The Unfinished Child

by Theresa Shea

  “Why does everyone think there needs to be an occasion to see a friend? I just have some news to tell her, okay?”

  “Okay, okay. Relax. What news?”

  Marie juggled her options. “Promise you won’t tell Mom?”

  “Oh yeah, like Mom’s the first person I go to,” she said.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “Good one.”

  “No, I am.”

  “I thought you and Barry were done having kids.”

  She grimaced. It was like the grand inquisition with Frances, and Marie didn’t feel like defending herself. “Yeah, well, so did I.”

  “So you forgot birth control, or what?”

  “For God’s sake, Frances. Do you think that’s helpful?”

  “Sorry. I’m just surprised is all; I was caught off guard.”

  “Well, you and me both,” Marie said.

  “So you’re going to tell Elizabeth?”

  “Yeah, I want to tell her before she guesses.”

  “Do you think she’ll take it okay?” Frances asked.

  “I’ll find out,” Marie said. “Look, I’ve got to get to the grocery store. We’ll get together soon, okay? The girls would love to see Max.”

  She dressed quickly and herded the girls into the van. The garage door opened automatically behind her. Marie imagined Elizabeth’s mouth, opened wide with joy, opened wide with anguish. Her stomach twisted tight with anxiety. She put the van in reverse and drove slowly down the icy street to the four-way stop at the corner.

  FOUR

  Across town in an old wartime bungalow with a rooftop covered in snow, Elizabeth stepped into the shower and slowly turned from side to side to allow the hot water to erase all of her goosebumps. Standing fully beneath the shower head, she felt the water make its own course through her hair, over her face, along the slow curve of her waist, and down the full length of her body until it reached the drain. Gradually the chill left her bones, and when the water’s heat began to fade, she turned off the tap and stepped out into the steamy room, drying herself quickly before the chill returned, avoiding the full-length mirror that would reflect the uselessness of her body.

  As a young girl, she had been obsessed with horses. She read every horse book she could find, collected horse statues, and took weekly lessons at a local stable. Her favourite riding horse was a one-eyed palomino named 10-10 (who’d lost an eye as a yearling due to an unfortunate run-in with a tree branch), and every Saturday morning she made sure to arrive early enough to claim him for the day. She wasn’t bothered that in all of his gaits he moved with his neck slightly at an angle to adjust for his lack of vision because she loved all things wounded and their various imperfections. In grade school she’d envied a girl who broke her leg and had to hobble about on crutches. And she coveted the neighbour boy’s large husky that had lost a leg in a car accident. Aptly named Tripod, the dog was easy to manage on a leash because of its affliction.

  Despite her kindness to flawed things, she couldn’t accept imperfection in herself. When she was twelve, she started to believe there was a hidden flaw in her: she hadn’t been perfect at birth. That must explain why her mother had walked away as soon as the umbilical cord was cut. Snip snip—free at last! Her adoptive parents were wonderful, and she loved them, but deep in her cells she craved a unique heartbeat, a familiar voice, the rhythms and vibrations of the woman who’d provided her first real home.

  By the time she was a young adult, she understood better that women made hard decisions sometimes. Like Sandy, a girl who often showed up at the church dances. When Sandy got pregnant at sixteen, Elizabeth was as surprised as everybody else. Sandy was just an ordinary girl, not too bright, not too pretty. Then she disappeared for a while, and the following year at school, she didn’t have a baby. Nobody referred to the incident, at least not to her face; only the Grade 12 boys snickered when she walked by. Elizabeth almost told Sandy that she’d been adopted, to reassure her that her baby would be okay. But she didn’t because she knew there was another baby out there now who one day might hunger for its real mother. Plus, what Elizabeth really wanted to ask was if Sandy regretted letting that little bit of herself slip away. And she was afraid Sandy might say no.

  Then Ron came along—funny, optimistic Ron—and he made her laugh at her superhuman attempts to be perfect.

  Elizabeth had first met him at a party, which would have been nice if he hadn’t been Marie’s new boyfriend at the time.

