The Unfinished Child (40 page)

Marie took a deep breath and opened the door. Her mother’s head tilted to one side when she saw her daughter and her eyebrows lifted onto her forehead in a severe gesture of sympathy. Then she passed the flowers to her husband and opened her arms as she stepped over the threshold. Marie walked right into them, as if she were eight years old and had just fallen from her bike.

“You did the right thing, dear,” her mother said, patting her on the back. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

The right thing? Fay didn’t know that Elizabeth would have taken the child. What would she have said about that?

No! she told herself fiercely. Barry and I spent hours looking at both sides. It wasn’t an impulsive decision!

Somehow she got through the visit with her parents—her mother’s well-meant clichés and her father’s sorry eyes, sad as a basset hound’s.

Then the long
weekend came and Marie packed her family’s belongings for the trip to Jasper. Barry had made reservations for the family at Jasper Park Lodge. He said they needed to get away and have some fun, and he was probably right. Barry had ignored that she rarely made eye contact with him and that she had little to say. He didn’t understand that their lives would never be normal again. You didn’t just end a pregnancy and carry on as if nothing had happened. Some grieving had to take place, some acknowledgment that she and Barry had played a part in ending a life. It wasn’t right for him to simply move on to the next item on his agenda.

He hadn’t been the one to give birth;
his
body hadn’t changed in the least. The bleeding had finally stopped, but that didn’t mean her body had entirely forgotten its ordeal. At least ten extra pounds circled her waist, and she still found that her hands instinctively went to her belly and rubbed the excess flesh that no longer needed tending.

Every morning prior to leaving town she had awoken saying,
Today’s the day. Today’s the day.
And every day her resolve diminished with the weighty knowledge of her deed. She knew the longer she waited, the harder it would be, but something kept her from picking up that phone. Guilt. Shame. Fear. Grief. A whole host of emotions.

The buds on the trees sprang to life overnight with their shiny green leaves. For a few days the entire city looked as if it were blanketed in electric green.

Marie threw another load of laundry into the washer and transferred one to the dryer. Barry didn’t realize how much work it was to go away. He made reservations, put gas in the car, and thought his job was done. Meanwhile, Marie took care of everything else, and lately she found herself resenting all the lists she prepared to make sure everyone had what they wanted for the next few days. God forbid she forgot something one of the girls needed.
Where are my goggles? You know I need goggles when I swim!
And what about amusements for the car to keep the kids occupied? It was only a four-hour drive, but unhappy kids could make that seem like a lifetime.
Are we there yet? I’m hungry. She’s touching me.

She climbed the stairs from the basement holding a clean basket of laundry in her hands and sat down at the kitchen table. Four piles grew on the glass tabletop, one for each of them: Barry’s underwear, socks; Nicole’s underwear; Sophia’s undershirt, socks; her own bras. Marie’s hands moved on autopilot. She had completed this task hundreds of times in the past dozen years. No, thousands. But since coming out of the hospital she’d been in a constant state of irritation. It didn’t have much to do with the kids, or even Barry for that matter—he just happened to be an easy target. Her mind was elsewhere. She hadn’t called Elizabeth.

The silence between the two friends had stretched far longer than Marie had believed it could, and she now wondered if their friendship could remain intact. She’d never been good at playing games, and now she had no idea whose move it was. But if it was a contest over who was hurt more and needed comforting, Marie figured she should be the one on the podium. Gold medal to Marie. Silver medal to Elizabeth.

She picked up one of Barry’s white undershirts by the empty shoulders and shook it hard, flapping its corners like a whip. Then she folded the arms behind the back and tucked the shirt in half. She folded it over onto itself and kept on folding until his shirt got smaller and smaller and her hands looked larger and larger.

This time last week I made the appointment . . . 

Despite her irritation at preparing for the trip, Marie was glad they were going away for the weekend. She looked forward to being surrounded by complete strangers who had no idea what she’d just been through. She didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for her, searching to find the right words of condolence. For the most part, everyone had been wonderful. Her mother, for instance, had been surprisingly sympathetic. Marie sat at the kitchen table, encased in a fortress of piled clothes.

