Finding Home (18 page)

I picked up one of the photos to examine it
more closely. Kiera sitting on a rock in the south cove, with the
wind in her hair and the choppy sea behind her. “I’m touched. But
it still doesn’t solve our little problem. What about my baby?”

Angus flung out his hands, palms up. “I’m
sorry, but where Kiera’s concerned, I’m helpless. I’ll do whatever
she tells me.”

“Oh great. True devotion.” I set down the
photo and turned to leave. “That pretty well settles it then,
doesn’t it. You and Kiera are going to have a huge and hideous
fight with Nick over this kid.” I didn’t add that the fight might
be with me as well. He needn’t know, yet, that I hoped to keep my
baby. I was in his care, and I wanted him on my side until after I
delivered.

He sighed and looked extremely uncomfortable.
“Well, I’d hate it to come to that, but we really do want the
child.”

“And what about me?” I asked. “I feel
scammed. What I really want is for things to be the way they were
when I agreed to do this.”

* * *

Winter continued through January at a slow
pace, the days and nights becoming almost indistinguishable. My
need for sleep seemed to increase proportionately with the bulging
of my belly. I went to bed by nine most nights, sleeping soundly
until nine in the morning. There was nothing to get up for. All I
did was eat and read and walk.

I felt so lonely. I missed having a dog, like
Garou, who used to follow me everywhere at the lodge. For days on
end the weather stayed wet and dismal, without even a glimpse of
the sun. loom settled over me the way the fog settled over Malagash
Point – a thick, gray curtain shutting out the rest of the
world.

On quilting afternoons I sat and watched the
group work, but even though they’d started a new quilt in bright
spring colors, I wasn’t cheered the way I had been in the fall. The
conversations, which had intrigued me so before Christmas, now just
depressed me. These women all led such normal lives, taken up with
work and family and friends. The sort of life I was never going to
have. And I could barely look at baby Blair, who at eight months
was crawling around, more darling than ever.

I couldn’t keep the image of Nick holding him
on Boxing Day out of my mind. Kiera was wrong; Nick would be a good
father. To my baby.

Often I’d look at the white silk gown hanging
in my armoire. Stroking it softly, I’d wonder if I’d imagined more
than Nick had meant. He hadn’t called nearly as often since
Christmas. And when he did, he wanted details about the pregnancy
and my health. He never hinted at a relationship between us. Was he
playing with me, pretending not to care?

Well it was working. Big time.

When I wasn’t obsessing about Nick I was
brooding about my baby. What would happen to us? I felt possessive
and protective and tender towards the tiny being curled up inside
me. I fantasized about taking her up to the lodge someday. I
imagined her in a pine cradle on the front verandah, then as a
toddler splashing in the lake, then as a small child hiking through
the woods or paddling a canoe. I couldn’t get over the feeling I’d
had since reading
Sweet Fetal Dreams
, that my baby was
somehow putting these thoughts in my head.

But then I’d have to remind myself that the
money to buy Auberge Ciel remained an issue. Whether I got it from
Nick or from Kiera and Angus, it would only be mine when I gave up
my baby. Which I wasn’t sure I could do. So where did that leave
me?

I still couldn’t see any solution. I’d
imagined and ruled out so many times the idea of Nick and I raising
the child together, because that would mean giving up my camp. My
thoughts went round and round in circles with no acceptable
outcome. I wanted my baby and I wanted Auberge Ciel.

By February I was feeling like a prisoner at
Malagash, manipulated by Kiera, lost in lust for Nick. I felt bored
and blue and terribly alone. I knew I had to get away, if only for
a few days.

When I’d phoned the Wembles at Christmas,
Vera had urged me to visit, and I’d said maybe next summer. But now
I was overwhelmed by a desire to see them right away. I wanted to
surround myself with the absolute ordinariness of their life. The
Wembles were sane, normal people who followed the accepted rules.
They did what was right and good and didn’t complain. They were the
closest to real parents I’d ever had, and I wanted their comfort
and safety. I needed to be with them.

One day I pulled the Christmas card they’d
sent me out of the drawer where I’d stuffed it. It featured a Bible
verse of the Nativity with a manger scene, almost as if Vera
somehow knew about my baby. She’d signed with her inevitable “God
Bless”. I’d shaken my head over that card when it arrived, but now
the Wembles’ solid belief that life unfolds according to some
Greater Being’s plan filled me with hope that everything would
somehow turn out all right. On impulse I phoned to say I was coming
to visit.

