Uh-uh. You don’t pack up until the bell rings. Alan, get your binder back out. Scientists have made countless discoveries with their experiments, but the smart ones use their imaginations. Dream possibility. What did Albert Einstein say? Imagination is more important than knowledge.
The classroom empties. Chalk dust down your pants.
Three sculpted ivory heads sit on the woman’s desk. Two clamp their eyes shut. The third stares at me; I stare back, clenching a booklet tossed on the oval coffee table: Perinatal Bereavement. The Unique Nature and Factors Surrounding the Death or Acute Illness of a Child. Footsteps squeak, the swish of nurses’ uniforms, low rumble of food trolleys rolling wonky down the hall. Roast beef, well done. The social worker flips the pages of my file. I lean back against the brocade chair and consider the woman’s outsized purse and burnt orange fingernails. Never thought to make a fashion statement when I dressed this morning. I consider my grass-stained running shoes, consider the walls of this sterile office, forget-me-not blue. The flipping stops, the social worker caught on a page, like Skipper on point, eyes glued to a squirrel. Ah, yes. The woman’s finger stabs against a word, the buttons on her suit jacket sleeve gleam gunmetal.
Let’s start with this morning’s situation, the social worker says.
The chair in which I have been deposited is designed for someone with metre-long thighs. Unless I slide forward, which leaves me leaning helplessly at a forty-five-degree angle, my running shoes sticking straight out from the knee.
This morning, in Neonatal ICU. The social worker taps her fingers against the desk, a cheerful clicking, and waits for me to take up the ball.
Are you sleeping well? she says. Because there are pills.
I wipe salty moisture from my hands. I had a dream, I say. My budgie, Dicky, I had him as a child, every night I said, Pretty bird, Dicky, pretty bird, pretty bird, before I covered his cage.
The social worker leans forward. So what was the dream?
That was it. Right there. I never owned a budgie. I am at his cage wearing rubber high-heeled shoes. I have a blanket in my hands, and I’m saying, Pretty bird, Dicky, pretty bird. Then I cover his cage. And I can’t see him anymore.
The woman clears her throat. Shall we talk about this morning?
No.
Mrs. Solantz. The doctors, the nurses on fifth — the woman takes by the head the statue that has been staring me down and sternly rearranges it. One blue shoe dangles off her foot.
I’m Ms. Watson.
They’re worried about you. You need to talk to someone.
I do talk. My husband. My sisters. I have friends. Milk sponge-leaks from my rock-hard breasts.
Your baby has been in the intensive care unit almost four weeks now?
Twenty-three days.
When have the doctors last spoken to you of her prognosis?
But I sit stony in my chair. Never again this morning’s surprising sweep of sobs, the other mothers’ panicked, averted faces, like I’d thrown up, soiled my underwear.
Don’t blame yourself. The woman leans across her desk, pats my arm, an awkward, unfamiliar gesture. I hadn’t known I should.
Here, grief is — the baby opens her blue-tinged mouth — emotional extremes all mixed — anxiety, anger, fear —
I breathe, huuuuuu. Breathe. Huuuuuu.
Oh, dear — perhaps this isn’t the best — Let’s bring you back when you feel more comfortable.
My body a river: mucus and blood and breast milk. The social worker, scrambling through her daybook.
A week from Friday — get yourself together — here, this tissue, no — of course we know it’s hard.
Lady. You have no fucking idea.
Dr. Vanioc snaps a rubber band. He hasn’t slept in days. Two nights on call, and last night, his son, teething, cried for hours.
He is mulling over the Solantz baby case. A scrawny child, somewhat wasted, though born at five pounds, unlike most of the babies who rarely make three, but she lost a pound initially and has made little gains to this point. He shifts through papers. The child continues to have dusky spells. The nurses’ report indicates they had to leave the IV out this afternoon after four failed attempts to restart. The child’s veins are collapsing. Tonight her temp’s up.
The doctor makes a note. He’ll add penicillin to the digoxin and Tri-Vi-Sol. She has copious amounts of thick, creamy secretions. Why can’t the child swallow?
