Daughters for a Time

by Handford, Jennifer

  On what would have been Claire’s forty-third birthday, we returned to the clinic. I was sedated lightly and the embryos were placed in my uterus—life made of my sister and my husband, blessed by Ross, and carried by me. For the first time ever, I was holding up Claire.

  “If it works, it works,” Tim said, trying to keep me levelheaded.

  “It’s worth a try,” I said. “And if it doesn’t, we’ll head right back to China for another. We might want to do that anyway, someday.”

  “Come back in ten days,” Dr. Patel said when he returned to the exam room. “We’ll take a look and go from there.”

  There was a chance that this wouldn’t work, but at least for this moment in time, I was pregnant with four embryos.

  I spent the next ten days playing quietly with Sam, molding Play-Doh, strolling through the yard, picking flowers and examining leaves, reading stacks of books, and watching videos. Each day at one o’clock, we’d drive down the road to pick up Maura at school. The three of us would nap together on my bed. Afterward, we’d each drink a glass of milk and snack on cheese and crackers.

  Ten days later, Tim and I returned to the clinic. In the waiting room, I picked up an album filled with photos of newborn babies. Sam played in the corner, stacking blocks and lining up cars.

  “Sam, look at this,” I said, calling her over. I pointed to the photo album of newborn babies. Sam toddled over and pointed to a squinty-eyed Buddha baby who had a good three chins. “That little boy’s name is Brandon Michael O’Donnell. When he was born, he weighed nine pounds and three ounces.”

  Sam smacked the photos with her happy hands.

  When we were called into the examining room, we assumed our positions. I lay back on the exam table; Tim sat on the chair next to me with Sam on his lap. Tim looked at me with his cautionary eyes—the ones that reminded me that we only had a 25 percent chance that this would work, the ones that worried that my hopes were too high. I nodded my acknowledgement, conveyed to him that he shouldn’t worry. I was no longer the girl I once was. I was ready to take a risk, fall, and get back up again.

  The doctor squirted gel onto my abdomen and pressed the ultrasound wand until he found what he was looking for. That’s when we heard it, the breathy, whooshing aria via Doppler: whirl, whirl, whirl, whirl.

  “Ah, the heartbeat,” Dr. Patel said.

  When I turned my head to look at Tim, tears sprang loose because, for once, being in the odds meant that I had hit the jackpot. I had spent my life on the tail of every bell curve: a mother who died, a father who left, a struggle with infertility, a sister taken much too early. What were the odds of all of that heartache befalling one person? And what were the chances of that same person hearing this heartbeat?

  “Good news,” the doctor said, staring at the black-and-white sonogram. “One embryo has implanted.”

  “One,” I repeated, though I secretly had wished that there were maybe two, just in case one lost its grip.

  “We’re not out of the woods,” the doctor said. “Take it easy. Let’s look again in a week.”

  A week passed, then a month, then the first trimester. With each ultrasound, the little bean grew, and before we knew it, we were at fourteen weeks and back in Dr. Patel’s office. His ultrasound technician, Carly, squirted gel on my belly and roamed around my abdomen with her wand. She called out organs as she found them, identified the chambers of the heart, measured the circumference of the baby’s beautifully round head, counted ten fingers and ten toes.

  “Carly, come on,” I said. “You’re killing me.”

  “Oh!” Carly said, feigning surprise. “Did you want to know the sex of your baby?”

  Carly rolled and pressed the transducer wand to the exact spot between the baby’s legs. “Surprise, surprise, you’ve got a girl.”

  “Did you hear that, Sam? You got a sister!” I said.

  Sam clapped her hands, recognizing the word sister as something good.

  At eighteen weeks of pregnancy, we went in for a 3-D ultrasound. It was offered to us mostly for fun: Dr. Patel had just updated his equipment, purchasing the latest technology. Once I was situated in the ultrasound chair, Carly came in and turned on the machine. It caught Sam’s attention, stopping her from what she was doing, pulling on Tim’s bottom lip and belly laughing. She stared alternately at my stomach and the ultrasound machine as Carly squirted gel and rolled the wand.

