Blame

by Nicole Trope

  ‘I’m sorry, Anna,’ says Walt.

  ‘I’m not,’ says Anna. ‘It was my choice. I know that autism can run in families. I knew that there was a chance another child could be the same way and, no matter what Keith said, I couldn’t seem to imagine any other outcome. I couldn’t have dealt with two of them. I would rather have died.’

  ‘What did Keith think?’ asks Cynthia.

  ‘What difference does that make? It has no bearing on what we’re talking about today!’

  Anna tries not to think about the night Keith found out about the termination. She had waited two days to tell him, until she felt physically strong enough to deal with his reaction. He had wanted her to keep the baby, had begged her to keep it. He had talked at her for days and days, trying to convince her that everything would be all right, promising to hire a full-time nanny if she needed one. ‘With what money?’ Anna had scoffed. ‘Everything we have goes on therapy and doctors. How do you propose to pay for a nanny?’

  ‘I’ll go to my parents,’ Keith had said. ‘They’ll understand. Everyone will help. Please, Anna, it’ll be different this time. I know that this child will be fine and will make us a proper family. Please don’t do anything until you’ve thought about it. I’ll talk to my mother and see how much she can help. Everyone will want to help.’

  He would not let it go and eventually Anna had agreed to wait, to give it some time before she made her decision, but she hadn’t been able to. She had spent hours going over it again and again, trying to fit a new baby into the puzzle her family was, but no matter what image she tried to conjure up, no matter how hard she tried to envision the dream toddler she and Keith had once believed would be theirs, she couldn’t see it. All she could see was a future of being shackled to two children who would need her for the rest of their lives.

  She saw herself dragging them both by the hands through a shopping centre, with Maya screaming, and the new child spinning or flapping away from her. She saw the sleepless nights, and the dirty nappies that Maya had only stopped producing at five years old. She saw the endless hours trying to guess what was wrong with the new baby . . . ‘Are you too hot? Too cold? Hungry? Tired? Hurt?’ She saw the hours that she now had alone while Maya was at school disappear, swirling her back into a vortex of caring constantly for another living creature. There would be no rest or respite. She would be with a baby all day and all night, and when the baby was asleep, she would have to be with Maya. And how would Maya deal with a baby? In the middle of one of her tantrums, she had ripped the head off a teddy bear that was the size of a two-year-old child. Mid-tantrum, what would she do to a baby? And in the midst of all this worrying and caring and mothering, what would happen to Anna? There was little enough of her left as it was. How could there be enough for another human being who needed and wanted her constantly?

  The thought made Anna throw up, even when the pregnancy hormones were not affecting her. After lying awake for a whole night, she had understood that she was not capable of sustaining even one positive thought about the child growing inside her, and it seemed kinder to her to let it go, rather than force it to deal with all her anger and fear.

  She had booked the termination the next morning and was able to have it the same day. Caro had gone with her and Anna had arrived home before Maya’s school was out. One, two, three, and it was done.

  Two nights later, she had joined Keith on the couch after Maya had gone to bed.

  ‘How are you feeling today?’ he had asked gently.

  ‘I’m fine, Keith.’

  He had gone back to watching the television, but was clearly sensing something. Anna could always tell when Keith was avoiding a fight with her. He sat up straighter, did more cleaning up in the kitchen, or did what he did right then, which was switch the television channel from the news to a home-decorating show, because he knew she liked those.

  ‘Don’t you want to know why I’m fine?’

  Keith had turned to look at her. ‘Of course I want to know, Anna. I just hoped you were feeling okay today. I know you hate feeling nauseous.’

  ‘I’m not nauseous.’

  ‘That’s great. I didn’t realise it’d pass so soon. With Maya, you felt horrible for the whole time—remember?’

  Afterwards, Anna had chastised herself for not taking a moment to phrase her words properly. As it was, even to her own ears, she sounded smug, and almost as if she were taking some sort of sadistic pleasure in her announcement. ‘Keith, I’m not nauseous because I’m not pregnant anymore. I had a termination two days ago.’

  ‘You . . . what?’ said Keith without removing his eyes from the screen.

