The Unfinished Child (25 page)

But seriously, aside from the cavernous hole that your absence has made in my life, not much has changed. Things at school are pretty much the same. No one likes the new principal, so staff morale is lower than usual. But the basketball team is doing well and we hope to clinch a top spot in the upcoming tournament.

You know, I’m not nearly as oblivious as you think I am. Your confession that you’d been hiding baby sleepers wasn’t at all necessary as I’d known about that for some time. On more than one occasion, probably while looking for a particular piece of clothing, I found sleepers tucked into the back of dresser drawers. At first I thought you might be pregnant, but as the days passed and you didn’t say anything I began to wonder what was going on. Then one day I stood in the bedroom doorway without your knowing I was there. I watched you take out a little sleeper, place it flat on the bed, and then lay your hand ever so gently upon it. That was when I began to really understand the extent of your longing and loss. Over time the sleepers disappeared. I figured you’d talk to me about it sometime, but you never did. Until your letter.

Lizzie, I may not have said enough to comfort you. I just wanted to fix things somehow and didn’t have any idea what to do. I can’t tell you how hard it is to watch the person you love not get what she wants despite her doing everything in her power to make it happen. I’ve always admired your great determination and perseverance, but I’ll admit there were times when I wished you’d concede defeat and turn your sights to something else. Maybe I should have told you that. You’re not the only one who has kept things to herself.

Now I’ve got a memory of us to share. Remember the time we hiked the Skyline Trail in Jasper? Your feet were a mass of blisters because you insisted on wearing the new hiking boots that you thought you’d broken in enough. And because your feet hurt so much, while you were tender-footing it across a creek you ended up slipping off a log. You and your pack both landed in the water and got soaked. Luckily you weren’t carrying both sleeping bags! But it turned out okay. We hung yours from a tree to help it dry, and that night I invited you into my sleeping bag. Those mummy-bags were definitely not made for two, but we managed, didn’t we? What heat we threw off that night!

I’ve always loved you, Lizzie, and I still do. Say the word and I’m there. Ron

Elizabeth reread the letter three times before letting it rest in her lap. Then she wiped the tears from her cheeks. He’d known about the sleepers and hadn’t said a word. How could he not have said anything? Then again, what
could
he have said that wouldn’t have made her angry? He’d tried being supportive and that hadn’t gotten him anywhere.

She stopped suddenly when she realized where her thoughts were going. Why wasn’t she thinking about the fun they’d had on their hiking trip in Jasper instead of their failed clinic visits? Why did she always focus on what she
didn’t
have? No wonder she was alone, she thought as she looked around her apartment. She certainly didn’t want to be with herself. Why would anyone else?

Ron would. He said as much in his letter. Despite all she’d put him through, he still wanted her.
Say the word and I’m there.

“The word,” she said out loud and smiled. “The word.” She swivelled her head. Where was he?

He was at home, in their house, waiting. He was used to that. For almost ten years their lives had been put on hold; they’d been stuck in an endless loop of one test and procedure followed by another and then a wait. Needles. Paper gowns. Sweat. Cramps. Ultrasounds. Pain. Tears. She needed to stop remembering the failures. Or put a new spin on them. Ron wasn’t the bad guy, he’d done everything. Once, she had been told to make an appointment with a fertility specialist at a specific time during her monthly cycle. The appointment was to be preceded by a week of sexual abstinence, and she was to arrive at the doctor’s office a prescribed number of hours after intercourse. Her appointment had been for three o’clock, so Ron had left school early that day to be home in time to have sex.

How undignified it all had been. How utterly exposed she had felt, like a butterfly with its wings pinned flat to a board. She remembered the doctor returning to the examination room. “I’m sorry to say that, although there should have been, there was no evidence of live sperm in the cervical environment.”

“But that’s not possible. I came here immediately . . .”

“We’ll have to repeat the test,” the doctor interrupted. “You have what is called an ‘inhospitable cervical environment.’” Elizabeth’s heart sank. Inhospitable. Like she didn’t know how to throw a good party.