  The French expression is le coup de foudre—a bolt of lightning, an act of God—which translates in English to love at first sight. And it felt like that, a sudden and searing heat. Elizabeth held his gaze a fraction longer than necessary and then backed away, embarrassed. Ron had immediately put his arm around Marie for balance. All night Elizabeth couldn’t help staring at him when she thought he wasn’t looking. But on more than one occasion their eyes locked.

  And then the telephone calls and Marie’s sobbing voice on the other end trying to describe the breakup. “I don’t know what happened.”

  Months later, Elizabeth’s phone rang. It was Ron. Was she seeing anyone? If not, would she like to have dinner?

  If only he hadn’t gone out with Marie! She’d thought about him often and remembered that heady feeling when her eyes had locked with his. She’d never been so instantly attracted to a man before. Ron knew that it was awkward, he said as much on the phone, but he also said he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her. Could they go out just once? He convinced her that it was possible they’d both imagined the attraction. Yes—she’d see him once, let him down easy, and Marie would never have to know. But when he drove her home after dinner he’d parked around the corner from her house because she was still living at home then, and she’d stayed in his car for hours until they couldn’t see out of the windows because of the steam before she stumbled home, thick-lipped and weak with desire. It took her weeks to have the necessary conversation with Marie. And it took weeks again for Marie to get over the idea that Elizabeth had stolen her boyfriend. When she finally did forgive Elizabeth, it was with the unspoken belief that Elizabeth had overstepped some line of friendship and was lucky to have Marie’s forgiveness.

  Elizabeth squeezed the excess water from her hair with a towel and tried to remember the last time Ron had made her laugh. Their dreams hadn’t quite come true. Only after they’d married had her greatest flaw revealed itself—an inability to bear children. You didn’t get to use crutches for that, and there was no special infertility sign that she could hang from her rear-view mirror to explain why her backseat wasn’t filled with crumbs and government-approved baby seats.

  In the bedroom, a feeble light pressed against the white sheers on the south window facing the backyard. It was a deceptive winter light, almost bluish, as if it had succeeded at the ultimate challenge of freezing itself. It could be eight o’clock in the morning, or it could be noon.

  Elizabeth pulled on her silk long johns and blue jeans before finding a turtleneck and sweater. She’d told her staff at the flower shop not to expect her this morning. Business was always slow in the period after Christmas and before Valentine’s Day, and even more so when customers worried about their flowers freezing before they could get them safely to their cars and then home. It was a good time to take a little break.

  In the kitchen she saw the remains of yesterday’s coffee in the pot and realized Ron hadn’t made himself a fresh cup before going to work. He always said her coffee tasted so much better.

  She ground some coffee and put on a fresh pot before heading to the bathroom to dry her hair. Bloodshot and swollen eyes stared back at her from the mirror. The small pocket of skin beneath her eyes was puffy and criss-crossed with spidery lines. She pursed her mouth in concern and then stared at the pleats that circled her lips. How quickly aging crept up on a body. At least the copper streaks in her hair made her complexion not so pale. She mixed some foundation and moisturizer in the palm of her hand and smoothed the lotion int
o her face with gentle strokes. She didn’t feel like wearing her contacts, so she placed dark-rimmed glasses on the bridge of her nose, hoping they would conceal some of the puffiness around her eyes. Finally, she tucked her shoulder-length hair behind her ears and stretched to her full height. Ron still found her to be beautiful, or at least he said so from time to time, but she suspected he tried to bolster her self-image by paying her compliments to offset the years of negative self-image she’d suffered through with all the side effects of fertility drugs.

  When she was thirty-one, and they’d been trying to get pregnant for five years already, she’d finally called the fertility clinic to set up an appointment. From the start, Ron said he’d follow her lead, but he also let her know he was already happy, without kids. He loved the life they already had; he wasn’t looking ahead to the future one with kids that he didn’t know. “I’m a teacher,” he’d remind her. “I get my kid fix during the day.” Well, no kids were coming into her flower shop. Could Ron really be happy with or without children?