I suggested to Kiera that she might want to
pay for my trip. After all, she owed me. If I hadn’t caught her
with Angus that day, I’d still be thinking she wanted to have a
child with Nick. I’d gotten pregnant under false pretenses, and she
was to blame. She must have thought so too, because she even phoned
and booked the flight for me.

The morning I was to leave I slipped across
the hall to her room to say goodbye. She didn’t answer my knock so
I just stuck my head in, calling out to her. Except for the dark
wood furniture and a display of jewel-toned quilts on a stand,
shades of white defined her room. Downstairs all the walls were
painted warm colors, and the other upstairs rooms were papered in
stenciled prints. But Kiera’s walls and woodwork were ivory. And in
contrast to the pine floors of the rest of the house, her floor was
carpeted with velvety, cream-colored broadloom.

The door to Kiera’s ensuite bathroom stood
open. I could see her sitting on the floor in front of the toilet,
her head on her knees. When she glanced up at the sound of my voice
her face looked ashen. Dark pouchy circles drooped under her eyes
and her hair hung limp and stringy.

“Hey,” I cried, stunned. I’d never seen Kiera
look less than perfect. “You okay?”

Instead of answering she raised herself up to
vomit.

“Kiera,” I said, “if you’re sick, you’ll want
Phoebe here with you, not off driving me to the airport. I’ll
cancel my flight. I can go another time.”

But she shook her head, wiping at her mouth
with a washcloth. “No!” she gasped. “It’s okay. I’m not sick.”

“
Not sick?
”

“No, not sick.” She leaned over to throw up
again.

“Then what the hell’s wrong?”

Kiera struggled to stand, grabbing the sink
for support. “Oh Luce, I’m pregnant!”

Middleford gave me a safe feeling. It was so
pleasant and sleepy and prim. The taxi from the airport took me
through the downtown area, past the block-long offices of
Middleford Life, where Walter Wemble had worked for forty years. I
remembered seeing him leave every morning in his well-preserved
green Ford while I waited on the corner for the bus to West Grove
High.

He’d drive down the street more slowly than
I’d walked it, pull up to the stop sign with caution. He wasn’t a
tall man, and although gray-haired, he looked like a kid learning
to drive. He always nodded in my direction, but never smiled or
waved. Walter believed in keeping both eyes on the road and both
hands on the wheel.

The taxi passed maple-lined Scanlon Street
next, where Kingsley United sat, solid and forbidding. I remembered
five years of pious Sundays. Every week, while soft organ music
played, Gordon Clark ushered me to the Wembles regular pew, third
from the front. There Walter, who’d arrived earlier for a church
elder’s meeting, waited.

As the choir proceeded up the aisle to begin
the service, singing, “Holy, holy, holy,” I always heard Vera’s
soprano warbling above the rest. Then I’d sit staring at the
stained-glass windows, trying to listen to the hour-long sermons of
Reverend Clark, quiet Gordon’s stern, black-gowned father.

The taxi finally reached Greenham Heights, a
modest, respectable area of Middleford near the university, where
the Wembles lived in the ground floor apartment of a duplex they
owned. I remembered an older, stuccoed building, and when the taxi
pulled up I was surprised how good it still looked.

But I was unprepared for how aged and sort of
shrunken Vera and Walter were. I hadn’t seen them in over four
years, since before I’d moved to the lodge. They’d been in their
late forties when I’d come to live with them, so they had to be
close to seventy now.

They of course were astounded when they saw
me. So far I’d been vague about what I was doing in Nova Scotia.
Perhaps I should have warned them I was pregnant, but it hadn’t
seemed right to tell them over the phone.

“Oh Lucy, you got married and never even told
us!” Vera cried, opening her arms to me. She was wearing a familiar
tweedy skirt, a flowered blouse bowed at the neck, sensible brown
shoes. I hugged her as hard as my shape allowed. Her hair was
pinkly permed, but she still smelled the same, of Elizabeth Arden’s
Bluegrass talcum powder. She stepped back and stared at my stomach.
“I hope it’s that nice boy from Vermont, that Jay Williams.”