  It made Anna nervous. She had expected yelling and the inevitable tears. She blundered on, ‘I haven’t been able to tell you because . . . because I know you wanted another child but I knew, Keith . . . please understand . . . that I knew that I couldn’t do it.’

  Keith hadn’t said anything for about five minutes, and then he had finally switched off the television and stood up, moving across the room from her.

  Anna wanted to get up and leave but could see he was breathing deeply, trying to make his anger dissipate.

  ‘Say something, Keith, please! I’m really sorry but I know myself. I know what I can handle.’

  ‘You evil bitch,’ Keith had finally spat. He had rushed over to where she sat and loomed over her, raising his hand. ‘How could you,’ he sputtered. ‘How could you do it without asking me? Without telling me? My child, you killed my child.’

  Anna had never been afraid of Keith. He was short and slim, and could go for days without shaving. His curly blond hair and pudgy cheeks made him look younger than his years, and he was the least threatening person Anna knew, but that night she had been afraid he would actually hit her.

  ‘Keith, what are you doing?’ she had yelled.

  ‘Be quiet,’ he said. ‘You’ll wake Maya.’

  Anna had stood up and pushed him out of her way. Even when he was so angry at his wife, he wanted to hurt her physically, he was still thinking about Maya, because if Maya woke up, the whole night descended into chaos. The whole world descended into chaos.

  ‘I don’t expect you to understand, Keith. I don’t expect you to be happy about it, but you have to get that this was my body and my choice. I cannot have another child. I need to be here for Maya, and Maya only.’

  ‘You’re like a fucking robot, Anna. Don’t you care? Aren’t you heartbroken? What kind of a woman kills the baby she’s carrying and doesn’t feel a thing?’

  When Anna thinks about that night now, she knows it was the end of her marriage. They had carried on together because Maya needed two parents, but she couldn’t bear to have him touch her, and even though he had apologised, had apologised again and again, after a long talk with his mother, she had never been able to see him the same way.

  ‘Keith thought . . .,’ says Anna to Cynthia, ‘Keith thought that my decision to terminate made me an evil bitch.’ Even now the words cause a pain in her chest. ‘We don’t have much of a marriage.’ Anna has never said such a thing out loud before. She feels strangely freed. In fact, after last night, they didn’t have a marriage at all, but Anna doesn’t want to talk about that yet. She had slept on the couch with her mobile phone next to her, and had spent the night fighting the urge to call Caro and tell her what had happened. She knows that she should have removed Caro’s number from her phone, or blocked her or something. In the days following Maya’s death, Caro’s calls to Anna’s mobile had numbered in the hundreds. If she called the house, she got Keith, because Anna refused to answer the phone. It was bizarrely comforting to her to see evidence of Caro’s attempts to contact her and to know that Caro was suffering as she was suffering. Her calls were proof of her guilt. They had to be.

  ‘Would you say that you and Keith stayed together because of Maya?’ asks Cynthia.

  ‘Absolutely,’ says Anna. ‘How long did you stay with your husband because you didn’t want to put your children th
rough a divorce?’

  ‘Too long,’ says Cynthia. Walt clears his throat and Cynthia sits up straight.

  ‘Would you say that on the day Maya died, you’d finally had enough?’ asks Walt.

  There is a moment of absolute silence in the room. Walt has asked the question without emotion and Anna can see him thinking that he’s got her. She can see both detectives thinking that the good cop–bad cop routine has worked. Cynthia has engaged her, has connected with her as another mother, and then Walt has come in with the hard question. It’s not the hardest question, because he hasn’t asked, ‘Did you kill your child, Anna?’ But it’s hard enough.

  What neither of them understands is that Anna is watching herself, watching them and watching the camera. She is watching it recording all her words so that they may one day be used against her.

  ‘No,’ says Anna. ‘I’d had enough every single day. Every time she hit me, or threw a tantrum, or broke something, or spat at me, I’d had enough. That day was no different to any other day. I loved my daughter, Detective. Despite everything, I loved her and I would never have done anything to hurt her.’

  Anna shifts in her chair. ‘What else have you got?’ she thinks.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘You’ve got our attention, Caro. Tell us what you think we need to know,’ says Susan.

  ‘Okay, just give me a moment. This is really hard for me, you know.’