The May long
weekend proved to be as nice as the weather announcers had forecast.

Despite the sun, the mountain air was cool and pungent. It smelled of pine trees, glacial runoff, hidden valleys, and naked earth. A couple of male elk ambled slowly by, their necks covered in shaggy brown fur. New racks poked from the nubs in their brows, covered in a soft velvet, mere suggestions of what they would become by fall. She stared with wonder, trying to imagine velvety bone pushing up from a hard skull. Did it hurt? Was it the equivalent of enduring teething pains on a yearly basis? How could they possibly sleep at night with so much force gathering inside their skulls?

The girls had wanted to take the tram up Whistler Mountain; they were excited, but Marie couldn’t fake the enthusiasm to go with them. The skin on her face felt heavy as lead. She was entirely joyless, so Barry took the girls without her. Bathed in full sunshine in a lawn chair on the deck of Jasper Park Lodge, Marie watched an elk lower its head to Lac Beauvert and drink deeply. Water dribbled from its velvety lips when it lifted its head. Another elk followed slowly behind, waiting for her new calf to follow. Calving season had just ended. The clerk at the front desk had warned them not to get between a mother and her calf because the instinct to protect was so pronounced. Barry had abruptly asked about the pool hours to change the subject, and Marie had pretended not to notice.

A train whistle blew long and low and echoed down the valley. In the distance, Mount Edith Cavell broke the skyline with its snow-covered peak. Its flat rock face looked like an open palm issuing a command.
Halt! Take stock. Notice the beauty!

The grey rock, the white snow, the blue, blue sky.

Closer, and off to the right of her vision, a tramcar slowly ascended Whistler Mountain, swaying in the wind. She regretted not going, now that her family was gone. Children didn’t understand an adult’s need for solitude.
But why?
they’d asked when she told them she wanted some time alone.
Why?

Marie’s eyes filled with tears. This was yet another moment of regret to add to her list of bad parenting moments. She should be with her girls now, feeling the tram swaying in the wind, laughing light-heartedly. Instead, she’d allowed her own grief to keep her alone and at ground level. There’d been many such missed moments over the years, when her need to be alone outweighed her desire to be a good mother. A child late at night, excited to tell her one more story while she chastised her and sent her back to bed. Missed moments when her children wanted to be with her, confide in her, make her laugh.

The tramcar looked tiny on its metal cable. From that height, they must be able to see everything, she thought. For a moment she imagined the tramcar disengaging from the wire and plummeting to the valley below with her family inside. She played the whole tape and felt the anguish of losing her daughters. Barry’s death would be hard too, but her daughters’?

Stop it, she told herself. Stop.

She shifted against the hard wood of the Adirondack chair and let her gaze fall once again on the tramcar as it ascended the mountain’s peak. If Elizabeth only knew how much she’d wanted to call her before . . . But what would she have said?
Thanks for the offer, Elizabeth, but we’ve decided against it.

And what would Elizabeth have said?
Oh, well, it was worth asking. Thanks anyway.

She watched as another tramcar swayed precariously on its metal cable. Whistler Mountain looked suddenly forbidding with its dark patches of trees thinning and thinning as they gained altitude, their roots becoming more unstable, clinging desperately to the shallow soil that eventually turned to sheer rock.

Another train whistle sounded and echoed throughout the valley. Behind her, the door from the lobby opened and a large guided group emptied onto the deck, exclaiming and gesticulating wildly at the sight of the elk, rushing to get pictures. Marie closed her eyes and tried to re-enter her silence without success. Finally, she stood and turned back to the lodge. What now? A swim in the salted pool that spilled out into the open air? A massage? More food? Another cup of tea? There were too many choices.

Loss brings a certain exhaustion to the body, powerful as the urge for bones to grow, for tides to rise and fall. A grieving body needs sleep. She glanced at her watch. If she hurried, she had just enough time for a nap before her family returned.

She walked quickly through the lodge trying not to notice a group of well-dressed women in their thirties. How many of the other women she saw also carried dead babies slung around their necks like scarves? She tucked her chin into her chest to hide her tears and hurried toward her cabin.

