The Unfinished Child Read online

  Should their daughter live, the doctor had said. Did that mean she might die? Or was it a question he posed? Should she live? Was he asking if the small bundle of warmth in her arms should have a life? A small cry escaped from her throat. Oh, it was too much to take in. Yet this was her baby. This was the child she’d said she couldn’t wait to meet, but now their meeting was all wrong. It was without joy. If Dr. Morrison had just given the baby to her without saying anything, she’d never have known something wasn’t right. She’d have taken it home and let it sleep in its crib. She’d have nursed the baby in the rocking chair and watched the colourful mobile sway above the crib. Oh, why didn’t he just let her love it and find out on her own?

  The nurse returned with a bottle of formula and, once she had confirmed the doctor wasn’t present, asked, “Did you want to try to feed her?”

  Donald shifted nervously beside the bed. “Margaret . . .”

  She waved away his fears, took the bottle, and placed it to her baby’s lips. Milk dribbled down her daughter’s cheek and filled the hollow of her ear. The baby sputtered and choked and began to cry even as her mouth opened for more fluid. Despite her efforts, Margaret couldn’t quite direct the baby’s mouth for proper suction to occur. She stared at her child, her little mongoloid, a defenceless infant who needed care. Extraordinary care, if what the doctor said was true. Extra-ordinary.

  “It’s not so bad,” the nurse said softly, as if reading her mind. “I’ve seen far worse.”

  Margaret met the nurse’s eyes. What was she trying to tell her?

  Dr. Morrison returned to the room with a sheaf of papers in his hand. “Look these over,” he said, handing them to Donald. Then he took the baby from Margaret’s arms, handed her to the nurse, and nodded toward the door. “It’s for the best,” he repeated. “She’ll get the special care she needs. Poplar Grove Provincial Training Centre. She’ll be taken care of there. They even have a special ward just for mongoloids.”

  The door closed behind her baby.

  The room emptied of life until just she and her husband remained.

  The overhead lights shone like a spotlight onto the black type on the pages before her. A government-run institution for undesirables. All they had to do, according to the doctor, was sign at the bottom of the page and their troubles would disappear. Dr. Morrison said their baby would have the mental development of a three- to six-year-old, but people loved three- to six-year-olds, didn’t they? Why hadn’t he spoken about love?

  Shame wrapped them in its dark cloak. “She’s just a baby,” Margaret cried. “It’s not her fault.”

  Donald sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed her shoulder. Margaret took his hand and forced him to look at her. His eyes were wet and afraid, like a little boy who had hurt himself. In that small glance before he looked away, she saw his fear and his attempts to hide that fear so he could be strong, like a man should be. She saw his desire to take charge, to comfort and not need comforting himself, and as she witnessed his clumsy effort to shield her from his own fear, she loved him more and desperately hoped his decision would make him someone she could be proud of.

  “It’s not anybody’s fault,” he said. “If the doctor says Poplar Grove is the right place for her, then we have to trust him. Those places must exist for a reason.”

  “Did you see her? She was warm and sweet and—”

  “Stop it, Margaret. I can’t . . .” He stood up and walked to the dark window.

  Margaret felt herself go cold. Did he think his mother might be outside in the parking lot, ready to tell him what to do? Was she standing by to heap more criticism on Margaret, in her muted way. You tried, dear. Better luck next time. Don’t use the dessert fork for the salad, dear.

  Donald looked so vulnerable that for a brief moment Margaret felt her heart constrict. He had chosen her; he’d stood up to his mother at least that one time.

  Finally he turned and spoke. “I’m not a pioneer, Margaret,” he said so quietly that she strained to hear. “I’m sorry to say that I’m not that brave.”

  She held out her hand. “Maybe we could learn to be brave together.”

  He turned back to the window and didn’t respond. Against the dark pane, his face was reflected back to her, but she was unable to read the variety of emotions that played across his face. Finally, she saw his back gradually straighten and she knew what he had decided.

