The Unfinished Child (18 page)

Her frizzy grey hair was pinned haphazardly behind her ears, and he noted that her ankles were swollen beneath her transparent stockings. She had a washed-out look to her as if she’d been on her feet for days and only just found a place to rest. He judged her to be somewhere in her late fifties or early sixties and felt sure she wouldn’t last long in her position.

“Nurse . . .”

“Langford,” she offered. “Alice Langford.”

“Nurse Langford, there’s an infant in Room 5 who is in need of a change. I found her unfed and in a state of distress.”

“Room 5? What’s a baby doing in Room 5?”

“Do you mean to tell me no one told you to look in on her?”

Throughout the entire conversation Nurse Langford kept her eyes on the television. “Nope. It’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

He threw his hands in the air to register his disgust. “Just see to it that she’s cared for,” he said angrily. “If I come in tomorrow morning and she’s not clean and fed, you’ll be looking for a new position. Have I made myself clear?”

Clean and fed? What new standards was he asking of the staff? He raced to the front door and breathed in the summer air with relief. Gravel crunched under his shoes as he walked briskly to the parking lot. The red brick building of Poplar Grove was a dark shadow behind him, a nightmare from which he couldn’t quite wake. That child should not be here, he thought. No child should be here. His arms felt empty because his instincts told him he should take the infant home.

Not now, he told himself. In the morning he would write to Mrs. Harrington and inform her that her daughter had given birth. The sooner that child was removed from Poplar Grove the better.

After the children had finally
gone to bed and the nighttime kisses had been exchanged, Marie put the kettle on for tea. Fluorescent lights glared from the kitchen ceiling. Beside the sink, the dishwasher churned noisily. She put two teabags in a teapot and ran a cloth over the countertop as she waited for the kettle to boil. Barry walked into the room behind her. She could feel his gaze upon her and wondered what he saw. Had he noticed the greying roots that were now starting to appear in her once-dark hair? Was he comparing her figure today with the one that had first caught his attention almost twenty years earlier? Probably not. He was not critical of her in the same way that she was of him.

She kept her back to him and scrubbed the sink, pretending not to know he was there. Out of the corner of her eye she saw his dark reflection in the window above the sink. Her hands kept moving. She wasn’t ready to face her husband yet. Her anger had disappeared as the evening wore on, replaced, as usual, with regret for how unfair she was to him. It had been helpful to have Frances at the house when they’d returned from the doctor’s office. She had stayed for dinner and gradually the ice had thawed between Marie and her husband as Frances voiced one opinion after another on issues ranging from agriculture and drought to interest rates and
UN
policies. She knew all kinds of things about large issues, but when it came to the day-to-day things, she was quite clueless. Ask her how much a loaf of bread cost, and she’d give you a blank look as if it was an irrelevant piece of information. The only information she retained was the kind she thought would impress people. To her, knowing the cost of groceries was pathetically domestic and reeked of failed feminism. But that might change, Marie thought, now that Frances had a child. She’d have to have food on hand at home sometimes. She couldn’t just keep opting out. Marie shook her head: All that education, and Frances never seemed to apply it to daily living.

The kettle finally whistled.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked Barry.

“Please.”

“Come and sit down,” she said. “I can’t talk to you when you’re pacing like that.”

Barry’s chair scraped along the wood floor. She’d asked him a million times not to drag the chairs because it scratched the wood. But he was on edge. She didn’t need to pick another fight now.

“What are we going to do about the baby?” he asked.

What he really meant was what was
she
going to do about the baby. Barry had always left all domestic decisions to Marie; for him, this would be just another thing that he’d hope she’d take care of. But she wasn’t going to take care of it all herself. No.

She took a sip of tea. Licorice. Black licorice. She had eaten pounds of it as a kid. Summer and long, sticky black ropes sprinkled with sand. She stirred in a spoonful of honey.

“Isn’t it kind of soon to be talking about it?” she said. “We can’t really make any decisions until we know if there’s something wrong because if we were to end the pregnancy now, would we be deciding not to have another child because we really didn’t
want
one, or because we were afraid it wasn’t well?”

