The Unfinished Child (16 page)

“I know you’ve always been happy for me,” Marie had said. Ha. She didn’t know her very well then, did she? There had been times when she’d wanted to slap Marie for being so lucky. Slap her hard. Her and any other pregnant woman parading around town with her belly button poking out like a third eye or with children in tow. Oh, yes, she’d had her share of envy all right, of sleepless nights, crying quietly to herself so as not to waken Ron. Elizabeth had never needed anyone to feel sorry for her; she’d had enough self-pity to last a lifetime.

Laughter in the hallway interrupted her thoughts as a group of people passed her door on the way to the elevator. Their laughter was spontaneous and yet staged, and there was something carefree in their banter. They sounded young and enthusiastic. They weren’t in the midst of trying to pick up the pieces of their lives and imagine a new future.

Elizabeth tried to imagine going out with a bunch of friends but couldn’t. Who
were
her close friends, anyway? Besides Marie, did she have any? All her energy had been focused on her business, on her marriage, and on trying to get pregnant. All those years when she should have been having fun and making friends were lost. Her life had narrowed to attaining one goal. Clearly, it had been too much to ask for.

The hallway became suddenly quiet once the elevator doors closed. Restless, Elizabeth turned the television off and walked to the sliding glass doors. The city was particularly beautiful at night from the vantage point of the twelfth floor. All those lights shining like living stars, the frozen river a serrated blade slicing the city in two. She stared to the south, trying to pinpoint her old neighbourhood. What was Ron doing right now? Staring to the north?

An ambulance rushed over the Low Level Bridge, lights flashing, siren blaring.

Elizabeth took another sip of wine and stared at the sky where she saw the first real star glittering in isolation. By reflex, she recited the childhood poem.

Star light, star bright

The first star I see tonight

I wish I may, I wish I might

Have this wish I wish tonight!

Nothing ever came from wishing on stars. There was no magician in her life to wave a magic wand. The doctors with all their needles and transducers had failed to make the impossible possible. She closed the balcony door and went to fill her glass. The bottle was empty. She opened another bottle and smiled when she remembered how her mother had always cautioned her about drinking to excess.
A girl can be taken advantage of without even knowing it.
There had to be more to that story. What had her mother not told her? Was she speaking from personal experience? Was this some clue to Elizabeth’s birth mother’s situation?

She sat back down on the couch and closed her eyes. Memories came unbidden. Breaking her arm falling off a horse when she was fourteen. Visiting Marie in the hospital after Nicole was born. That awful lunch with Ron.

She was thirty-two and they were celebrating her birthday at the Upper Crust restaurant. The sun was high in the mid-afternoon sky, the wind calm. They chose a spot outside on the patio. She smiled at Ron and squeezed his hand over the small, round table that separated them. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so happy. Everything was perfect—the day, the restaurant, the sun shining down, the colourful wildflowers stretching up, up, up in the large pots on the patio—cosmos, black-eyed Susans, wild flax, yarrow. There was nowhere else they’d rather be. They studied the menu carefully and ordered rich appetizers and an expensive bottle of wine and sat back to enjoy the crowds walking past the restaurant.

Then the pregnant woman walked by.

Her helium-filled belly pushed against her sundress and cast Elizabeth in shadow. The woman was holding hands with a blond girl who looked to be about three. The girl’s hair was pulled into two pigtails that stuck straight out from the sides of her head. She held an ice cream cone in one hand, and her mouth and chin were covered in chocolate. The mother bent down onto one knee, carefully lowering her weight, and wiped her daughter’s mouth, smiling. Then she took the cone and, with her own tongue, cleaned up the ice cream dripping down the side and pushed the scoop more securely into the cone. Elizabeth stared at the intimate act, the pregnant woman bowed on one knee, her saliva merging with her daughter’s, the girl’s upturned and trusting face. Suddenly the only sounds she heard came from the playground across the street. The chains squeaking on the swings, the thud of children’s feet as they hit the slide, the shouts, the laughter. She couldn’t take all that laughter. Unable to compose herself, she got up and went to the car.

Ron got their food to go.

Poor Ron. She really had been a lot of work at times. He’d danced around her unpredictable emotions more than once.

