The Unfinished Child

by Theresa Shea

  Any desire Marie had had to tell her mother about the pregnancy disappeared. “She’s just trying to do her best, Mom,” Marie said. “She just wants your support.” We basically raised ourselves, she wanted to say, because you were always too busy to listen. You never listened.

  “Well, how do you support someone who never asks for help?”

  Marie wanted to tell her mother that she should show up without waiting to be asked, or just drop off a meal every now and then. People often needed help the most when they were the least able to ask for it. She clenched the phone in her hands. The words I’m pregnant almost came out of her mouth. She tried to imagine her mother’s response. For crying out loud; you’re no spring chicken.

  “Did you get my postcard yet?” Fay asked.

  “No, maybe tomorrow.”

  “Well, take care. Tell the girls that we say hi.”

  “I will,” Marie said. “Give my love to Dad.”

  The phone went dead in her hand.

  Marie reached for her purse and pulled a cracker from a Ziploc bag. Lately her nausea extended throughout the entire day.

  The phone rang at regular intervals at the front desk. Five women in matching pale green uniforms pulled files and answered the calls that never stopped. From down the hall wafted the smell of disinfectant. The woman in the corner had another coughing fit. She still didn’t cover her mouth. Marie shifted in her seat and closed her eyes. Someone in the room was wearing too much perfume.

  She turned her attention to her husband. A late afternoon shadow covered his cheeks. By the morning, his whiskers would have broken cleanly through the thick skin on the lower half of his face and neck. Then he’d do what he always did: bang his electric shaver against his fist to empty the old whiskers into the toilet bowl. After he shaved, he’d forget to flush the toilet, even though she’d asked him to a million times, and all his whiskers would cling to the side of the porcelain bowl like metal filings to a magnet and she would have to get the brush out and scour it clean.

  Barry read on, unaware that he was the object of her scrutiny. She felt the beginning of a resentment searching for a resting place in her chest. For a brief moment she wished he wasn’t with her. It would be nice to be alone.

  Finally, the receptionist called Marie’s name. She and Barry followed one of the doctor’s assistants down the hall to an examination room.

  The room wasn’t much bigger than a walk-in closet and held the usual equipment—an examination table with a disposable sheet of white paper on top and stirrups at the end, a blood pressure sleeve and pump, and a glass jar full of cotton swabs that sat next to the stainless steel sink. It was all so predictable. How many times had she seen the poster with diagrams of the inner nose, illustrating various nasal conditions?

  Barry stepped onto the scale next to the table and frowned. There was no way she was going to check her own weight. She already felt a bad mood coming on.

  Marie heard someone outside pull her chart from the door rack. A few seconds later, Dr. Cuthbert walked in, smiling.

  “Hi, Marie,” she said and then turned back to her file to search quickly for her husband’s name.

  “Barry,” he said, shaking her hand.

  “Ah, yes,” the doctor replied. “It’s been a while, Barry. Since the birth of your youngest, I think. When was that?” She consulted her chart again and laughed. “Ten years already! How are your girls doing?”

  “I’m pregnant,” Marie blurted.

  The doctor waited for Marie to proceed.

  “I know this is going to sound strange,” she said, instinctively moving her hand to her belly, “but I woke up a few nights ago convinced that something is wrong with the baby.”

  The doctor nodded. “Premonitions aren’t unusual,” she said. “Lots of mothers have them, but they’re also not accurate assessments of a baby’s condition.”

  “This wasn’t a planned pregnancy,” Marie added. “And now we want to know more about the baby’s health before we make any decisions.”

  Barry listened while Marie and the doctor spoke, nodding occasionally to show his support.

  “Well,” Dr. Cuthbert said, referring again to her chart. “You’re thirty-nine, correct? The standard genetic counselling we give suggests that women thirty-five and over have amniocentesis. Just to be safe. As I’m sure you know, maternal age plays a role in chromosomal abnormalities.” She paused to write a quick note in Marie’s file. “If you’re concerned about the baby and want to know more about its health, the most accurate test we have right now is amniocentesis.”

