The Unfinished Child (30 page)

She stepped out into the rain and pulled her jacket tight to her neck. Dr. Maclean could help her. She stepped around the dirty puddles on the sidewalk. He would help convince Marie to let the child live.

When the light changed she crossed the intersection.

Why hadn’t she been more persuasive? She hadn’t said that she’d love the baby as if it were hers, but that should go without saying because Marie knew how much Elizabeth wanted a baby. Yet she hadn’t rehearsed any of it. How could she have? She didn’t know about Marie’s test results. There was no way she could she have prepared herself better.

She reached her shop and went straight to her office. The rest of the afternoon sped by, and soon she was in her car, heading home. In the stalled afternoon traffic, under the soft rays of the lingering sun, she picked her bottom lip until a thin strand of skin tore off and she tasted blood.

She wanted that baby.

Not since her last round of failed in vitro sessions had she wanted something so badly.

Yet here she was, placing her fate in another person’s hands. Again. What if she didn’t get what she wanted?

She gripped the steering wheel to erase the image of her own devastation. It was too much to contemplate. Now that Marie knew she had another option, that her best friend would raise the child as if it were her own, she wouldn’t terminate the pregnancy. She couldn’t.

Could she?

She licked her lips and tasted blood. A nervous giddiness lightened her stomach. Down syndrome. It wasn’t so bad, was it? Certainly there were worse things. The girl would know she was loved and she’d return that love too. Elizabeth remembered the young mothers in Dr. Maclean’s waiting room all those years ago when she’d still been his patient. One mother, in particular, had carried her baby in a sling and looked adoringly upon him as he lay in her lap. That kid would be almost thirty by now and probably still holding his mother’s hand when he went for a walk.

She would phone Dr. Maclean and ask his advice. He’d made a career of studying people with Down syndrome. He would have wise words for her. But would he remember her? And how would she find him? He couldn’t still be practising, could he? She did some quick math and decided he’d be almost seventy by now. She hadn’t seen him since she’d gone for a prescription for birth control when she was seventeen. An irony, now.

The afternoon sun blazed on the western horizon. A car honked behind her and she inched forward in the heavy traffic on the High Level Bridge.

The small guestroom that was currently her study would be the nursery. She’d picked that room because the south-facing window brought in lots of light. She’d paint it, of course. Maybe she’d put some stencils on the walls too. Of teddy bears? Clowns? Balloons? There was so much to do in the next four months. And there’d likely be some legalities to iron out in terms of custody rights. But they had time to sort everything out.

And then she remembered Ron. She’d spoken as if he was in complete agreement with her. But if Barry didn’t want the child, and it was his own flesh and blood, what made her think that Ron would agree to raise it?

The North Saskatchewan River shimmered in the sun’s orange glow. The water levels had finally receded after the spring thaw. New islands of moist sand and silt dotted the north bank. A flock of seagulls bobbed sedately in the main channel, enjoying the lengthening days. She watched them and felt a twinge of envy for their simple lives.

She passed a stalled car at the bridge’s south end and quickly picked up speed.

What am I going to tell Ron? she thought.

What is Marie going to tell Barry?

“She what?!” Barry said, his
eyes wide with shock.

“Keep your voice down!” Marie hissed, rinsing lettuce in the sink. She cocked her head and listened for a moment. All was quiet downstairs.

“Is she nuts?” He paced the room. “I can’t fucking believe this!”

“Calm down, Barry.”

“Who does she think she is, Mother Teresa or something? She’s supposed to
help
you, not make things harder. What did you say to her, anyway?”

“I didn’t say anything! I just told her we got the results back and were having a hard time with our decision. She means well, you know.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Barry exploded. “Do you really think she’s trying to help us? Do you feel better now, knowing that someone else would raise our baby while we can’t wait to get rid of it?” He sat down abruptly at the kitchen table and put his hands over his face. “Christ,” he mumbled. “What did you tell her?”

“I can’t remember
what
I said. I was as shocked as you are. I
certainly
didn’t tell her she could have it. Even if I thought it was a good idea, I knew I’d have to talk to you first.”

