. But she was almost forty; she wasn’t supposed to be talking about aborting a child. She pulled her robe on and knotted the sash at her waist. She already had two children. And she loved her husband. Good people didn’t talk about terminating pregnancies under such conditions, did they?

It was still dark. She felt Barry’s eyes follow her across the room.

“You’d better hurry up,” she said over her shoulder. “We’re running a bit late.”

“Will you call the doctor?” he asked.

She turned back to the bed. Barry sat with his knees drawn up, his eyes deep hollows in his face. He looked like a child ready to spit up in a bowl. She walked back to him and placed her palm on his forehead. His arms circled around her waist.

“I’ll phone later.”

She knew there was little a doctor could tell her now. But maybe he was right. The doctor should be informed at each step.

Downstairs at last,
Marie scrambled some eggs for her daughters and set out the cereal, toast, coffee, and juice for Barry’s breakfast. Then she made cheese sandwiches and put them in Ziploc bags inside the girls’ brown paper sacs. She added an apple to each bag, two homemade cookies, and a juice box.

The girls zipped up their winter coats, and she kissed them goodbye. The fresh snow muffled the sounds of their boots and the cars driving slowly by on the unplowed road. The snow continued to fall. At the front window she watched Nicole and Sophia make tracks in the unmarked snow. They walked a large circle in the yard and then started to cut across it as if to make a maze. Marie looked at her watch and tapped on the window. She gestured toward the corner. The girls stared at her for a moment and then stepped out onto the freshly shovelled sidewalk before walking down the middle of the road to the corner. A group of kids already stood there waiting, throwing snowballs and making snow angels.

The sky was grey and low. Snow swirled from its murky depths. The naked elm trees looked as if they were single-handedly keeping the sky from falling.

Minutes later, the school bus pulled to a stop at the corner. The kids automatically lined up, their snowsuits bright as gumdrops. Then the bus and the children soundlessly disappeared.

Marie returned to
the kitchen and began her morning cleanup. This was the favourite part of her day, when the house was completely empty and she could return things to their proper place and remove every fingerprint from every surface. She rinsed the dishes and loaded them into the dishwasher. With a fresh dishcloth she wiped the counters and the table. She sprayed the toaster with Windex and heard her sister’s voice, “Is that the same toaster you got at your wedding? It looks brand new.” Or, “Hey, Marie, I see a fingerprint on your toaster.” She said it as if it were a criticism, as if nobody else in the world took good care of their possessions. Marie stood back to survey her work. She was pleased to be in control of the standards in her own home. It had been a long time coming. Growing up she’d had to battle against her sister’s slothful ways. Cleaning the kitchen together had been unbearable. Frances always wanted to wash instead of dry the dishes. So Marie would wait, towel in hand, and Frances would plow through the dirty pile as if the house was on fire. Dish after dish filled the drying rack, all with some kind of crud left on them. Marie would refuse to dry them if they were dirty, and Frances would refuse to wash them again after a second rinse. “It’s good enough!” she’d hiss through clenched teeth, and then she’d drain the sink and leave the greasy residue to set into a hard crust.

When the kitchen was clean and a load of laundry was in the wash, Marie phoned the doctor’s office and made an appointment. Then she phoned Barry.

She could picture him in his office on the twenty-first floor, the phone cradled against his shoulder. His window faced south and overlooked the river valley. It was a lovely view. South of the river were four glass pyramids, the Muttart Conservatory, that squatted like giant icebergs pushed up from the river’s depths. Farther still and toward the east, billows of smoke from the tall stacks at Refinery Row would obscure his view of Sherwood Park. To the west, the High Level Bridge spanned the river like a long line of boxcars shunted together. Beyond it, the varied buildings of the university huddled along the south banks.

“I’ve made a doctor’s appointment for late Friday afternoon. Can you come with me?”

“What time?”

“Four o’clock.”

“Do you want me to?”

“If you don’t want to come, just say so.”

What Barry really wanted to know was if his presence was necessary. Was it just another appointment or would she find anything out? Despite her irritation, she didn’t want to hang up on him.

The backs of her hands had blue veins on them, thick as earthworms. She had aged imperceptibly. While sleeping, while sweeping the floor. She pictured her husband slumped heavily in his chair at work, his jowls pushing out from his freshly starched collar.

The premonition tapped her on the shoulder. She turned to find an empty room.

She walked to the sliding glass doors that led to the backyard. The children’s snow fort had collapsed onto one side. February and its drabness stretched out before her.

I want it to be spring, she thought. I want the trees to bud and the robins to sing.

An airplane crossed the sky like a zipper parting the clouds.

Not a spot of colour anywhere she looked.

Why this orderly insisted on
leading her was baffling. She knew the way by heart—the map had been permanently seared into her memory. Carolyn was sixteen now, and Margaret had been visiting for twelve years. Once a month, predictable as her own cycle, she nodded wordlessly to the driver of the asylum bus, stepped up the narrow stairs, and avoided eye contact with the other passengers. Sometime during her early visits to Poplar Grove her reflexes had dulled to the abuse and misery she witnessed around her because she knew that she didn’t really have other options. To raise her voice against the injustices would sooner or later involve her husband and children; she’d kept her secret for too long, and Carolyn still needed a home.

The air grew thicker with each step that brought her closer to the mongoloids, housed in the west wing. To see them all together at the same time was to witness a macabre family reunion, so much did they resemble one another, with their broad faces, slanted eyes, and thick wrestler’s necks. Nothing made her daughter stand out in this crowd. Carolyn, who could feed and dress herself, was as much a societal reject as the rest of them. She more resembled the other mongoloids than she did her flesh-and-blood brother and sister. In fact, when Margaret looked deep into her first-born daughter’s eyes, cupping Carolyn’s dimpled chin in her hand and gripping hard to keep eye contact, she saw no hint of her own genetic makeup or that of her husband’s. Nothing. If she hadn’t birthed the child herself, suffering through the long contractions until her body released the six and a half pounds of sadness, she’d have in good faith denied all familial ties.

Her first visit a dozen years ago had been the hardest, and it appeared to Margaret that the conditions inside Poplar Grove had improved modestly over time. Or perhaps she had lost the ability to be shocked. Still, as she followed the male orderly down an endless yet familiar hallway and through another locked door, she couldn’t help but notice how the stench intensified. She could be a seagull at the dump, diving quick and hard for any scrap of spoiled food. Or a crow diving for shiny bits of treasure. What did she dive for here? A smile? Maybe what she dived for was reconciliation. If Margaret could love and accept her damaged daughter, maybe it would erase the pain of having been abandoned by her own mother. It wasn’t her fault she’d gone to the creek that day. Her mother was wrong about that. Stuart Jenkins would have found her in the chicken coop, in the barn, or in the garden. She knew that now. Margaret had never considered bringing her other children to visit. It was unthinkable. James and Rebecca were teenagers now too, and it was impossible to imagine springing the news of a mongoloid sister on them.