  ‘We gave you all the time you needed yesterday and we didn’t get very far.’

  ‘I was sick.’

  ‘You were in withdrawal,’ says Brian.

  ‘And I still am,’ says Caro. ‘I haven’t had anything to drink since yesterday morning.’

  ‘Well, good for you,’ says Brian, and Caro smiles at him. ‘The first few days are hard,’ he says, ‘but once your body recovers, it’s going to be harder still. Now you can feel the effects that alcohol has had on your body but, afterwards, when you’re feeling physically okay, it might be difficult to resist temptation.’

  ‘This is not a therapy session, Detective Ng,’ says Susan sharply. ‘Caro, the accident. Let’s just get to the accident.’

  Caro holds up her hands to stave off Susan’s aggression. She feels prickles of fear all over her skin. ‘They’re not going to believe me,’ she thinks but knows there is nothing she can do but tell her story.

  ‘Anna called me to come over to her house,’ she says.

  ‘Yes, you’ve said that already, and you also said that you’d only had a couple of glasses of wine,’ says Susan.

  ‘Well, I’m guessing that those blood-test results are going to say that’s not the case,’ says Caro, and stops talking.

  ‘Well, actually—’ says Brian, looking at the folder on the desk and then shaking his head, but Susan interrupts him: ‘Why don’t you just tell us the story, Caro?’

  ‘Odd,’ thinks Caro. She wonders how high the number actually is, wonders how she had thought she would be able to drive. She feels her stomach flip as the realisation of the course her life is now on hits her. She thinks about simply sitting back and refusing to speak. There is nothing she can say now to save herself, so why tell them what happened? Why drag Anna, who is already suffering, who already has suffered for years, into Caro’s train crash of a life?

  But then she remembers one afternoon when Maya was around seven. Anna and Keith had been invited to a wedding, and Caro had offered to babysit. It was the wedding of one of Keith’s cousins, so none of their usual babysitters were available, and by then, Anna’s mother refused to be alone with Maya.

  ‘I can’t ask you to do that,’ Anna had said over the phone. ‘You know how difficult it’ll be.’

  ‘I do, but I’m offering anyway. I’ll come to your house, and leave Lex with Geoff, so I don’t have to concentrate on anything else. She knows me, Anna, and it’s one afternoon. I’ll cope for one afternoon.’

  Anna had hesitated for a few minutes, and in her silence, Caro had heard not only her friend’s concern that Caro wouldn’t be able to handle her child but her concern about the times when Anna had seen her a little the worse for wear.

  ‘I’ll be stone-cold sober, Anna,’ she had said. Saying the words had hurt but she desperately wanted to give her friend one afternoon off. She had known Anna would never have said anything to her about her drinking. She would have supported Caro if she decided to give up, and turned a blind eye when she overdid things, but Anna would never judge her. ‘Trust me,’ Caro had said and finally Anna had agreed.

  Caro had kept her promise. She had stayed away from alcohol the whole day she was going to babysit Maya, and arrived an hour early, so she could adjust to her being there.

  ‘You look gorgeous,’ she told Anna, who had looked quite startlingly beautiful. Not just well made-up and well dressed but lit up by the prospect of a free afternoon. ‘You both look nice,’ she had said when Keith walked into the room.

  ‘Yes,’ he had said, not even glancing at his wife, ‘don’t we.’

  Anna had shrugged her shoulders and rolled her eyes at Caro, as if to say, ‘Men!’, but Caro knew that their marriage had never really recovered from Anna’s termination the year before.

  Their marriages, their failing marriages, were part of the ongoing stories of their lives. They felt they were both in the same situation, stuck with men they were no longer sure they wanted to be with but hampered by their children. Anna and Caro were closer than friends, closer than sisters. They texted each other all day and spoke every night. Caro had once pictured the two of them living side by side in a retirement home. She had never pictured them without each other. She had been able to imagine a time when her marriage to Geoff would be over, and when Lex would have a life completely separate from hers, but she had always seen Anna in her future.