  Hours later, when Margaret finally stopped crying, she and her husband signed the papers, but first they named their child. Carolyn, after her mother’s sister who died of tuberculosis at thirteen. Jane, after Margaret’s childhood friend. Carolyn Jane Harrington.

  Donald gathered up the papers and tapped them on the table to line them properly. The death of expectation, that’s what this was. They’d expected to take a baby home, and now . . .

  “We’ll try again,” her husband said, wiping a tear from her cheek. Then he kissed her softly on the mouth and held her chin up to look into her eyes. “We’ll be okay, won’t we?”

  Margaret smiled weakly and nodded, moving her hand to touch his unshaved cheek, gathering all her energy into that simple gesture to move them both forward.

  It was worse than a funeral. Nine months of hope and a lifetime of regret. No ceremony, no finality. Her in-laws tried to be kind to her, but Margaret could read their true thoughts: if only their son had married someone from his own background . . . Sometimes Margaret caught her mother-in-law looking at her as if she wanted to wash her hands, as if Margaret was a piece of raw meat left out too long on the counter.

  Nonetheless, her in-laws did try to be kind to her, for Donald’s sake, and they repeated Dr. Morrison’s words as if they’d written the script together. She was doing the right thing. She was young. She would have more babies, healthy babies that would feed and laugh and not be sick. Babies that people wouldn’t turn away from. Babies that would give her something in return for all her hard work.

  Three days after Carolyn’s birth, Margaret left the hospital empty-handed save for a set of strict instructions prohibiting her from visiting her baby for at least six months and the mantra It’s for your own good firmly lodged in her brain. Her breasts pushed sorely into her thin blouse. Her milk had let down and left large, round stains in the silk. What dress-up game was she playing? What had she been thinking when she’d packed that blouse? She was nothing but a childless mother, left to fend for herself with an ear always cocked to an empty distance.

  The sun scalded her pale skin. She and Donald returned home, and Margaret saved her tears for the long hours when her husband was at work. Nothing happened naturally anymore. She switched from taking baths to having showers because she couldn’t stand to look at her bloated and changed body, the bruises still so close to the surface. Her feather duster stirred up unwanted images of her baby crying and alone. Better to have put it in a burlap sack and thrown it into the creek than to be left thinking of it unloved and untended. Faceless and unwanted. She dusted the images away. And when her husband reached for her in the night, tender and seeking mercy, she feared what the outcome might be.

  TWO

  2002

  On a bitterly cold January night in a northern city, Elizabeth drove west toward a restaurant where her friend Marie had made dinner reservations. Christmas lights still decorated the avenue and many of its storefronts in an attempt to change retail statistics. Elizabeth drove carefully on the now-rutted streets and finally pulled to a meter at the curb. All day she’d been fighting the feeling that she was moving underwater and something awful was about to happen. How absurd. There was no running or standing water in Edmonton at this time of year—the North Saskatchewan River was jammed thick with ice. But travelling on ice could produce a similar fear of drowning, for at any moment the ice, thin in spots from the moving current below, might give way and she’d fall right through, gasp at the excruciating chill of the water, and succumb sweetly to hypothermia just like that father of a boy she’d known in school who had fallen throu
gh his pond while using a tractor to clear the snow from the hockey rink he’d built for his kids. The whole class had gone to the funeral.

  A cold blast of icy wind sucked the air from Elizabeth’s lungs as she stepped from the car outside the restaurant. Move, she told herself as the fingers of winter slipped beneath her collar. Just move.

  Inside the restaurant, a young, pierced waitress in cowboy boots led her to a booth at the back, far from the drafty door, and brought her biscuits with a green jalapeno jelly. Elizabeth ordered a margarita. She wanted to lick the salt rim and imagine herself at the beach, a hot sun overhead, and pull the heat deep into her bones.

  Elizabeth watched the waitress, who looked as if she could step outside in her fashionably ripped leggings and not even feel the cold. Elizabeth was well past putting fashion before comfort. In this weather, she enjoyed her wool-lined boots and the silk long johns she wore beneath her jeans, and while she admired the fashion of youth, she definitely preferred her sensible attire that made its own fashion statement. She picked up the menu and instinctively scanned it for errors. Her father was an English professor, and every time they went to a restaurant he woefully pointed out typos and misplaced apostrophes.