Another group of people moved down the hallway outside her apartment door. Elizabeth hadn’t realized when she moved into the building how many young people lived in it. Times had changed. When she was twenty, the suburbs were all she had known.

Cigarette smoke drifted under her door and into her living room, invisibly filling the empty space around her as if a guest had suddenly departed. But of course she’d had no guest. She had no friends except Marie, who didn’t need her because she had a family. Imagine that—having a family. Marie had gotten everything she’d ever wanted. All those wishes
she
’d made on stars had come true. She had a
real
family. Not like the make-believe one Elizabeth had imagined when she played house as a child. And even
that
had ended. One year they were too old to play house and too old, even, to play with dolls.

It had been Marie’s idea to dispose of the dolls. Elizabeth held a mouthful of wine in her cheeks until her tongue turned numb. Why had she always listened to Marie? The girl who had enjoyed pulling the legs off of daddy-long-legs.

Come on
, Marie had cajoled, convincing Elizabeth to carry her favourite doll down to the creek. Marie’s ratty doll Mitsy was already missing an arm, so what did she care about setting it free? She skipped across the open field and down the gravel path that led to the wooden footbridge.
Come on!

It had been rainy the previous week and the creek ran high. Marie climbed onto the railing and leaned her body over the dark water rushing below; Mitsy dangled perilously from her hands.

“Ready?” Marie asked.

Elizabeth remained quiet. She felt a sudden pang for Moxie, the doll that had heard so many of her childhood secrets. She loved its frilled dress, its hard plastic limbs, its blue eyes that opened and closed depending on whether it was standing up or lying down. Most thirteen-year-old girls didn’t play with dolls anymore, but that didn’t mean she had to get rid of it. Couldn’t she just keep it in her closet? Or in a box under her bed?

“Are you ready?” Marie asked again, more insistent this time.

Elizabeth clutched her doll to her chest. M & M: Mitsy and Moxie. No, she wasn’t ready.

“Come on,” Marie said. “We agreed. We’re too old for dolls, right?”

Was thirteen too old? She nodded.

“Okay, then. Come on. It’s just a doll. Follow me.”

One final kiss, one last whisper into a shell-shaped ear. Then they counted to three and the dolls arced into the air and splashed lightly into the creek. They bobbed momentarily to the surface before racing away with the current, smiles frozen on their plastic faces, blue marbled eyes shuttered by thick black lashes. They bounced from rock to rock as the current sent them downstream and the water tried to penetrate their waxen hair.

So vivid was the memory of being a child again that her next sip of wine tasted like grass and sunshine. She missed that doll. Sweet Moxie. They had shared a bed for years; she didn’t deserve to be cast away. Why had she listened to Marie?

Maybe the clouds had parted for a split second and God had peered down at her that August afternoon and seen a heartless girl throwing her dolly away. And maybe the clouds came together again and blocked His view before he had a chance to see that Marie was there too. It had been her idea! And maybe at that moment God touched the eggs inside of her that were jockeying for position, deciding in which order they would fall for the next forty-odd years. And maybe He had touched each one and taken the light out of them, leaving dark, dry husks behind.

The phone rang.
Elizabeth rushed unsteadily to the kitchen.

“Hello?”

“Uh, is Fred there?”

“I’m sorry, you must—”

The phone went dead in her hand. Something in her deflated. She poured another glass of wine and sloshed half of it onto the counter.

The carpet felt good under her bare feet, cushy and deep. She spread her toes and flexed her feet, restless for something to do. She turned the television on and flipped through the channels. Nothing interested her. She stood and began pacing again. On the wall behind her kitchen table, she’d hung some black and white photos of herself and some friends in their first year of university. In one, she and Marie stood side by side on the roof of Gillian’s house. That had been a good party. Marie’s hair had been long then, pulled back into a bushy ponytail. In those days, her own hair had hung straight and silky down the middle of her back. Funny to think that Marie had once envied how straight her hair was because Elizabeth would have loved to have had some of Marie’s curls.

Marie. Pregnant again. And with two lovely girls already. Sometimes she wished she could drop Marie as a friend and start fresh. But it was too late for that now. Her whole life was twined with Marie’s. She couldn’t simply transplant herself without doing serious damage. Then again, it didn’t seem that either one of them was taking great care to keep their friendship alive and thriving. Somewhere along the way they had both stopped watering it.