  The doctor looked at the calendar. “What I’ll do today is schedule you for an ultrasound. Are you sure about your dates?”

  Marie shook her head. “Not entirely, no.”

  “Okay. At the ultrasound we can take some measurements and get a better idea of your due date. An ultrasound at eleven to twelve weeks will give us the best results, and we can also at that time look for some soft markers of Down syndrome. If you decide to have amniocentesis, you’ll have to wait until at least your sixteenth week of pregnancy, to be safe.” She jotted a few notes in her chart. “We could do a pre-screening blood test too, if you like, but the amnio gives us much more reliable information. Any questions?”

  Marie and Barry shook their heads.

  “Well then,” she added brightly, “let’s proceed with the ultrasound for now, and, if you like, I’ll schedule you for amnio in about two months.”

  Dr. Cuthbert’s file snapped shut. She repeated that Marie’s intuition didn’t confirm any abnormalities and then started for the door.

  “Excuse me,” Barry said. “Do you mean we won’t have any idea of our baby’s condition for another eight weeks?”

  The doctor nodded. “The ultrasound will give us a preliminary idea of the baby’s condition. However, unless there is some obvious physical deformity, we’ll have to wait for the amniocentesis results, yes.”

  The afternoon sun had already slipped behind the University Hospital when they left the doctor’s office.

  A white Jetta drove slowly by in the bumper-to-bumper flow and honked its horn.

  “Hey, there’s Elizabeth,” Marie said, waving.

  “Oh, great,” Barry said. “Bring on the guilt.”

  Marie’s mood altered instantly, as if someone had touched a dial and switched it from medium—moderate contentment—to low—irritability. She felt the click and immediately her perception changed. She’d only just stepped out of the heated building, but already her feet felt cold. Why hadn’t Barry parked underground, like she’d asked him to? He could at least have left early and warmed the car. She hated winter. Hated having to gather the scarves, sweaters, mittens, hats, and jackets that were necessary to keep warm. Hated how her kids routinely lost gloves and expected new ones to magically appear. She clumped heavily along the shovelled sidewalk in her winter boots. With each boot fall she felt a greater burden on her shoulders, and a mammoth fatigue lodged in her bones. The sound echoed off the building and rode the wind around her. She walked past a store window and was startled by her reflection. She looked like her sister, with a hate-on for the world.

  Suddenly she realized she was mad at everyone: her husband, her mother, her sister. Even Elizabeth, who hadn’t called since she’d moved. She hadn’t even pulled over to the curb to say hi. Instead, she’d honked and waved, as if that was as good as a visit.

  She hurried to the car and waited impatiently for Barry to open the door.

  Barry eased the car into rush hour traffic.

  “I’m sick of this,” he said, gripping the steering wheel tightly with both hands. “One wrong word and you clam up.”

  She stared straight ahead, her lips a hard blue line.

  “It’s like walking on eggshells with you. You act as if you’re the only one worried about the baby. But I’ve been thinking about it too, you know. Christ, I can’t go anywhere these days without seeing someone in a wheelchair and wondering if that’s what our future hol
ds.” He paused and added, “We’re not in competition, you know.”

  Fifteen minutes later their garage door opened and Barry eased the car into the small space between her van and the toboggans lying against the garage wall.

  Marie remained in the passenger seat and watched his back disappear. The garage door closed automatically. A few minutes later, the overhead light clicked off. How long would she have to sit in the garage before he worried that she might freeze to death and come out and check on her? Obviously he didn’t care that she was angry. She sat in darkness and breathed through her mouth to avoid the industrial smells of gasoline and oil. As her eyes adjusted to the dark she saw the outlines of her children’s bicycles hanging from hooks in the rafters like the carcasses of deer.