The latest chest X-ray shows bilateral upper-lobe atelectasis plus some consolidations. He taps the page. The electroencephalogram shows some mildly slow generalized waves but within the range of normal. Her barium swallow revealed a grade four reflux and Maxeran was unsuccessful. The current thought among the doctors is that the child has a brain stem abnormality. That’s possible, and yet — Dr. Vanioc removes his glasses, rubs his eyes. He’ll ask Norton to look in on her again. Judging by the charts, last time she saw the baby was seven days ago.
The doctor leans back in his chair. He’ll phone the library, give them some names, get them to do a literature search. He massages his neck and glances at his watch. His son is already in bed. He imagines lifting the telephone receiver to call his wife.
Friday night. We lie in each other’s arms. We have done the dishes, not talked about the baby. Her presence a terrible, beauteous light that hurts the eyes, that never dissipates, that burns. Skipper leaps onto the bed and knocks against us, breathing out his halitosis. I flip off the bed and put him out. He rains us with indignant whines. While Brodie marked his test papers, back to me at our small dining room table, I tried to read, then tossed the book aside, started baking, then abandoned the chocolate cheesecake brownies, began to clean, an awful restlessness gripping me, until once when I passed Brodie, vacuum and dust cloth in tow, he grabbed my hand, said, Maggie, which led us here. My soft and clingy nightgown, the colour of autumn leaves. Brodie is naked, aroused in sorrow. Maggie. He pulls my nightgown off, reaches, his tongue sliding my skin. He runs his fingers from my hipbone down in against my cradled warmth. I hold on to Brodie’s buttocks, slip my hands into their centre. He shakes, a stifled cry. His fingers find my neck, the indent of my backbone, pursue their travelling, roam my small curve of belly, and take flight against me, butterfly-wing light.
Maggie. The most Brodie can say, and then my body arching, arching, he slides down down down down against me, disappears his tongue, invites my cries against his skin. The light is all around.
Stilled birds shake themselves into currents of song as I move through the dim house early this morning, past the spiral of Brodie’s breathing, to sit shivering in the bare outline of my living room. What do I know of grief? Seeing through a glass darkly. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I thought as a child, I reasoned as a child. When I became an adult, I put away childish things —
Once, I believed grief was pure and simple: sadness. No one warned me of aching muscles, dull depression, headaches, bitter isolation. I look out the window to the empty street and think of Char. First year of university. Four in the morning, a high-pitched keening, a banging on my dorm door. Char, crazy, laughing Char, my new Toronto friend who kissed me on the mouth when I sat on the toilet at a house party the night before. Char stumbling into my room, clambering into my bed, dragging lament behind her, one long-held note, an alphabet of sound. Din filled my room, my groggy head, my need to shush her, Char’s cold hands shattering my sleep, grabbing my skin, her cries sailing, alive. I struggled to sit up. Her treble wrenched off like a tap.
Maggie! Voice urgent, low now. Tell me what to do! What do? The tortured eyes. Maggie, help — I don’t know how to grieve.
I learned the news over breakfast gossip in the cafeteria, Char sleeping like one drugged within my crumpled sheets. Char’s estranged dad, murdered in Mexico. Died of a stab wound to the heart.
I long for such a spill of blood. A proof of suffering. A measurement of grief.
I look at my watch, Brodie will be starting second period. Three hours gone.<
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These days, in the hospital, the supermarket, the bank, a tide of unmitigated misery holds me hostage, wells tight against my rib cage, fills my chest like thick black tar. Light sears my eyeballs. I have surrendered my baby to people who do not love her, people whose job it is to hurt her.
Your grief is going to kill you, the Dutch nurse said two days ago as she adjusted the drip on Kalila’s Prosobee. They’d stuck a baby bottle nipple in her mouth, taped on the back to hold out air. She was sucking furiously. She looked so cute. The scene so somehow normal.
Your body won’t stand this. The nurse grabbed an Opsite bandage and wrapped the baby’s arm. You’re here too much, she said. As if grief were a job, and I could punch out at five o’clock or, better yet, put in my notice. This is the nurse who jokes that Kalila must not listen to her. You don’t want to grow up speaking like me, now, she will say in her guttural English, covering the baby’s ears and laughing. She reconnected the heart monitor and said, You know, it’s only in North America people expect children to live.