“What do you mean ‘even if you thought it was a good idea’? You’re not actually thinking about it, are you?”

Marie turned back to the sink so Barry couldn’t see her face. Of course she’d thought about it. How could she not? All the way home in the car she’d thought about it, alternately raging against the new scenario Elizabeth had introduced and then imagining her and Ron pushing a stroller.

She had also pictured the various scenarios involved in telling her children, her parents, and the rest of the family.
Auntie Elizabeth couldn’t have her own children
, she imagined explaining to her daughters,
so we gave her our baby.
But wouldn’t they later think it was strange that the child their parents had so generously given away was the one with Down syndrome? And then she’d thought about fabricating an even bigger lie.
Because she’s my best friend and couldn’t get pregnant, I agreed to carry Elizabeth’s baby. So it was never ours to begin with.
That didn’t seem so far-fetched. She’d read stories of people who’d carried children for friends or siblings.

Marie even briefly entertained the idea of going away for half a year, without the kids, telling the rest of the family that she’d terminated the pregnancy, and then delivering the infant to Elizabeth under a veil of silence. But she didn’t want to leave her girls for four months, and her family would find it strange that Elizabeth had a baby that was exactly the same age that Marie’s would have been if she hadn’t terminated her pregnancy.

But the truth was no good either.
Dear kids, your parents didn’t want a baby with Down syndrome, but Auntie Elizabeth did.
Absolutely not.

What, then? Terminate the pregnancy and tell Elizabeth she was sorry? Tell her if we can’t have the baby, nobody can?

“Marie?”

“I thought about it all the way home,” she said quietly, staring at her hands as they went numb beneath the cold water. “Just because we don’t want it, does that mean that the baby has to die?”

Barry let his head fall onto the table.

The smell of frying onions and pork chops filled the kitchen.

Barry stood, reached into the cupboard above the refrigerator, and removed a bottle of scotch. Then he poured a tumbler full and quickly drank it.

“It would be one thing to give the baby up for adoption,” he said, clearing his throat. “That would be hard enough. But to give it to your best friend? I just don’t think we could do it. How would we explain that?”

“You were the one who said we shouldn’t worry about what anyone thinks.”

“Look, I’m not the bad guy here,” Barry said. “I’m not pressuring you to do something against your will. We’re supposed to be in this together.”

Marie nodded. He was right.

“Plus, she’s not even with Ron anymore, is she?”

Marie shook her head in disgust. “You never listen to me. I told you that she and Ron are back together again. Elizabeth moved back home.”

“And I’m supposed to remember that? And even if she is living with him again, you can’t exactly say that’s a very stable home environment, can you?”

Marie tried to keep calm. Barry was slipping into his know-it-all stance. It irritated her when he pretended to be so sure of himself. What would it be like, she wondered, to live in a world where everything was black and white, where all the edges were sharp and never rounded.

“You don’t know the whole story,” she said with resignation. “I hardly think you’re in a position to judge the state of Elizabeth’s marriage.”

“The hell I’m not. Judge and be judged, that’s my motto. I can judge anything I want to. Like, for instance, what kind of friend she is. She thinks things come too easily for you, and now she wants to make something harder for a change. You call that being a friend?”

“Look, I’m not interested in debating my friendship with Elizabeth right now, okay? That’s not the issue. We’re supposed to be deciding what to do about the baby. Why don’t you think about the baby for a minute, instead of yourself.”

Barry sat quietly for a moment. “I can’t believe we’re even having this discussion. Do you honestly think that you could give the baby up once you’ve had it?”

Marie tried to imagine the larger picture. She saw her water breaking. Packing a bag for the hospital. The contractions, slow to start and then coming on like a train. The sweating, the vomiting, the rocking back and forth trying to calm herself. Searching for a better position of comfort. Waiting for the drugs to kick in to stop the pain that foreshadowed her own death.

She could hear, taste, smell, feel, and almost see the baby as it struggled to leave her body. The baby’s head crowning, the burning, the burning, and the splitting open, before its entire length slipped out. And then the incredible relief when the pain ended.

For what? To swaddle the baby and hand her over?

But if she agreed to do this, then Elizabeth would be in the room with her, and perhaps even Ron, to watch their daughter’s birth.