  It wasn’t long before the chill began to creep into her bones. Barry probably wouldn’t notice she was still outside until six o’clock, when dinner wasn’t on the table. They always ate at six o’clock sharp. Barry liked it that way. She did too, most of the time. It only bothered her when she was mad at him, then she blamed him for all kinds of things, like making her adhere to a random schedule that he made appear fixed. In reality, it was good to have dinner ready for six. The girls knew their homework needed to be done by then, and it gave Marie a firm deadline to prepare for.

  The cold was now a scarf at her neck. She shivered and gave herself a hug. What she didn’t need right now was to get sick. She had enough to think about without losing a few days in bed. The light came on when she opened the car door. She quickly stepped into the darkness and slammed the door behind her.

  The house smelled wonderful when she walked in. She’d forgotten that she’d asked Frances to be at the house when the girls came home from school. It was good to have an icebreaker.

  In the kitchen two cooling racks sat on the counter beside the sink, lined with chocolate chip cookies. The sink was full of mixing bowls and measuring cups. Flour dusted the counters. A bag of sugar rested on its side, tiny granules of white crystals spilled out like tropical sand. A pound of partially used butter sat slowly melting in its wrapper.

  Frances sat on the loveseat nursing Max.

  Marie ran some hot water into the sink and began to clean the mess that Frances and the girls had left. “What snack did you make? Grilled cheese?”

  Frances nodded. “How was the doctor’s?”

  “Fine,” Marie said.

  “Well, what did she say?” Frances persisted.

  “She scheduled me for an ultrasound in a couple of weeks and for an amnio in two months.”

  “Why is she scheduling you for amnio?”

  “It’s standard procedure,” Marie said. “They suggest it for all women over thirty-five.”

  “Who’s they?” Frances asked cynically. “The doctors? Or all the people who make money from scaring perfectly healthy women?”

  Marie felt the hair on the back of her neck prickle. She heard the anger in Frances’s voice and remembered, too late, that her sister, not quite two years younger, had been thirty-six when Max was born. She would have had the same choices presented to her.

  “You do know,” Frances continued, “that your chances of having a child with something wrong with it are the same as your chances of miscarrying from having amnio?”

  Marie immersed her hands up to her elbows into the hot soapy water and closed her eyes. She wished Frances would shut up for a change and stop trotting out her facts and figures, especially when nobody asked for her opinion.

  “Do you want to stay for dinner?”

  Her hands swept the bottom of the sink.

  “Did the doctor tell you that?” Frances persisted. “That your risk of miscarrying is the same as your risk of having something be wrong with your child?”

  To be fair, Frances knew nothing about her premonition. “But those risks are both low, aren’t they?” Marie said. “So why not find out if there’s a problem?”

  “Why don’t you at least call my midwife? She’s great. She—”

  “Your midwife won’t be able to fix anything that might be wrong, Frances.”

  “I didn’t say she could. I’m just saying that if you go looking for trouble, you’ll find it.”

  Marie rinsed the frying pan and the stainless steel bowls and stacked them on the drying rack beside the sink. Frances really was a know-it-all. The day after Max was born, she was a sudden expert on childbirth, and on home birth in particular.

  Would Frances have been so exuberant if some emergency had forced her to be moved to the hospital? Probably not. She was still on her post-birth high, so Marie had overlooked that her sister was indirectly criticizing her own decisions to have her kids in the hospital. But what she didn’t tell Frances was that she liked being in the hospital; she liked being surrounded by equipment that beeped and buzzed and let her know at all times what her baby’s heart rate was; she even liked having the student doctors come in because she was contributing to the medical care and well-being of future women.

  Unlike Frances, Marie didn’t think that hospitals were barbaric places to give birth in. On the contrary, she found the idea of having a baby at home, without the possibility of drugs, to be unthinkable. Crazy even. Why endure all that pain if you didn’t have to? Of course women in the old days gave birth at home all the time, aided by midwives or local doctors, but many of them had died too. And back then they also washed their clothes by hand, burned wood to keep warm, hauled water, did all of their own baking, killed their own chickens, used an outhouse, and read by candlelight. She didn’t see Frances depriving herself of any other modern conveniences.