  It annoyed her that it seemed so easy for him, but in fairness, he’d done things that he hadn’t expected to do.

  “You have a twenty percent chance of getting pregnant,” the clinic doctor had said optimistically on their first visit. Elizabeth had immediately burst into tears.

  “Those aren’t bad odds,” Ron had comforted, stroking her hand.

  But all Elizabeth heard was that four women failed for every one who succeeded. Four women cried their eyes out for every one who threw a party. She had never won anything in her life, and after years of trying to get pregnant naturally, she wasn’t feeling the least bit lucky.

  They’d start with intrauterine insemination; it cost less than in vitro fertilization and required lower doses of fertility drugs. No egg retrieval was required because the sperm, carefully prepared in the laboratory, was inserted directly into the uterus. Elizabeth admired the science behind it all. They filled her uterus with an abundance of fast-swimming sperm energetically poised to penetrate the eggs that were lined up like buttons on a blouse waiting to be done up.

  But Elizabeth had bled on the fifteenth of the month. Okay, she told herself, that was the practice run. It was always easier the second time around. There would be no surprises. She made sure to eat well. To exercise and get sufficient sleep.

  Two rounds later, she still wasn’t pregnant. So she rolled up her sleeves and turned to the in vitro.

  At one of their appointments the doctor gave them a small box filled with ampoules of liquid that would induce ovulation. For intramuscular injections, the small print on the box read. To be injected deep into a large muscle.

  “You need to get the needle straight into the muscle,” the doctor had instructed, and Ron had paled visibly. He hated needles.

  “What happens if I miss?”

  “You won’t miss if you go slowly. Don’t try to rush.”

  The men moved behind Elizabeth in the small examination room. She bent over the table, as instructed.

  “But there must be nerves in there,” Ron said. “What if I hit a nerve?”

  Elizabeth slowed her breathing. She wanted him to sound confident, but his hesitant tone led her to imagine her leg collapsing beneath her, nerve damage, partial paralysis.

  “Just watch closely,” the doctor said. “You’ll get the hang of it after the first few injections.”

  She tried not to flinch when she felt the sharp prick of the needle burrowing into her backside.

  “It’s okay, Ron,” she lied, massaging her behind as she straightened. “It’s not so bad.”

  He didn’t look convinced. “Look,” he said to the doctor. “If I’m going to do this at home, with nobody around to help me, I need more than just watching you give one needle. There must be something else . . .”

  Elizabeth looked at the ampoules cradled seven to a box. She would take home two boxes. Ron would give her one injection a day for the next two weeks. The clear fluid would heat her ovaries to a low boil. She pictured him as a fertility superhero dressed in a red and white latex suit, holding a syringe in both hands with clear liquid spurting from the needles. She saw a scientist’s lab, her reproductive organs hovering over a Bunsen burner’s blue flame.

  On a normal menstrual cycle, one egg would drop from her fallopian tubes. With this artificial stimulation, her body would drop as many as two dozen. Two years of eggs condensed into one month. Twenty-four cycles in one. Twenty-four chances to get some high-quality eggs to remove, fertilize, and re-insert. It was dizzying.

  “Nobody likes giving needles,” the doctor replied, “even me. But here’s a little trick that might help at home.” He asked Elizabeth to pull her underwear up, then turn around and rest her elbows again on the examining table. “I’m going to lift your gown now for a moment. I hope these aren’t your favourite underwear,” he added. Then he took a blue felt pen and drew a circle over the spot where the needle should go in. “Cut this circle out when you get home,” he said to Ron, “and make your wife wear them each time you give an injection. That should help you feel better about getting it into the muscle.”

  There had been so many needles along the way, and so many drugs. Follicle-stimulating hormones with names that sounded like they should be administered to cattle, except that the word human was thrown in sometimes. Some days Ron’s superhero image evaporated and he became, instead, a mad scientist pulling syringes from his laboratory holsters.