And now I’ve broken out in three cold sores. Won’t be allowed on the neonatal floor for seven days. I’m dangerous. Life floats on. Do the shopping, wash the car, take Skipper to the vet, the dog’s hair is falling out, they don’t know why, buy Brodie a Cross pen, my mother’s motto, you can always take one more step, make supper, old hymns rattling round my head. What a fellowship, what a joy divine, leaning on the everlasting arms … What can I lean on? Evidently nothing.
Brodie goes to school, drives to the hospital. I’m home alone days, nights, walking a darkened house, can’t bear the lights on. I pounce on Brodie the moment he returns. Silent Brodie turned reporter. Tonight he bathed the baby, the site around her gastrostomy tube is red and hardened, her intravenous is fastened in her left hand, she slept, she awoke, her hair grew, there was a spina bifida scare, but it’s been ruled out, she’s on thirty-two per cent oxygen, twenty-eight per cent oxygen, tomorrow she’s having a barium swallow, Brodie doesn’t know why.
This banished week I step into the surprise of early winter, run Skipper on the hill. Skipper’s hair loss is the beginnings of eczema, from acute anxiety, the vet phones to say. His tone is disapproving, as if I torture the dog. I see Vs of wild geese escaping south, a sailing sparrow’s shimmer as he darts past winter’s grip. When I come back inside, I do the wash, water my dried-up plants, actually sweep, vacuum the green-flecked carpet, stand at the window and watch the neighbour’s little girl make snow angels, a crazy chain of songs squeezing a vise around my head. Only Je-sus can mend a broken heart … Close up the casement, Shut out that stealing moon …You promised to buy me a bonny blue ribbon … My need for Brodie so great that when he walks in the door each night, ripe with hospital experience, I want to hit him, drive him to distraction with my questions. Today the news is good. The baby’s coronary arteries are normal in position and distribution. They’ve done a test. Her abdominal contents show unremarkable. I follow him as he hangs up his sports jacket, gets a glass of water, riffles through the mail.
But did they say more about her enlarged liver, Brodie? Does she still have the rash on her buttocks? Is her temperature up? What about her gastrostomy? Well, is it leaking? What yellow drainage? Her alarm went off three times? What for, Brodie? What do you mean, you didn’t check?
I berate him for holding Kalila too much, for not holding her enough. For what he didn’t say, did say to the doctors, until, worn out from all their movement, my cold sores crack and weep. Brodie, ghost-faced, rises and goes to bed, his lab reports unmarked. I stand at the window, my womb an ice wind blowing.
When I sleep, I dream dogs. A dog fettered to a schoolyard fence. A dog stuffed in a burning fireplace. A dog with his chest cavity ripped open. A dog falling out of a speeding van door. A dog with diarrhea on Brodie’s mother’s rug. I wake, dreaming of Houdini, of magical escape. Toss until dawn burns crimson the morning sky. Magicians, the doctors. They hold the big trick in the bag.
I look around my house this banished week, at my novels, my vases, my mismatched towels, my photo albums, my knickknacks from our trip to Venice, my scented candles, my paintings on the wall, with the frightening clarity of someone who could just walk out. Abandon. Leave it all behind.
For seven days Brodie dutifully gathers information, accumulates detail, speaks. We were just wondering, um, if there is any news?
The doctor stands in light, skin smooth and fine, eyes bland, waiting for this new dad to finish so he can pick up sushi, make a phone call, carry out another procedure, attend the Philharmonic, work on his stamp collection, watch his daughter’s soccer game, practise his Italian, sleep.
There are moments, rare, but moments when we forget. Me, on waking, Brodie, shovelling the walk. The phone rings. A friend, a minister, a second cousin on my mother’s side.
Hello?
Maggie.
The pregnant pause.
How are you?
And I turn and look out on bleak November streets, the threads of my dress sucking through my skin to infiltrate my cells, my tissues, bloodstream.