  Marie pulled the plug in the sink and listened to the water gurgle its quick descent. “Look, Frances, Barry and I have talked about it, and we’ve decided to have the test. So I’d appreciate if you didn’t conjure up any statistics on how it’s unsafe.”

  Frances draped a receiving blanket over her shoulder and burped Max. She leaned against the counter where Marie chopped vegetables for her pasta sauce. “I’m only trying to help. Hospitals and tests are for sick people. You’re pregnant, not sick. Those tests will just screw with your brain. I know a woman who had one of those blood tests done, the alphafetaprotein or whatever it’s called. She figured she was healthy; why not let them have a look at her blood? But the test came back saying she had a higher risk of having a baby with Down syndrome. A one in 294 chance or something ridiculous like that, and when she did the math she figured out that was half a percent! And for that her pregnancy was ruined.”

  Marie kept her gaze low and continued her chopping. What about the couples who found out something was wrong and were able to make informed decisions? Did they count?

  “My midwife says—”

  “Look,” Marie interrupted. “I already told you that Barry and I have talked about it,” she said, her voice shaking, “and we’ve decided to have the test.”

  The two sisters stared at each other. The vegetables sizzled in the frying pan. Max grabbed a fistful of his mother’s hair. The radio droned on in the background.

  Frances finally averted her gaze and sat down at the kitchen table. “I’m only trying to help.”

  Marie heard the self-pity in her sister’s voice and wanted to scream. “I didn’t mean to snap your head off. I’m just a little worried right now.” She picked up a cookie and walked toward her sister, extending it as an offering of peace.

  “Mom says to say hi, by the way. She called yesterday.”

  “Yeah, well, hi back. She never calls me.”

  “That’s because she loves me more,” Marie said. They laughed, fully aware of the truth in her joke.

  “Have you told her yet that you’re pregnant?”

  “No, not yet. I’m going to wait until the test comes back before I do.”

  “You’re going to wait two months?”

  “Frances, we’re not sure we want this baby, okay? Until we decide, I’m not telling Mom or Dad anything.”

  “That’s probably wise,” she sa
id. They both remembered Fay’s response to the abortion Frances had when she was seventeen. It was the first time Marie had ever seen her mother cry. But she’d made all the arrangements and drove Frances there herself. She never did learn who the father was because Frances wouldn’t tell her. There was a price to pay after all for not listening to your children. They didn’t suddenly start talking to you when things got bad, just like a person didn’t run a marathon without first training. Marie knew that Frances had secretly appreciated that neither parent had asked too many questions, but she’d resented having to include Fay in her life at all. If she could have arranged the abortion herself and not told her mother, she would have, but she was a minor; she had to have an adult with her for the hospital to perform the procedure.

  Marie added red peppers and mushrooms to the mixture in the frying pan. Then she put a big pot of water on the stove to boil.

  Nicole and Sophia came running into the kitchen. “Hi, Mom,” they said. “What’s for dinner?”

  Marie opened her arms for a hug. She kissed both girls on the head and glanced up at the clock. Almost six o’clock. Barry would be wandering in at any moment, ready to eat. Well, supper would be a bit late today. Hopefully it wouldn’t wreck his entire evening.

  She hugged her daughters again and asked them to set the table.

  “What did you do in school today?” she asked.

  Their noncommittal responses echoed softly off the walls.

  FOURTEEN

  1963

  It happened so quickly that Dr. Maclean wasn’t prepared for the patient’s mother to tumble headlong from the chair onto the floor. He rushed to her side and took her pulse, but she quickly came to and was determined to leave immediately.

  “Rest for a moment,” he said and helped her to her chair. He poured a glass of water and handed it to her. “Drink this.”

  She drank deeply, as if she’d been parched for days.

  Carolyn, meanwhile, had found the couch and had slumped into its corner.