  And then an image like nothing I had ever seen before appeared on the screen. Not black-and-white, like the other ultrasound, but more golden, glowing. It was like looking into a cat’s-eye marble. There she was, our baby, a perfect bundle curled into the shape of a comma, with her hands at her face and her thumb in her mouth.

  “Sam, do you see her?” I looked over at Sam, whose mouth had parted and eyes were transfixed.

  And you really could see her: the purse of her lips, the cutest profile in all of history, and…Was that a dimple in her chin? And cheekbones that formed her little face into the shape of a perfect heart (thank you, Claire), and the sweetest arms, like two little satin ribbons flowing down from her shoulders and ending in slender, piano-playing fingers.

  Carly printed an entire sheet of ultrasound photographs. She printed a few extra to give to Sam, who studied them as if she were charting stars on an astronomical map.

  “I don’t suppose Sam’s birth mother ever had an ultrasound like this,” Carly said.

  “I think if Sam’s birth mother had had an ultrasound, it would have been because she was forced to, to see the gender of the baby. And in Sam’s case, that probably wouldn’t have ended well.”

  “She’s lucky to have you and Tim,” Carly said. Many people had said that over the last year, that Sam was the lucky one. And I suppose, in terms of her survival, the lucky part was that she was abandoned somewhere where she would be found. But it never settled in me that we had done something particularly altruistic. I was the first to admit that my motives were selfish. I wanted a baby, a baby to love, a baby to love me. It had worked out. One side hadn’t received more than the other had. As far as I was concerned, we had struck a good deal.

  After lunch, we dropped Tim at Harvest and then drove to St. Mary’s just in time to pick up Maura after school. I spotted my niece on the sidewalk, talking animatedly to a classmate, so cute in her denim capris and green tunic. Next year she would wear a uniform—a blue-and-green-plaid jumper with patent leather Mary Janes.

  “Great day, Mother!” Mrs. Morrissey said as we approached the curb. The director of the school had been in the education field since the seventies and addressed all the moms as “Mother” and all the dads as “Father.” The distinction that I was Maura’s aunt did not discourage her.

  “She looks good today,” I said. “Like the old Maura.”

  “I heard that she was asked to sing a solo in the Thanksgiving celebration,” Mrs. Morrissey said. “Maybe that had something to do with it.”

  “Oh! Great, okay.”

  Maura was already talking before her seat belt was buckled. “Aunt Helen, guess what?”

  “What, honey? Tell me.”

  “I get to sing a solo at Thanksgiving! The first verse of ‘America.’”

  “Oh, Maura, honey, that is the best news ever,” I said, thinking that Maura singing a solo was just what she needed to counteract the anxiety that seemed to be shrouding her once outgoing personality. “My country, ‘tis of thee…” Maura sang.

  “Sweet land of liberty…” I joined in.

  I looked in the rearview mirror, saw Maura’s cheeks perched high atop a smile, the happy girl she used to be. Maybe today, I pondered, she didn’t think about Claire. Was that the goal? I wondered. For Maura to forget her mother so that she could be happy? So that the sadness would disappear? As much as I wanted her to remember her mother, because it was only fair to Claire, and because, truly, Claire was unforgettable, I couldn’t help feeling grateful for a day like today when maybe Maura had had a day without her.

  “Wha
t’s that?” She pointed to the strip of photos in Sam’s hands.

  “Those are pictures of the baby girl that’s growing in my tummy,” I said.

  “There’s a baby growing in your tummy?” Maura asked, wide-eyed.

  “Yep,” I said. “There is. Take a look at the pictures.”

  “Wow!” Maura said, her eyebrows almost disappearing into her hairline. Then suddenly serious and concerned, “Aunt Helen? Is she going to be my baby sister?”

  I opened my mouth to explain the difference between sisters and cousins, but stopped myself, thinking about how it was Claire’s egg that started it all. “Kind of,” I said. “She’s going to be your cousin, but you know what? She’ll be just like a sister, just like Sam’s like a sister to you. Cousins, sisters—it doesn’t really matter, as long as you’re all together, right?”