She looked at her watch. It was almost ten o’clock. Impulsively she moved to the kitchen, picked up the phone, and dialled Marie’s number. She’d just say hi, how are you? What are your plans for the weekend? They’d talk like they used to, quickly, with no pauses between words, rushing to get the next thought out. Maybe she’d invite Marie and the girls over to see her new apartment. She’d bake muffins, buy some good coffee and some juice for the kids. Maybe Nicole and Sophia could even have a sleepover.

The machine picked up on the fourth ring. Elizabeth heard Sophia’s small voice through the receiver: “If you would like to leave a message for Barry, Marie, Nicole, or Sophia, please do so after the tone.”

She hung up.

Pregnant again. Without all the pokes and prods and drugs and hopes and disappointments that had plagued her own numerous attempts to conceive.

The black cordless phone sat beside the bottle of wine. She thought about phoning Marie. Then she remembered she’d already tried.

She rocked back and forth. All she wanted was for someone to hold her and tell her everything would be okay. Ron would comfort her. Ron would listen. Would he be home? It had been two weeks since she’d moved out, and she’d asked him not to phone until the newness of their separation had worn off. But it was her rule, so she could break it.

Dear Ron. The warmth started in her abdomen and slowly spread throughout her body. When they were first dating, Ron had gone to Vancouver to help his uncle with some renovations, and Elizabeth had taken the train to visit him there. They hadn’t seen each other in almost a month. It was a nineteen-hour trip, and the train had arrived at eight in the morning. Ron stood waiting patiently on the platform, an umbrella sheltering him from the rain. He was wearing a suit and tie. “What’s the occasion?” she’d joked. He kissed her and smiled. Then she realized that he’d dressed up for her. She was the occasion.

Elizabeth reached for the wine bottle and was surprised to find that it too was empty. How had she managed to drink both bottles?

She dialled the familiar number. One ring. Two rings. Three rings. She pressed the phone hard against her ear and listened to the echo of her heart beating loudly. “Pick up the phone,” she whispered, rocking back and forth, her lips parted, her mouth dry.

On the seventh ring she realized that Ron hadn’t re-set the answering machine. She’d taken her own voice off the machine when she left, leaving him concise instructions of how to put his own message on.

The phone kept ringing. Every time she was about to hang up, she saw him fumbling for his keys, rushing for the phone.

Finally, she hung up. She’d been the one to leave. Of course he’d be out on a Friday night. What had she expected?

Elizabeth looked around the room and saw two sliding glass doors. Two television sets. Two coffee tables. Her stomach flipped.

Unsteady on her feet, she made her way to the bathroom. A couple of Tylenol might keep the inevitable hangover at bay. And maybe some toast for the stomach, but just as she was about to put two slices of bread into the toaster, she spotted mould growing alongside the crust. She threw the bag in the garbage and went through the cupboards. She needed something that would be kind to her stomach, but she found nothing, not even a box of crackers.

She staggered back to the bedroom and flopped face first onto the bed. How pathetic could she be? It was a good thing Marie hadn’t been home to answer the phone. And, oh, God, she’d phoned Ron, hadn’t she? Thankfully he hadn’t been home either. She’d have made a fool of herself for sure.
I miss you. Can you come over?
But where had he been? Who might he have been out with? She closed her eyes and pictured him in his faded blue jeans with the black shirt that she loved. He had kept in good shape over the years. She felt the warmth of old memories, the rekindling of a passion that had almost been extinguished over time. Maybe there was a hot coal under all that ash. Maybe, if she remembered the early years, the good times, she could fan it back into existence. She needed to remember his hands before they held the syringes. Love came and went, after all. It took work; it wasn’t always steady and true. Maybe she could get it back.

She thought about how his cheeks dimpled when he smiled, how warm his hands were on her body. They’d met eighteen years ago—almost half her life. He’d encouraged her to open her own business, and he was proud of her.
I’m your number one fan
, he always said. Starting over with a new man would entail her finding someone who had the qualities that Ron already had. Maybe giving up the idea of having a baby didn’t really mean throwing out her marriage too.