Elizabeth leaned her full weight
into the shovel and turned the moist soil in her small patch of garden. Dark mounds of dirt in perfect rows marked her progress. On the grass beside her back deck sat the boxes that housed her summer’s ambitions: seed packages of peas, carrots, beans, spinach, onions, and beets. Bags of peat moss and fertilizer were stacked neatly alongside the boxes. Beside them, a dozen tomato plants were hardening off.

The first time she’d heard that phrase was at the farmers’ market. As she paid for her purchase, the farmer told her to be sure to harden off the plants before putting them in the ground. He said it as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Harden them off?” Elizabeth tried to visualize the process but couldn’t.

“Yes, before you plant them leave them outside during the day for a couple of days. Bring them in at night, though. They’ve been in a greenhouse the whole time, so they need hardening off.”

Don’t we all, she’d thought at the time. That’s what childhood was, a hardening-off period to prepare you for the real world. Something her mother, Carolyn, had never had—exposure to the
real
world. Yet she’d been hardened off too, hadn’t she? In the worst way possible.

The dirt turned easily; its dark underside glistened. Elizabeth adjusted her gardening gloves; already she could feel blisters forming on the soft flesh of her palms. Next to her shovel, moist black beetles scuttled for cover.

The dank smell of things fermenting hung heavily in the air. She surveyed her garden, calculating how much time this manual roto-tilling would take, and then took a deep breath and began again. The shovel lifted and fell in her thin arms. Sweat gathered on her brow, in the hollow between her breasts, in her armpits, in the small of her back. She paused when her shovel hit something hard. A large stone had made a home in her potato bed. She bent down and threw it over by the compost heap.

It was not yet noon and already the day was hot. Loud shouts of glee filled the air from the neighbours’ backyard. The children had the sprinkler on. She could see small flashes of nakedness through the boards of the fence. In the alley, a group of young boys in baggy pants swerved their trick bikes around the potholes, their heads dwarfed by large helmets.

Last year’s giant sunflowers came out easily in her hand, roots and all. Elizabeth was always amazed that their shallow root systems supported such height. When she was a child she’d sat in her mother’s backyard to see if the sunflowers really did follow the sun’s path. She never managed to stay still long enough to find out.

From seed, to adolescence, to old age, the sunflower did all that in a brief season while always reaching for the sun. It was so life affirming and beautiful.

A robin sang from a tree branch nearby. She imagined her mother reaching for the song. The sun’s heat intensified. Elizabeth kept turning the soil and with the rhythmic motions her mind’s attention moved to the new family she was beginning to discover—her grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Harrington, and her Aunt Rebecca and Uncle James and their families. Granted, she hadn’t made a full introduction yet, but she soon would. Dr. Maclean had agreed to help her. He said he’d talk to Mr. Harrington and fill in the gaps in his knowledge.

“I’m only doing this because it’s you, Elizabeth,” Dr. Maclean had said when she called. “You know I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for you.”

“I know.” She’d laughed. “I’m reading all about it in your notebook.”

Elizabeth bent down
and transferred the pile of weeds into a garbage bag. A person should never want something so much, she thought. Ron had been right about that. When she’d latched on to the idea of raising Marie’s child, she’d lost her bearings. And when Marie had left her in suspense long after her decision had been made, well, it was like discovering someone you loved had been betraying you for years and the entire relationship was a sham and you didn’t really know your lover at all. Betrayed. Yes, that was how she felt. Betrayed and abandoned.

Except she couldn’t deny that Marie’s baby had been the reason Elizabeth had contacted Dr. Maclean again in the first place. If not for Marie, then Elizabeth wouldn’t have access to her new family. And given that Mrs. Harrington didn’t have long to live, she was grateful to have the opportunity to meet her, even if her mind was clouded. So, in effect, Marie had given her a family, indirectly, but a fresh start nonetheless.

“You know,” she’d told Mr. Harrington on his most recent visit to the store, “I have a friend who worked at a place called Poplar Grove. He’s a doctor, though he’s retired now. His time there overlapped with your daughter’s.”