“I don’t see what difference that would make,” Barry replied.

“But could you live without knowing?”

“Not knowing what?” he said. “Whether it was sick or well? You already said you think there’s something wrong with the baby. I swear every time I got in my car today I had a bloody
DATS
van shadowing me. Am I supposed to get prepared or something?”

“But what if I’m wrong?”

He threw his hands in air.

The dishwasher moved to its next cycle. Water gushed loudly into the drain.

“What do you mean, what if you’re wrong?”

“A premonition is just a
feeling
,” Marie said. “It isn’t necessarily accurate.”

The phone rang. In the stillness it sounded like an alarm going off. Marie started; the phone rarely rang after nine o’clock at night.

“Let the machine get it,” Barry said. “It’s probably just Frances with another bit of wisdom to dispense.”

The phone continued to ring. Finally, the answering machine picked up, but all they heard was a dial tone. It would bug her all night now, wondering who had phoned.

“It can’t have been important,” Barry said. “So we get the tests done and then we decide.”

“Maybe we should decide now whether we want a baby or not.”

“What difference does it make if we decide now or later?”

She stared at her husband in disbelief. “Well, first of all, I’ll be pregnant for that much longer, and it’ll be harder to terminate if we decide to go that route. And second of all, having an abortion means you don’t want a child.
Any
child. Terminating a pregnancy after finding out something’s wrong means you don’t want an
imperfect
child. There’s a
huge
difference.” Her voice had risen. “Having a baby isn’t like buying a house. You don’t get to pick the colour of your baby’s hair like you do the fixtures in your bathroom or the paint for your walls.”

“Shhh,” he hissed. “Don’t get so worked up. I don’t want to argue about this. I just want to find out what we both want.”

Marie forced herself to remain seated. “Are you saying you’re okay to have this baby, no matter what?”

“No, I’m not saying that. Don’t put words into my mouth. What if it needs constant care?” he asked. “Is that fair to the girls?”

“Other people do it.”

“Other people do lots of things that we don’t do, so don’t make me the bad guy, Marie. You’re the one who started all this. I’d have been fine to have another baby if you hadn’t told me something was wrong with it.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Marie threw her hands up in complete surrender. “Has the Barry I married been replaced with another man?” He didn’t do anything spontaneously. This was the man who hadn’t changed his brand of cereal for twenty years. The man who never deviated from routine. And wasn’t it this very quality in him, his desire to know the outcome before taking any action, that had made her, over the years, less spontaneous and more restrained in the things she did? It didn’t seem fair that he was looking at her now as if she were the one who was unwilling to be daring.

“I thought you’d be first in line for testing. I’ve seen you read the last pages of a book to find out what’s going to happen before you even start! How can you say that you wished you didn’t know?”

“Because I never would have thought something might be wrong. The other two pregnancies were fine, why wouldn’t this one be fine too?”

“Oh, so it’s my fault?” Marie asked, her voice rising.

The dishwasher finished its cycle and the room fell into a hushed silence.

Marie pictured the small writing on the calendar, three weeks away, that marked the date of her ultrasound appointment. Barry was right. The waiting was going to kill them both. Maybe she’d miscarry before then and solve everything. That was the body’s natural way of eliminating embryos that weren’t healthy. She moved from hope to guilt in two seconds. That was no solution to wish for. If it happened, okay, but to wish for it . . . Plus, that little baby was probably suctioned on for dear life. Literally. Nothing would jar it from its home.

Barry pushed his chair back and nodded toward the stairs. “Come on to bed.” He squeezed her shoulder as he walked by.

She placed the palm of one hand on her belly. Her own heartbeat pulsed back. It was too late now for a normal pregnancy. She sat for some time lost in thought. Finally, she picked up the teapot and cup and carried them to the sink. Then she unloaded the dishwasher and ran a cloth over the table and countertops.

At the doorway she stopped for a quick survey. The floor had been swept. The counters were clean. The sink was empty and the stainless steel shining. Everything was in its proper place, ready for the morning. Everything except her old life, the one that was safe and good.