  “Yeah!” Maura cheered. “We’re having a baby!”

  A few minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot of the Gymboree studio.

  “Aunt Helen,” Maura asked, “did you bring my blue leotard or my pink one?”

  “Blue, I think. That’s the one you like, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Aunt Helen? Is Grandpa Larry going to watch me do gymnastics again?”

  “I’m guessing he’ll be here,” I said. “He hasn’t missed a class in months.”

  “Is he going to have dinner with us?” Maura wanted to know.

  “Probably, unless he’s tired of you choosing IHOP every time,” I said, stifling a smile.

  “Last week he drank six cups of coffee,” Maura said. “I counted.”

  “That’s a lot.”

  “But he never orders pancakes,” Maura added.

  “Grandpa Larry never liked pancakes, for some reason.”

  “Then why do we go to IHOP every time?” Maura asked.

  “Gee, I wonder, knucklehead,” I said, laughing. “Maybe because you love it?”

  “Sam likes it, too,” Maura said. “She likes the silver dollars.”

  We opened the door to the studio and Maura ran in, hollering, “Daddy! Grandpa!” She ran full speed onto Ross’s lap, kissed him and then Larry, and then darted off for her warm-up.

  I handed Sam to Larry and said to Ross, “You came!”

  “I heard that we get pancakes for dinner afterward,” he said.

  “We do!” I said. “And eggs and bacon.”

  “I’d be crazy to miss it,” he said, smiling. He stood up and walked to the window, watched Maura stretch her legs out and reach for her toes.

  Larry looked at me, then at Ross. “Good news, huh?”

  “He’s coming around.”

  “Glad he’s not a slow learner like me.”

  I sat down next to him, handed him the strip of sonogram photos, and said, “What do you think, Grandpa?”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The following May, we gathered at Claire’s gravesite to mark the one-year anniversary of her death. Maura danced around the grassy hill, the memory of her mother already blurred, the current events in her life now dominant. It was sad watching Maura forget her mother, to know that she wasn’t capable of remembering that way. But it was also a blessing. No child should have to know that the person who loved her the most had been stolen from her, that she literally had been the victim of a thief. Let her forget, I thought. I would carry the heavy heart for my niece—a heart so full I could feel it in my belly.

  I leaned flowers against Claire’s headstone, placed my hand on the cool granite, closed my eyes. I miss you, Claire. But I’ll see you soon, I thought, placing my hand on my swollen belly. And Maura’s doing well. Do you see how we’re all loving her? We always will. I promise, Claire. I promise. I’ll take care of her just like you took care of me. I promise to love all of these girls—none of whom is really mine, but all of whom are still my own. Whatever that means. What I’m trying to say is, I’ll love them like you loved me, okay?

  I looked up at the marbled sky and then back at Maura. I would ask her occasionally about a memory, about Claire. She had already forgotten so much—the actual events. Sometimes she would recall a story, a day—”Remember when Mom and I picked apples?”—but then I would find a photo of the two of them at the orchard on her bulletin board, and I would know that much of Maura’s memories were from pictures. But sometimes I would see her stop, as if she were trying to bring into focus a feeling that was buried a layer too deep. A hug, a touch, a smell—something that would make her pause and remember, a fleeting moment of “Oh, yeah.” I knew because it had happened to me. Occasionally, in the last year, I had seen women on the street who bore a likeness to Claire and I had done a double take. Every time I ordered a vanilla latte, I would hear Claire instruct the barista to “go light on the syrup.” In the days when the grief threatened to swallow me whole, I would hear Claire’s singsong admonition: “Pull yourself together and put on a brighter shade of lipstick!”

  I knew what Maura was going through, how she distrusted her memories, because I felt the same uncertainty about what was real and what was imagined.

  The first week of July, I felt a twinge.

  “Is it a contraction?” Tim asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, tearing up at the thought of something going wrong, remembering the sadness that swallowed me after my miscarriage years ago.

  “Let’s get you to the hospital,” Tim said.

  Davis and Delia had come up from North Carolina the day before. The doctor had guessed that labor would start in the next few days. He’d given me the option of inducing, just in case.