Marie reimagined it. Elizabeth holding her hand, scared and excited at the same time, encouraging her, telling her she could do it, that she was doing just great. Elizabeth’s eyes widening with excitement when the head crowned, knowing her baby was almost there. Then Elizabeth’s tears as the slippery bundle was placed into her arms and she stared down at her own little girl, loving its sweet face, its tiny fingers, its perfect toes.

“I don’t know if I could give it up,” Marie said softly. “But I do know that there’s nobody else in the world that I’d do it for but Elizabeth.”

Barry listened quietly. “I’m scared,” he finally admitted. “We’ve pretty well always agreed on things, but what if we don’t agree on this? I’m having a tough time imagining Elizabeth and Ron walking away from the hospital with our baby.”

“I know.”

“What would the kids do?”

“They love Elizabeth.”

“Yeah, but do they love her enough to give away their baby sister?”

“That’s hard to imagine, isn’t it? But we’ll still have to tell them something because either way there’ll be no baby in the house.”

They were silent for a moment as the weight of Marie’s words settled into their bones.

The grandfather clock in the foyer chimed six o’clock.

“Maybe I’m just being a coward,” Barry said a minute later, “but it somehow seems easier to explain why the baby wasn’t born at all than why it’s not living with us.”

Marie nodded. “I know. But are we going for what’s easy or what’s right?”

Barry walked to the sink and put an arm around her. “We need to do what we think is best for us and the girls.” He pushed her hair off her face. “No matter what we do, we’ll probably have some regrets.”

He was right. They had already talked. They would talk again. For now, she would do the next obvious thing—serve dinner. She walked to the top of the basement stairs and called down, “Nicole! Sophia! Dinner’s ready.” Then she moved back to the stove and began filling plates with food.

Elizabeth was seventeen and in
love for the second time in her life. Her body felt exciting, and it pleased her that her boyfriend’s hands could elicit such wonderful and exhilarating feelings; it was similar to how her stomach felt when the roller coaster ascended the rise to its highest point, slowing to a crawl just before it plunged down the steep slope on the other side. It was exciting and terrifying all at the same time. Her body was wanting more; she hadn’t gone all the way yet, but when that time came, she wanted to be prepared.

Marie told her she should go to Planned Parenthood, for the anonymity, but Elizabeth thought that was a depressing way to begin one’s sexual journey, “planning,” as if parenthood was the only reason to have sex. Plus, everybody knew that women who went to Planned Parenthood were there because they
hadn’t
planned and had gotten themselves into trouble.

She certainly didn’t want to go to her regular doctor because what if she wasn’t discreet and mentioned it offhandedly to her mother, who was also a patient? Elizabeth loved her mother, but there were times when she needed some privacy, some little bits of knowledge about herself that no one else could share. So instead of going to her family doctor, she looked Dr. Maclean up in the phone book and found he still ran his practice out of the University Hospital.

“Dr. Maclean’s office,” the receptionist answered.

“Hi, uh, I used to be a patient of Dr. Maclean’s, and I’m wondering if I might be able to schedule an appointment with him.”

“What is your name?”

“Elizabeth Crewes.”

“And when did you last see the doctor?”

Elizabeth counted in her mind. “Uh, it’s been about five years.”

“Well, I’ll have to ask the doctor. Can you hold, please?”

A few minutes later she was back on the line. “Dr. Maclean says he’ll be happy to see you. Can you come on Friday at two forty-five?”

By the time Friday rolled around Elizabeth was embarrassed that she’d made the appointment at all. Once she stepped into his waiting room she remembered why she and her mother had stopped seeing him. There were three patients with Down syndrome who were waiting with their mothers. Two of the children were fairly young, under the age of ten, she guessed, but the third one was maybe in her mid-teens. She was bald and her scalp was covered with patchy bits of downy hair as if she’d come straight from chemo. Maybe she had. Elizabeth knew that some of the kids born with Down syndrome had other serious conditions. It hardly seemed fair; hadn’t this girl and her parents been dealt a difficult hand already? Why wasn’t that sort of thing spread around a bit more?