She looked down at the letter in her lap, at Ron’s controlled penmanship, and she understood she didn’t want the next ten years to be anything like what she’d just lived through. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. There was Ron at the stove, flipping a grilled cheese sandwich, barefoot, unshaven, hungry, and lonely. And here she was, thinking of him, wanting to be with him. After almost two months she’d had enough. Invite him for dinner. Now.

For once she didn’t stop to question herself. Instead, she picked up the phone and dialled the most familiar number she knew.

And now he
was on his way over and she was preparing her body for his visit—showering and shaving her legs and underarms. Taking a pumice stone to her heels. Putting a dab of his favourite perfume at the base of her neck. Blow-drying her hair. Adding a light touch of foundation below her eyes.

When she was finished, Elizabeth walked to the balcony and looked at the night traffic coming into the city from the south, looking for a particular set of headlights cutting through the darkness. She glanced at the river’s dark shadow. In another month it would be ice-free and flowing with spring runoff. But for now ice pans drifted silently down the middle of the river, the northern version of lily pads, while the banks remained hidden by ice. People could be like that too, she thought. They could suddenly expose a part of themselves you’d never known about, or reveal plans that surprised you. Elizabeth had certainly done that to Ron, many times. “Will you come with me?” she remembered asking him when their fertility doctor suggested they go to group counselling. Ron hadn’t been interested. He said counselling was for people who had problems in their lives, and, aside from not being able to have kids, they didn’t have any problems. But Elizabeth had persisted. So he went with her. For support, he said. As it turned out, he seemed to get more from the sessions than she did.

That first night, the counsellor separated the men and women into two groups. Ron had arched his eyebrows cynically when he marched away with the other men. Afterwards, however, he talked with some relief about what they’d shared.

“Give me
PMS
any day,” a sandy-haired man in his early forties had joked. “That’s nothing compared to the mood swings from the drugs my wife is on.”

“I hear ya,” another man had added. “There should be safe houses out there for men whose wives are on fertility drugs.”

Ron told her he’d laughed along with them, surprised that he wasn’t the only one caught in some bizarre cycle of emotions. Listening to the others, he said he felt as if he’d been walking around for years with his belt too tight and had suddenly been given permission to loosen it and breathe. He’d been all smiles and full of jokes when the evening ended.

“Did you exchange phone numbers?” Elizabeth had asked sarcastically because her session hadn’t made her feel any better at all.

In fact, she’d come away emotionally drained, the skin around her nose and eyes sensitive because of all the tissue she’d gone through. Again.

She was supposed to be working on acceptance. She was supposed to learn to let go, to move on, to forgive herself.

The buzzer rang.

Ron was in the elevator, coming to her apartment.

Then she was welcoming him inside, kissing him shyly on his whiskered cheek, and giving him a tour.

Elizabeth could not stop the foolish happiness she felt in his presence. In the kitchen she poured them both a glass of wine. He stood behind her, his body like a second skin that had lifted off. He didn’t touch her but her flesh tingled as if he had lighted on every surface.

And finally, the familiarity of his lips. His hands drawing every note from her body. Too long. It had been far too long.

In the morning
Elizabeth’s feet padded soundlessly over the plush carpet to the kitchen. She pulled some eggs, cheese, green onions, a red pepper, and some broccoli from the fridge and began preparing an omelette. The eggs cracked neatly against the sharp metal edge of the mixing bowl. She inserted her thumbs into the thin shells and spread them open. Dark yellow yolks hovered for a moment, and then dropped intact. She whisked them into a frothy foam and cut some vegetables. Then she sliced a thick piece of butter from the block and watched it sizzle in the frying pan before pouring the egg mixture in.

A few minutes later, Ron came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. She turned and kissed him, taking her time, enjoying the feel of his body against her. “I’ve worked up an appetite.” She grinned.

Ron loosened the sash on her robe and slid his hands inside.

“Mmm. Smells good.”

The noonday sun shone in the balcony doors. A thick shaft of yellow light fell across the living room floor.