  ‘Thank you for doing this,’ Anna had said before she left for the wedding. She had given Caro a quick, hard hug, and Caro had immediately regretted not making a similar offer sooner. Keith’s family were fond of birthday dinners and picnic lunches and family holidays—none of which Anna and Keith ever got to attend.

  ‘You’ll be okay?’ asked Anna.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ said Caro, ‘just have a good time.’

  Once Anna and Keith had left, Caro had sat on the couch, quietly watching Maya watching her space DVD. Anna had told her which snacks she could offer Maya and exactly when to offer them; in fact, she had left a run sheet specifying how the four hours with Maya were supposed to go.

  Maya had watched the video five times while Caro sat there, every muscle tense, every sense alert. After the fifth time, she had stood up and looked around the room, and on seeing Caro, she had smiled. It was a genuine smile and in it Caro had read, Don’t be afraid. I’m going to help you get through this. She had picked up her iPad and touched the icon meaning snack, and Caro had dutifully put seven—not six, not eight—rice crackers in a bowl, and half filled a red plastic cup with water and added exactly one tablespoon of apple juice. Maya had taken the bowl and the crackers, and sat at a small wooden table with matching chairs. She was too big for them, but Anna had told Caro that she was afraid to get rid of the furniture set. When she had finished eating, Maya had disappeared from the living room. Caro had been tempted to follow her, but she knew that the whole house was set up so as to let Maya wonder aimlessly from room to room. ‘Sometimes she can do it for hours, for no apparent reason,’ Anna had said.

  Caro remained on the couch, fending off her desperation for a drink and refusing to look at the time. After a while, Maya had returned to the living room, holding a book, and then she had sat on the couch next to Caro and curled her legs under her, handing over the book. It was the classic story of the town mouse and the country mouse but with the language simplified to toddler level. Caro had read it to her, and then Maya had tapped the book, and she had read it again and again and again. She can’t now recall how many times she read the book but, at some stage, Maya had let her head drop onto Caro’s shoulder. She had never vo
luntarily touched her before. The trust she was displaying made Caro want to cry.

  Caro had kept reading until she recognised the heavy sleep that all mothers learn to spot, and then had closed the book and sat quietly until Anna and Keith walked through the door. She hadn’t wanted to move, being afraid to disturb Maya, afraid that the gentle look on the child’s face would disappear as she opened her eyes. Caro had seen her then as a little girl, just like Lex was a little girl, and she had understood why it was always possible to love your child, regardless of everything else.

  The next day, Anna had detailed a dreadful night with tantrums and no sleep. Caro had understood then that Maya really had tried to go easy on her—she had recognised that here was someone unused to dealing with her and had tried to help. When Caro had explained her theory to Anna, she had been unimpressed. ‘She knows which environments are good for throwing fits.’

  ‘Yes, but perhaps it means that you’ll be able to get through to her eventually; that she’s smart enough to know how to change her behaviour for me, so maybe—’

  ‘So maybe nothing,’ Anna had said. ‘She has good days and bad days, good parts of the day and bad parts of the day. The day you babysat, she’d spent the whole morning writhing on the ground, screaming and kicking. She was probably just exhausted.’

  Caro had left it because it was not her place to talk about someone else’s child, especially a child with special needs. In the interview room, though, she can recall the feeling of Maya’s head on her shoulder, and so, despite her friendship with Anna, she knows that she needs to tell the truth, whether she will be believed or not.

  ‘When Anna called me that day, she sounded . . .’ Caro thinks about what she is trying to say, ‘She sounded different.’

  ‘Different?’

  ‘Yes, I don’t know how to explain it. Usually, when she called me at the end, or in the middle, of a bad day, she’d be a little bit hysterical. No—not hysterical, just on edge, but laughing about it. She’d say something about what was going on, like “Maya threw one of her wooden blocks at me and it just missed my eye, so I’m going to look at that as a good thing,” and then give a little laugh, and then she’d say something else and have another little laugh, and over the years, that became her—I think you call it a tell. I knew that if Anna was talking to me and the strange little laugh came out, usually followed by “Oh well, that’s my life,” that she needed a break and that it had been a difficult day with Maya. I always tried to talk to her for a while, or to go over there, so she could at least have some adult company. But when she called me on that day, her voice was kind of flat, like she’d taken drugs.’