  Timing was everything. Ultrasounds determined the maturity of the eggs in their fluid-filled follicles. Elizabeth imagined setting a gigantic egg timer at home on her kitchen counter to log the hours before her eggs were collected. Then the timer was set again and Ron pleasured himself to produce sperm. Then his juice was mixed with her eggs. Three to five days later, the embryos were returned to her womb. Then the two-week wait for the ultrasound that would reveal if any of the eggs had stuck.

  Simple—wasn’t it? Petri dishes. Microscopes. Latex gloves. Cramps.

  And sometimes nausea, dizziness, hot flashes, headaches, acne, weight gain, bloating, and pelvic inflammation. At every step the doctors announced the statistics and asked if she wanted to continue. Over time, she was numbed by the details: Your chances decrease with each treatment cycle. Twenty-five percent of IVF pregnancies miscarry. Multiple pregnancies are a possibility.

  “Yes,” she always replied. “Yes, I’m willing to go on,” or, “Yes, I understand the risks and I’m willing to try that.” Ron was always there to squeeze her hand in support. She would do everything she could and beat the odds.

  After each in vitro cycle she rested and pampered herself for the two weeks leading to the ultrasound. And on that day, she and Ron would show up holding hands like high school kids on a date. Such a brave face they put on. And then the disappointment when the technician looked for some small sac suctioned like a snail to her uterine wall and found nothing but a Vacancy sign again and again. Once, after two failed attempts, and knowing the odds were declining with each cycle, she and Ron decided to implant five fertilized eggs—five!—knowing that multiple births could be a factor. Still nothing.

  Unexplained infertility. That’s what the experts determined after all the tests she had endured, all the pills, blood tests, ultrasounds, injections, and urine samples. Unexplained infertility. The experts had no idea why she didn’t conceive.

  Elizabeth poured herself a cup of coffee and went to the fridge to get some cream. Magnets held pictures on the fridge door of her and Ron in happy moments: at Christmas smiling in front of their tree, Ron with his perfectly straight, cavity-free teeth and fabulous grin, his arm draped casually over her shoulder. On their friend’s boat at Pigeon Lake. Next to the stage at Shakespeare in the Park. Her eyes roamed over the photos and stopped at one that Marie had taken of her daughters. It was a couple of years old now. Sophia had recently lost some teeth, and her pink tongue poked through the gaps in her smile. Nicole stood beside her, engaged in an equally funny grin, her fingers
hooked into the sides of her mouth and pulling wide. She took a big gulp of coffee and burned her mouth. When she was finally able to swallow, the scald continued down her throat.

  She was turning forty this year. For whatever arbitrary reason, forty felt like a firm transition point—either have children before turning forty, or don’t have them at all. Elizabeth had been on the verge of talking with Ron about a trial separation at least three times during the weekend, but she couldn’t speak the words out loud. I just need some time to myself. It wasn’t his fault they hadn’t had a child; she couldn’t blame him. But how had it happened that making the life she wanted was all up to her?

  On Sunday they’d cancelled their plans to go cross-country skiing at Elk Island Park because of the high wind chill. It was the perfect time to start the conversation. They spent the entire afternoon at home, catching up on household chores, but still she stayed quiet. She couldn’t remember the last time they had just hung around the house together. She’d made sure to keep herself busy because she preferred not to have time in which to think. It didn’t do any good. One of the women in her infertility support group had summed it up perfectly: “My head is like a bad neighbourhood,” she’d said. “I shouldn’t be in it alone.” Elizabeth had laughed along with the rest of the women in the room, but it was true, wasn’t it? She shouldn’t be in her head alone.

  It had been over a year since her last treatment, and she missed some of the women she’d become close to. Audrey had been fun. “If you think your brain feeds you negative messages,” she’d said, “you should hear my mom. Be patient, Audrey,” she mimicked. “Remember poor Abraham and Sarah.”

  Abraham and Sarah?

  Audrey nodded. “Yep, they’re in the bible—the first couple plagued with infertility. They were married and childless for seventy years, but they kept their faith.” At this point she lapsed into her old lady’s voice and shook a crooked finger at her listeners. “And when Abraham was one hundred years old and Sarah was ninety, their son, Isaac, was born!”