  Elizabeth was in her late thirties, of average height, thin and long-waisted. Women her age followed her with their eyes when she entered and exited a room, their gazes openly envious of her slim ankles, her muscular calves, her flat stomach, and her breasts, still high and firm. Nobody wanted to know that Elizabeth didn’t have to work to have that body. She was simply built that way.

  Marie appeared suddenly and plunked down on the leather banquette on the opposite side of the booth. She unwrapped the long black scarf around her neck and apologized for being late. “The roads are awful,” she said. “Barry got stuck in traffic coming home, and I didn’t want to leave the girls alone.”

  The girls, Nicole and Sophia, were twelve and ten and miniature versions of Marie, with their dark hair curled tight as springs. Elizabeth loved those girls and often wished they were her own.

  Elizabeth noted that Marie had put on weight again; her cheekbones were no longer identifiable. In the thirty years she’d known her, Marie’s weight had continuously shifted. It was easy to tell when she wasn’t happy.

  “What’s new?” Marie asked.

  “I’m happy to be on this side of Christmas,” she said. “Business was great. I had record sales in December.” She saw the yellow roses arranged in decorative vases in her display cabinet. The tropical flowers sent direct from Hawaii. The spools of red and green velvet ribbons, and the sleigh-bells on each vase as an extra festive touch.

  Marie nodded her head in agreement. “No matter how organized I am at Christmastime, it’s still a lot of work to be in charge of all that holiday magic.”

  The noise level in the restaurant had increased. Elizabeth saw her friend’s mouth moving but no longer listened to what she said.

  Sometimes her joy in Marie’s company was squashed by the weight of her longing.

  “How’s Ron?” Marie asked.

  “He’s good,” Elizabeth answered, wincing inwardly. Once, when she’d said Ron was good, Marie had answered, I know. She’d meant it as a joke, but Elizabeth hadn’t laughed.

  “Don’t look so guilty,” Marie laughed. “It’s water under the bridge. You guys were made for each other. It’s not like I didn’t try, right?”

  Elizabeth had been in love exactly three times: at the ages of fourteen, seventeen, and twenty. Three times lucky, she had told Ron before she walked down the aisle in her pearl white dress with tight lace sleeves that showed off her lean arms, and before Marie walked down ahead of her, having finally forgiven her friend.

  The waitress refilled their water glasses. Elizabeth drained her margarita. Marie ate fried chicken with potato hash. Obviously she was off her diet.

  Marie talked about the girls’ Christmas concert, their dance recital, their music accomplishments, and the many other things her children were involved in. Her hands waved in the air as she illustrated each point she was making and exaggerated her own feelings of being overwhelmed.

  “What did we do when we were kids?” Elizabeth finally asked.

  “We climbed trees,” Marie said. “I’m not sure what we did in the winter. Climbed cold trees.”

  They laughed and talked about their favourite poplar tree at the playground, the one with limbs perfectly spaced like rungs to the sky. “That tree was as good as having an older sister,” Marie said. “We were privy to all kinds of information up there, weren’t we?”

  They reminisced about how they’d arrive quietly at the playground and, when no one was watching, quickly scale the poplar’s branches. Invisible in the thick foliage, they listened to the mothers’ conversations on the park bench below. They heard irritations with husbands, doubts about whether love would last, worries about offspring. There was no end to the private details about people’s lives, details that ten-year-old girls didn’t need to know. Mysterious bleedings. Infidelities. Sexual escapades. They learned that the principal at school was having an affair with one of the students’ fathers; the police had arrived at Sammy Trainor’s house because he’d been caught shoplifting again; Lorie Jones had three little children and had just been diagnosed with breast cancer; Jane Bosney was being held back a grade at school.

  The girls breathed softly and listened. Sometimes they pantomimed great shock and held their sides to keep their laughter from bursting free. The bark of the old tree was rough against their bare legs, but they felt nothing, so great was their desire to hear the salacious tidbits of gossip.