They ate quickly and in silence, scraping their plates clean and pouring fresh coffees to take with them to the couch. Elizabeth pressed her back into Ron’s chest. His chin rested lightly on her head. They sat in silence for a few moments, comfortable in each other’s presence. A car alarm went off on the street below, high-pitched as a siren. The sound reverberated off the building and echoed down the valley.

Elizabeth twisted her wedding ring on her finger. “I don’t even want to think about trying to get pregnant,” she said, suddenly serious. “If it happens, it happens. But no more trying, okay? I’m done with any more disappointment.”

Dust danced in the sun’s shaft. The thick hairs on Ron’s arm glowed in the light. A door slammed in the hallway and Elizabeth heard laughter. It sounded fresh and optimistic.

“When are you coming home?” Ron asked.

The world opened up. She could be happy; they could be happy. Just as they were now. Ron stroked the side of her cheek. She leaned her face into his warm palm. She didn’t need anything else.

Her mind wandered. She tried to tune in, to see where it had gone. A thought circled about as if on a carousel, becoming louder at times and then dropping to a whisper before gaining volume again. She strained to hear what the familiar voice was saying. Try again, it said. Maybe this time will be different.

Elizabeth closed her eyes. Would it never go away? She wiped the tear away before Ron could notice. Then she slipped from his grasp and stared outside at the valley.

“What are you thinking?” Ron asked.

“I’m thinking it’s such a beautiful day we should go for a walk.” She turned back toward the couch and smiled.

“I’m thinking I should help you start packing,” he said.

He stood and opened his arms, and Elizabeth walked directly into them.

This morning, Carolyn Harrington died of cardio-respiratory complications, four months shy of her twentieth birthday. As is the custom at Poplar Grove, her body will be buried in the graveyard on the grounds.

The time of death is estimated at 3:30
AM
. The nurse doing the morning rounds discovered Carolyn in her bed at 7:00
AM
, curled into the fetal position. Her body was removed and an autopsy was performed.

Had I known her time was so near, I would have held a vigil by her bedside so she would not have died alone. I could have told her that she’d brought love into the world. I could have told her that her daughter, now four years old, is a vivacious and precocious child who was adopted by loving parents and who will live freely in the world from which she herself had been barred.

I could have told her many things, but beyond an intuitive knowledge that she was safe with me, she would not have understood. Carolyn never acquired speech.

So I am deeply grieved that I was never able to convey my gratitude to Carolyn. Had our paths not crossed, my vision would never have been elevated above the metal grate of the most pedestrian curb. Had she not produced a “normal” child, I’m not convinced the stark contrast of her own existence would have been so tragically apparent. To the unseeing, her life was better lived in hiding. To me, her life was larger than most.

Dr. Maclean wiped his eyes and closed the notebook. He heard his own ragged breath in the quiet room and sought a course of action. A door slammed down the hallway. He heard the intermittent drip of a leaking faucet at his sink.

Out in the wild expanse of fields, unnoticed, the snow very slowly softened. And in the white expanse the poplar’s bark was darkened by the winter melt.

In his office, Dr. Maclean heard the sound of geese flying overhead in the late afternoon sky, and suddenly the unhappiness of Poplar Grove was a burden too great for him to handle.

And with this realization came a sudden clarity: Carolyn had held him here, but now his ties to Poplar Grove could be severed. Electrified by this buoyant sense of freedom and possibility, he signed Carolyn’s death certificate and put it in his out box.

Then he pulled a blank piece of paper out of his desk drawer and began to write.

March 12, 1967

Dear Mrs. Harrington,

It is with profound sadness that I inform you that your daughter, Carolyn, died this morning of cardio-respiratory complications. Simply put, her already compromised heart was further damaged by her pregnancy. I hope you find some solace, however, in knowing that she appears to have died peacefully in her sleep. As is the custom here, she will be buried in the graveyard on the grounds. I myself will see to the details.

I am deeply grieved that we never had the opportunity to discuss Carolyn’s case further after the discovery of her condition. I blame myself, in part, for not trying harder to convey the particulars of the case to you. However, as promised, the infant was adopted into a good home, and I continue to follow her progress. She is a four-year-old bundle of enthusiasm and joy, and she has brought much happiness to her adoptive parents.