I just shook my head. Being called Lucy again
made me want to weep for the Wembles. How different I was from what
they wished. Lucy was a precious little English girl in a Beatrix
Potter story, who wore starched pinafores and frilly white aprons.
She was a favorite from Vera’s childhood, her ideal of what a
little girl should be. But I was definitely not a Lucy. Never had
been and never would be. And I’d never allowed anyone but the
Wembles to call me that.

I avoided meeting Vera’s eye by pretending to
search for something in my backpack. “Well it was just a civil
ceremony,” I said, “it wasn’t really a wedding the way you’d think
of one, no big deal at all. We didn’t even take any photos.”

Vera hugged me again. “Congratulations
anyway, dear.”

“Oh yes, congratulations, congratulations,
about time too!” Walter said. He pumped my hand up and down instead
of embracing me.

I leaned over to give him a little peck on
the cheek. “Thanks,” I said. His hair was pure white now, but still
thick, and he still smelled of Old Spice. “Nick’s a wonderful man,”
I told them. “He’s a lawyer in Toronto. I don’t know if you’d
remember him, but he went to West Grove High. We met up again by
chance. But anyway, he couldn’t get away just now, he hardly ever
even gets down to Airdrie Bay to visit, but I hope you’ll meet him
soon, and I knew you’d both be so happy about the baby.”

If the Wembles wondered about my strange
story, they didn’t let on. I felt terrible, making such things up.
Deeply ashamed. And what was I going to tell them next year? That
I’d given their grandchild up? Or that I had a baby but no husband
and no money and could they please look after me? Because Kiera’s
news changed everything. If she really was pregnant, where did that
leave me?

I hadn’t pushed Kiera to talk after her
little confession. Phoebe had been waiting for me out front with
the car and I had a plane to catch. Plus I’d felt real sympathy for
Kiera’s nauseous state, remembering how I’d suffered in those first
weeks. But I’d thought about nothing else all the way to
Middleford.

Kiera was home free now. She’d have her own
baby and not have to worry over what I might do.

And what might I do?

All the possibilities were constantly in my
mind, but none made me happy. I’d finally decided I just had to try
to forget the whole thing during my visit with the Wembles. There
was nothing I could do while I was there anyway.

“Oh my yes, we’re just pleased as punch about
your baby,” Vera said, blinking back tears behind her round
bifocals. “All my friends are grandmothers already, and they’re
always asking me, well, they all still ask about you dear, and I
just never know what to say.”

“Let’s get Lucy a cup of tea,” Walter said.
He picked up my bag with a stiff, careful movement. “She’ll be all
tuckered out from her long trip.” He carried my bag to the door of
my old bedroom.

We sat in the kitchen then, drinking tea from
the same chipped brown pot I remembered, which Vera still covered
with the same hand-knit cozy of orange and olive stripes. There
were the same orange plastic placemats, the same centerpiece of
faded silk flowers. In honor of my visit Walter had applied a fresh
coat of beige paint to the kitchen cupboards and Vera had made new
nylon net curtains for the window over the sink.

“Now what about your doctor dear?” Vera
wanted to know. She opened a package of the chocolate cookies I’d
loved as a teenager and arranged them on a plate. “Do you have a
good doctor down there?”

“Oh, the best, Vera. Everybody in town just
thinks the world of him.”

“But are you near a hospital?”

“Yes, there’s a small clinic nearby, in
Airdrie Bay.” There was no sense in mentioning midwives to the
Wembles. They’d only worry. “Dr. MacLaren says with a first baby
there’s always lots of time, anyway.”

“Oh, I hope so!” Vera said. “But you can’t be
too careful, you know, why somebody at the hairdresser the other
day was just telling me about her daughter who went into labor
while she was teaching, right there in the classroom, three weeks
ahead of time.”

“Don’t worry, please, I’ll be fine. Tell me
about yourselves. Now that Walter’s retired.”

Walter, who had been drumming his fingers on
the table, pushed up the sleeves of his cardigan. I was sure I
remembered giving him that heathery sweater for his birthday in
about 1982. “Oh, we keep busy. Darts and cards and choir practice.
I’m the church treasurer now, and Vera’s always got something on
with the U.C.W.”