The Unfinished Child

by Theresa Shea

  Elizabeth put some roses in paper and began to wrap them. When she looked up she saw an old man standing before her, an old man whose wife was dying a slow death. On bad days she barely remembered she had a husband and she didn’t know her own children. Yet she remembered Carolyn and she said she was sorry. Did he need to have his world upset even more?

  “Rebecca said your wife recognized her. That must have been nice; you had been worried about that.”

  “Yes, she even called her by name.”

  Elizabeth plunged on. “She also said your wife kept asking about someone named Carolyn. Did you ever figure out who that was?”

  She counted out six red roses, three yellow . . .

  He pursed his lips thoughtfully.

  Elizabeth willed him to continue.

  “Children believe they know everything about their parents,” he said softly, “which of course they don’t. In our case, we never told them that we’d had a baby who’d died before they were born.”

  She didn’t die!

  “How sad,” Elizabeth said. “If you don’t mind my asking, how did she die?”

  “Carolyn was born with Down syndrome. Our doctor said she likely wouldn’t survive and suggested we put her into an institution. Sometimes that feels like yesterday.” He sighed. “My wife never really did get over it, I think. I certainly see that now.”

  Your daughter was almost twenty when she died. And your wife visited every month for twelve years! She only stopped visiting when she discovered that Carolyn was pregnant. She had a baby girl who was put up for adoption and . . .

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “No, it’s all right. It’s good to talk about it. I wish now that my wife and I had talked about it more. I think we erred by not wanting to upset each other.”

  “Do you think you’ll tell Rebecca?”

  “I don’t know. If Margaret keeps going on about it I suppose I’ll be forced to at some point. Alzheimer patients often get fixated on earlier parts of their lives. Obviously giving up the baby affected her more than she ever let on.”

  “What about you?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Giving up a child must have been difficult for you too. Wasn’t it?”

  He studied his fingernails intently for a moment. “It was difficult, yes. Certainly it was, but my entire focus at the time was to keep Margaret whole. I was afraid of losing her to grief, so I expect I proceeded as if nothing had really changed in the hopes that our lives would return to normal somehow. Our son, James, was born a year later, and that helped. Margaret had been nervous throughout the entire pregnancy, and I think we were both a bit surprised that our son was healthy when he was born.” He chuckled for a moment. “The doctor had said lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place, but we weren’t at all convinced. I can’t tell you how relieved we were to be able to bring a baby home.”

  Elizabeth finished wrapping the flowers, taped the paper together, and delivered them to the man across the shop. “These are on the house today, Mr. Harrington. For being one of my most valued customers.” Grandfather.

  She helped him stand and gave him a quick hug. “Give my best to Margaret.”

  “Thank you, Ms. . . .”

  “Elizabeth. Call me Elizabeth, or Lizzie.”

  He nodded and smiled. Then he put his hat firmly on his head and stood up, cradling the flowers like a newborn in the crook of his arm.

  She opened the door for him. “See you next week,” she called to his retreating form.

  “If all goes well,” he replied as he walked steadily to the corner.

  After work Elizabeth crossed Jasper Avenue, passed the two stone statues, and walked toward the entrance of the hospital. It looked more like an office building than a hospital, with its many storeys with small windows running in straight lines across the old stone.

  The glass doors slid open automatically when she approached the main entrance, and she walked directly to the information desk on the right. Behind the glassed window a plump, grey-haired woman in her early sixties greeted her warmly. “Can I help you, dear?”

  “Hi, I hope so. Can you tell me how to get to the Alzheimer’s ward?”

  “There are Alzheimer patients throughout the hospital, dear. Are you sure she’s in the Alzheimer’s ward? You need to give me a name.”

  “Margaret Harrington.”

  She searched through her files. “Oh, yes, here we are. She’s on the tenth floor. Ward Y. The elevators are just down the hall.” As she spoke she gestured to the group of elevators in the middle of the lobby.

  “Is there a nurse’s desk there? I haven’t visited before, but I’m family.”

  “Yes, the desk is just inside the ward. They’ll be able to direct you to the right room.”

  “Thank you.”

  Elizabeth stood in front of the elevators and stared at her distorted reflection in the metal doors.

  The air carried the smell of food from the cafeteria, flowers from the gift shop, and disinfectant from the cleaning staff’s mops and rags. The air also held hope, despair, relief, and grief. Lives were saved here and lives were lost. Miracles and misfortunes.

  Elizabeth stepped out at the tenth floor and followed the signs to Ward Y, hugging the flowers to her chest. If she met Mr. Harrington, she’d say she was delivering some flowers for a customer, as a personal favour, but she was hoping he didn’t spend the entire day with his wife.

  At the end of the hallway were a set of doors with a sign overhead reading WARD Y. To the right of the door was a green button to push for entrance. Elizabeth pushed it and heard a click as the door momentarily unlocked. She stepped inside and the door swung heavily shut behind her. A combination code was on the wall beside the door, but for now she was effectively locked in.