She turned off the light and followed her husband up the stairs.

Three weeks passed. The days
gradually lengthened. March was around the corner and spring and optimism were in the air.

In the doctor’s waiting room Marie sat perched on the edge of her seat, her bladder so full that she could concentrate on little else. She squeezed her thighs together and covered her lap with her purse so she could clutch her crotch discreetly.

She’d been told to drink eight cups of water before her appointment because, as the receptionist had told her, a full bladder lifts the womb and gives a better picture of the baby.

Marie had nodded. She’d been through this procedure twice before. But this time she’d drunk so much water that the baby must be floating around her heart. She rocked back and forth to distract herself.

“Think of something else,” Barry said, patting her on the knee.

“I’m trying to!”

She focused on the carpet. The tables. The chairs. The fluorescent lights in the ceiling.

Half a dozen other pregnant women sat in stockinged feet reading magazines. None of them appeared to be in as much discomfort. One woman wore a long-sleeved shirt with a picture of Mickey Mouse on it.
DISNEYLAND
, the shirt screamed. Frances would love that. Long ago she’d vowed never to be caught dead in Disneyland, let alone pay to advertise for them. But she’d see. She’d take Max one day. He’d beg and plead and she’d give in because she loved him. Nicole and Sophia had sure enjoyed their trip. She had too.

Finally they called Marie’s name and a nurse led her to a small cubicle, handed her a white paper gown, and asked her to undress.

Marie clutched at herself again and danced from one foot to the other, turning this way and that, contorting and clenching her muscles to stop the flow of urine that begged to be released. She had never in her life undressed when her bladder was so full without being able to relieve herself. After two pregnancies, her muscular control wasn’t quite what it used to be. Thankfully, the nurse appeared as soon as she was finished and led her down a hallway lined with doors.

The room was not much larger than her pantry at home, just big enough to house the examination table and a small desk upon which a computer sat. The lights were dim. Everything looked grey or black beneath the low ceiling. To distract herself, she began to count the holes in one of the false panels directly over her head. The door opened suddenly and the technician appeared. She was a young woman, in her late twenties. A thick chestnut ponytail divided her shoulder blades. Small, dark-rimmed glasses perched on the top of her nose. She said hello and took a moment to examine Marie’s file. What was in it? Marie MacPherson. Aged thirty-nine. Mother of two. No allergies. Broke a collarbone skiing when nineteen. Accidentally pregnant. Old. Scared.

Marie lay on her back and undid the sash that held her gown closed. She flinched when the technician applied a cold gel to her bare belly and ran a transducer in small circles over her swell.

“You drank too much water,” she said immediately. “You’ll have to go to the bathroom and let half out.”

Marie snorted, certain it was a joke, but the technician had already turned away. So she closed her gown, gingerly descended from the table, and almost ran down the hall to the bathroom. Holding it in was virtually impossible now that she had permission to actually go to the bathroom. She barely made it to the toilet and, with great muscular control, emptied her bladder of half its contents. The relief was immense.

She climbed onto the examination table again, and the technician picked up the transducer and paused for a moment, suspending it in the air. It was sleek and long and slightly rounded at the bottom. It reminded Marie of one of those hand-held soup mixers, the ones you submerged right into the pot to puree your vegetables. The technician put cold jelly onto Marie’s belly again and moved the transducer in wide sweeps before zeroing in on the right spot. Then she positioned herself behind the computer with its glowing screen.

Tap, tap, tap
went the technician’s fingers as she connected a shape with an organ, another with a limb, moving from one image to the next.
Tap, tap, tap.
Her fingers moved from the keyboard to the transducer. She focused on the spine, the heart, the brain. She isolated the limbs.
Tap, tap, tap.
Sound waves bounced off Marie’s baby and were projected onto the screen. The technician scrutinized the images, her lips pursed in concentration. Instinctively, Marie trusted her. Sometimes a person had that effect. Sometimes you just met somebody and you knew right away that you could leave your children with her.