  Sam was on the deck with her grandparents when Tim and I came down the stairs.

  “We need to get Helen checked out,” Tim said to his parents. “She’s feeling something. She’s worried.”

  Davis and Delia nodded, assured us that Sam would be fine.

  “Mommy and Daddy love you,” I said to Sam, leaning over to kiss her mouth, just as another twinge grabbed at my abdomen. “Be a good girl.”

  Sam looked up briefly and then went back to blowing bubbles.

  “Good luck, dear,” Delia said, kissing my cheek.

  “Delia,” I said nervously. “Will you come with us?”

  “Oh!” Delia danced, flustered. “I would be honored to,” she said. “Thank you, dear!”

  “I’d really like you there.”

  “Lucky you,” Tim said to Sam. “You get Grandpa all to yourself. He’ll probably feed you ice cream and Oreos for dinner.”

  “Yeah!” Sam cheered.

  At the hospital, Tim checked me in, and once I was situated in a gown in a private room, the nurse came in to examine me. “Nothing’s wrong,” she assured me. “You’re in labor.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said. “Those twingy things didn’t feel like what I thought a contraction would feel like.”

  “Those are just the baby ones,” she said. “You’ll see.”

  Five hours later, the contractions began in earnest. Seven hours later, I cried uncle and called for the epidural. An hour later, the anesthesiologist inserted the catheter into my spinal canal. The next few hours were calm. Delia and I played Scrabble; nervous Tim polished off a pile of candy bars. I even slept for a few hours. At ten o’clock at night, I felt a pressing. It was so low and deep that the burning pressure reached my thighs. The nurse checked. I was at ten centimeters. Ready to push.

  Tim was on one side, holding a Styrofoam cup of ice chips ready for me to suck on; Delia was on the other, clearing the hair out of my face.

  “Now, Dad, Grandma,” the nurse said, “each of you is going to push her knee toward her face, and Helen, you’re going to push for ten counts.”

  Tim put his weight into my one knee and Delia into the other.

  “Now!”

  I pushed and pushed, though my efforts felt impossibly weak compared to what was needed to see this through. I pushed more, harder, until it felt like I was turning inside out.

  “You’re doing really well,” the n
urse said. “Again!”

  Again and again, I pushed. I lay back against my pillow, crying from exhaustion. Tim slipped me an ice chip; Delia folded a cool cloth on my forehead. I pushed again, and then again. Three hours later, the nurse said she was ready for the doctor. The baby’s head was crowning.

  “Oh, dear,” Delia said. “She’s almost here!”

  No, she’s not, I wanted to say, but was unable to speak through my exhaustion and tears. A sense of dread had filled me and an anxiety had wrapped around my neck and pulled tight. She should be here by now. If this was meant to be, it would be over by now. I’d have a baby in my arms. I never should have done this. I never should have tempted fate, messed with science, tried to find a loophole in my infertility life sentence. I wasn’t meant for this. I was in the last mile of the marathon and all I wanted to do was to turn back.

  When the nurse came back, she said, “Huh.”

  “What?” I asked.

  The nurse stared at the strips of paper etching their way out of the machine that monitored the contractions. “Your contractions seem to have stopped. You haven’t had one in over ten minutes.”

  My chest grew heavy. I fought for breath. Something was wrong. Of course something was wrong. My baby was dying inside of me.

  Delia cupped her hands around my face. “Helen, the baby is fine. She wants to come out.”

  I shook my head because, all of a sudden, a fear filled me like cement, and I just knew that she wasn’t going to make it. I wanted to see Mom and Claire. I wanted to tell them that it was no good on Earth without them, that I wasn’t strong enough to carry on alone.

  “She’s afraid,” Delia said to the nurse, her little voice ringing clear over the din of machines. “She’s had a miscarriage. She’s lost a lot of loved ones. She’s scared.”

  Delia’s words, making sentences out of my sad life, made me want to crawl into a ball and die.

  The nurse nodded as if that explained it.

  “The doctor will want to start Pitocin,” the nurse said sympathetically. “But meanwhile, see if you can talk to her.”