  She experienced a moment of panic immediately followed by shock at the powerful smell of disinfectant on the ward. Obviously it was supposed to mask the unpleasant odours of bodies kept in captivity. Holding tanks for people past their prime. What was it about humans, she wondered, that made them lean toward caging things?

  The nurse’s desk was directly in front of her. A reed-thin woman with curly black hair was talking on the phone.

  “Can I help you?” the nurse inquired when she finished her call.

  “Yes, please. I’m here to visit Margaret Harrington. I’m her granddaughter.” How strange it felt to say it out loud.

  “She’s in Room 7,” the nurse said. “Bed 2. It’s down the hall on the left.”

  “Can I ask why the door’s locked?”

  “For security. This is the lockdown area. The patients here tend to wander off. This way we know none of them are finding exits. We’ll let you out when you’re ready.”

  Elizabeth thanked the nurse and walked slowly down the hall that branched out into an open recreational area with rooms on the outer walls in a circular pattern. Several patients sat watching television by the potted ferns. One woman with hair white and sparse as a dandelion sang bits of a song to herself over and over again while the man on the couch kept telling her to be quiet.

  The room numbers were on the door, and as Elizabeth passed she peered in to find two beds per room. “Is that you, Gertrude?” a woman called out. “Is that you?”

  Mrs. Harrington’s room would be almost at the end on the left side. Most of the patients were bed-ridden, but two were wandering up and down the aisles as if searching for something.

  Elizabeth stopped outside Room 7, peered inside, and was relieved to find no visitors. A vase of fresh roses sat on a table beside Bed 2. The woman in the bed was sound asleep, her mouth hung slack. The other bed was unmade but empty. Elizabeth stepped quietly to her bedside and looked at the photographs beside the roses. One was an old wedding picture. In another she recognized Rebecca, who posed with her family. The third photograph was of a man (Margaret’s son?) and his family. Tucked into the frame of the wedding picture was a small photogr
aph of a golden retriever in full flight after a ball.

  Now that she was here, Elizabeth wasn’t sure what to do. She looked more closely at the sleeping figure in the bed and noted how papery thin Mrs. Harrington’s skin looked. Small blue veins around her temples looked as if a child had taken a ballpoint pen and drawn them there. Her sparse white hair held the look of a fresh styling. Her dentures had been removed and her mouth had sunken into itself, leaving her chin to jut sharply from her face.

  Elizabeth sat down in the chair beside the bed. This woman had allowed her husband to believe that her first-born child had died. This woman had secretly visited that child every month and then had disowned her when she’d discovered her daughter’s pregnancy. This frail woman, fragile as a newly hatched robin thrown from its nest, had lived with the weight of her decision all these years. Had she ever inquired after Carolyn’s baby to see if it had found its way to a good home?

  Elizabeth’s mind raced with questions and various scenarios, but she felt calmly separate from any blame or anger. Maybe it was the newness of discovery that allowed her to be self-controlled. Whatever the case, Elizabeth knew she’d had a good life. That she’d never had a child wasn’t the end of the world, despite the dark years of trying. There were greater darknesses out there, and this late discovery about her own life seemed pointless in a way. It could just as easily be the narrative of someone else’s life, an interesting one that would make for a good story, but not one that resulted in shattered lives.

  Wait until she told Ron that she’d just visited her maternal grandmother.

  Just then Mrs. Harrington’s eyes opened and fixed on Elizabeth’s face. She had startling blue eyes with a faint milky haze on them. She stared and stared without blinking and without changing expression. Elizabeth felt trapped by her gaze. Who was she to be here?

  Her granddaughter. That’s who she was. She lifted her chin slightly and smiled.

  Then Mrs. Harrington reached out an icy hand and gripped Elizabeth’s arm with a surprisingly firm hold. “I knew you’d come,” she said in a small, shaky voice. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Elizabeth placed her hand over Mrs. Harrington’s and allowed the warmth from her youthful body to spread into the chilled hand of the woman who had been expecting her for forty years.

  FIFTY-TWO

  On the Monday following Marie’s release from the hospital, she watched from the front window as her parents’ car pulled up to the curb. Her father stepped slowly from the car, looked toward the house, and smoothed what was left of his grey hair back into place. Then he walked slowly around to her mother’s side of the car and opened her door. Fay stepped briskly from the car and gathered her floral skirt in her hands as her husband closed the door behind her. Fay had always been great in a crisis, and she’d been through this once before with Frances.

  Fay’s omnipresent black purse hung from the crook of one arm while a bouquet of flowers was wrapped and cradled in the other. She turned and said something to her tanned husband, who promptly opened the back door of the car and emerged with some grocery bags. Then the two of them began a quick ascent up the cement path and rang the doorbell.

  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 s
un, 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?