I learn not to look ahead. There’s nothing out there. My body belongs nowhere, not at the hospital with the baby, not at home without the baby. My body has betrayed me, thinned. I want its outline to say, I have a baby, and for that to be an ordinary sentence. Instead, I look out on a snow-fused world from this body that bears no inscriptions of punishment, no sagging stomach, no rounded milk breasts, no angry stretch marks. My father, shortly before he died, the cancer diminishing his body until he took up no space at all, opened his eyes one evening and said so quietly, I’d like to live. He insisted on clearing the rolling table on which he kept his books and papers for the hair-netted worker each time she brought his meal, as if affording her a kind of pity for witnessing his demise. He lost his life, people say. Misplaced it.
To lose. Webster’s New Ninth Collegiate. To loosen and dissolve. Almost six weeks have passed and the detail is all wrong. The baby’s lungs won’t breathe without pumped-in oxygen, her heart won’t course blood into the proper arteries, her muscles won’t summon the strength to lift her head; her skin is blue. My body perfects itself while the baby’s scars and bruises write themselves on skin.
My body isn’t acting like a mother’s body. Mothers don’t cry, they take care of the crying. Mothers hold babies in their arms. I shouldn’t have had that second piece of chocolate cheesecake in my third month, I shouldn’t have jogged so much, I should have jogged more, I should have read more books on birthing. The hooks behind the kitchen door fill me with empty rage. I’m tied to people I wouldn’t look at twice. Receptionists. Lab technicians. Doctors. Nurses. An early winter.
Snow crying to the ground.
It’s not a question of lowering our expectations. On the radio, driving to the hospital, a man says, Humans have to have a culture in order to survive. You don’t have to be cruel to be a torturer, he says, you just have to be obedient. Seven p.m. A long, bleak night. The baby’s intravenous went interstitial again. She’s aspirated again. They’ve had to turn up her oxygen. Babies go blind from too much oxygen. Mottled green bruises lace her scalp and hands. Six needles plucked from her scalp in a twenty-minute period. Let’s try this again! the hearty nurse says.
The man on the radio said, We have to believe the things that matter to us are going to survive.
I remember studying the word believe for a spelling test, mixing the e and the i.
There’s a lie in believe, Maggie, my mother said.
You tuck your blue-and-green checked shirt — a Brodie shirt, Maggie’s sisters call it — into your green flannel pants and say, Okay. Question number ten. What concept does this question deal with?
Uniform motion, a scattering of voices calls.
And uniform motion is?
Motion at a constant speed.
Thank you, Eileen. And speed, as not many of you have learned, judging by the number of you who got this test question wrong, equals distance over
time. You scribble the equation on the blackboard. Harold, read the question.
Brodie and Maggie took their dog for a walk at the river. When they parked the car, Brodie got out and started walking. Maggie remained behind to gather up the leash and doggie bags and lock up the car. Skipper, worried that Brodie and Maggie would become separated, ran full tilt back and forth between them on the path. Maggie took three minutes to lock up the car. If Brodie was walking five kilometres per hour, and three minutes later, Maggie began walking seven kilometres per hour, how far would Skipper, bounding at twenty kilometres per hour, have to run before Maggie caught up to Brodie?
Hey, Mr. Solantz, is Maggie your wife?
Mr. Solantz, you have a dog?
What kind is she?
Mr. Solantz is married? I never knew he was married. You’re married, Mr. Solantz?
She is, I do, I am, and she’s a he. And details of Skipper’s daily habits, or mine, are not going to help you pass your physics departmental.
Skipper! Is he a mongrel?
You sigh. Last question, Anita. Promise? He’s a springer spaniel.
Awwwwww, echoes around the classroom. They’re so cute.
And smart, Anita says. I read that —
Anita, Skipper’s smart. He could probably pass this physics exam. The question is, Could you? Now help me work out this question. Where do we begin?
Well, says a gum-snapping Anita, I’d begin with the character of Brodie. Why the hell would he leave Maggie to lock up the car like that? He just walked off on her? Why would Maggie even want to catch up with the jerk? Anita slumps back in her chair. I tell you what I’d do. I’d drive right off and leave him!
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