  One afternoon black clouds blew in over the High Level Bridge. They travelled at great speed. When they finally let loose, the poplar tree, the girls’ portal to an adult world, was blasted by a bolt of lightning.

  “We played in the ravine too,” Marie said. “But kids today don’t run free like they did when we were kids.”

  “You were always trying to ditch me,” Elizabeth said.

  “That’s because you never had any ideas of what to do.” Marie laughed. “Somebody had to think of something. If I didn’t run ahead, I wasn’t sure that you’d follow.”

  Elizabeth smiled and let Marie continue.

  “I do get overwhelmed at times with all the girls’ activities, but they seem to enjoy them all, so . . .” Marie used her finger to wipe the final bit of whipped cream from her plate. “My weight’s up again, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  Elizabeth nodded.

  “It’s hard to say no during the holidays,” Marie continued. “And some people aren’t as lucky as you.”

  Elizabeth was the same weight she’d been in university. But how lucky was she, really? Would Marie rather be thin and infertile?

  “Barry got me a gym membership for Christmas,” Marie said. “I tried to look pleased, but sheesh. That’s not really a present, is it?”

  They paid their bill and said their goodbyes. Elizabeth tightened the scarf around her neck and stepped into the bitter cold. Only clear skies could produce an arctic chill this severe. Clouds at least acted as an insulation.

  She held her scarf over her nose to warm the air entering her lungs as she walked down the street, where restaurant windows remained garnished with mistletoe and painted snowflakes and wreaths with large red ribbons wrapped the glowing streetlamps.

  Post-holiday blues. That’s what she felt. And a growing irritation that Marie’s unhappiness was limited to such an uncomplicated discontent with the numbers on her scale. Why did she let a five-pound weight gain measure her happiness? She reached her car, and the cold engine slowly turned over. Buckling her seat belt, Elizabeth checked her side mirror and waited for a break in traffic before pulling onto the avenue.

  The new year stretched before her like an endless chore. She hadn’t made any resolutions. She had given up trying to hope.

  THREE

  The cold front lowered itself over the city like a cloud fallen from the sky h
eavy with grief. There was a kind of beauty in the savage wildness of it. Unexposed skin was frostbitten in minutes. Church basements became emergency havens for the homeless when two youth were found dead on top of a sidewalk grate downtown. Children drew pictures on frosty windows with their fingernails as curlicues of ice fell from the glass. The birds wintering over fluffed their feathers, creating air pockets for extra insulation, and sheltered in the thick branches of hedges and spruce trees. Here and there abandoned snowmen decorated front yards, their fronts slowly yellowed by neighbourhood dogs.

  “You don’t ever listen, do you?” Marie said, staring at her husband. “Are you just going to pretend this isn’t happening?”

  Barry was reading a book in his recliner. A fire burned in the gas fireplace on the far wall of the family room, producing a welcome heat.

  “I just can’t believe this,” Marie said from the couch. “I like our life. I don’t want it to change.” A whine had crept into her voice. She didn’t want to be pregnant. She felt a momentous fatigue and envied her daughters, asleep upstairs, their uncomplicated, pre-menstrual lives. At twelve and ten years old, Nicole and Sophia were at the height of their girlhood powers. Marie remembered when her own breasts had just begun to develop. She had inhabited her body with an unreserved ease until she had had her first unrequited crush on a boy. Then that ease had abruptly vanished and was followed by a painful self-consciousness that had coloured the next ten to twenty years.

  Outside, the winter wind howled. The cold snap was in its fifth day, frozen in place like a tongue on a metal pole. The night before, she had taken the garbage out to the curb and had stepped on an orange peel that lay frozen on the ground. It had shattered like glass.

  “Plus, I’m too old to have another baby.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Marie, you’re not old,” Barry said. He wasn’t really listening.

  “I’m thirty-nine! I’ll be forty when the baby turns one!” she said. “I was eighteen when my mother turned forty, and I thought she was old.” Marie reached up and ran a hand through her hair, fanning it out to look for grey strands that she could pluck from her head to illustrate her point.