The Unfinished Child (3 page)

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.

The cold front lowered itself
over the city like a cloud fallen from the sky heavy 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.

Barry sighed loudly to be heard over the wind and placed his open book in his lap. Then he shrugged his shoulders as if the abrupt movement would dislodge his irritation and make it slip to the ground. He didn’t appear the least bit interested in what she had to say.

“And the girls are getting so old,” she continued.

It was his dismissive tone that irritated her; the way he acted as if she was being unreasonable. He’d never been that way in the early years of their marriage. Or maybe she’d just hung on his every word then. Familiarity had brought a sourness to their relationship; it was as if Barry no longer felt the need to impress her. He had a wife. He had kids. The wondering about who he’d marry had been over for some time. Now he thought nothing of passing gas freely.

“You know damn well they’d love to have a baby in the house.”

Pins and needles began their stabbing exploration in her feet, and Marie carefully pulled her legs out from beneath her.

“And anyway,” Barry said, “some people are just starting at forty. So what if you have another baby now?” Barry turned back to his book, content to let his words be the last on the subject.

Why did every conversation become adversarial—him against her? He looked so smug in his recliner, his chin jutting out like a snowplow pushing his point home.

She shifted on the couch and felt the leather crinkle beneath her thighs as she studied her husband. He was committed to routine. Barry hadn’t changed his hairstyle in all the years she’d known him. He used the same shampoo, the same deodorant, and wore the same brand of shoes. Every morning he ate two pieces of toast, a bowl of Raisin Bran, drank a cup of coffee and a glass of orange juice. And he was superstitious too. Once, in the early years of their marriage, Marie had surprised him by buying a different brand of cereal. On the way to work that day he’d had a flat tire. He was convinced it was because his routine had been broken.

“You know what I think?” he said, licking the middle finger of his right hand to turn a page. “I think you’re feeling guilty.”

Guilty?
She sifted through her brain. “About what?”

“About being pregnant again.”

The first hint of jowls were forming in the thickening skin around his jaw line. He still had a full head of dark hair, sprinkled liberally with grey, but his hairline had recently begun to recede. Grandpa. That’s what some people might think if they saw him pushing a stroller. Isn’t it great that you’re a grandpa?

“Why would I feel guilty about being pregnant? Stupid, yes, but guilty?”

“Be-
cause
,” Barry said, drawing the word out as if what he were about to say was obvious. “Because Elizabeth’s been trying for years and hasn’t had any luck.” He reached for his cup of tea and took a sip, almost triumphantly. “You get pregnant even when you’re not trying.”

A hot sensation started behind her belly button and gained heat and intensity as it rose to her brain.

“I can’t believe you said that,” she whispered.

He didn’t reply.

How like him to start something and then back off, making it her problem. Marie took a sip of the tepid tea and tried to ignore his comment, tried to wipe it from her memory.

The wind continued to rage as the minutes passed and Marie built a case against her husband, stealing an occasional glance his way to see if he noticed. How effortlessly he moved from one minute to the next without dragging anything from the previous moment along with him. It would be enviable if she didn’t find it so frustrating.

She picked up her book.
You get pregnant even when you’re not trying.
Stop. Rewind.
You get pregnant even when you’re not trying.
He made it sound like an intentional act, as if
he
had nothing to do with the process. And what right did he have to talk like this about her best friend? Was it bad
luck
that had kept Elizabeth from having a baby for all these years? And even if it
was
bad luck, didn’t luck, good and bad, run out after a while? Three bad things were usually followed by three good things. If you believed that, then Elizabeth should have had some good luck by now. She should have had a baby. What did Barry know about guilt, anyway? He never second-guessed himself. He set a course of action and didn’t deviate from his plan. So why was he seemingly calm about this new wrinkle in their lives? Had he even
thought
about it? Was it
fair
that Marie was pregnant again?

No, it wasn’t fair, but she knew there was no such thing as capital-J justice. When she and Elizabeth had been in their early twenties, Elizabeth had often talked of how much fun they would have becoming parents together.