The Unfinished Child

by Theresa Shea

  Marie called Nicole and Sophia for lunch, and they pounded up the stairs like a herd of elephants to see who could get to the table first.

  She had set the table herself, taking great care to make it look lovely. A navy blue tablecloth dotted with yellow stars and planets hung halfway to the floor. Yellow cloth napkins lay over each plate. A glass pitcher filled with iced tea sat in the centre of the table.

  “Aren’t we lucky?” Elizabeth said as she took a seat. “While the wind gusts outside, we’re inside having a summer picnic!”

  The girls grinned widely. Nicole ran off and returned to the table wearing a sun hat and sunglasses. “Remember not to go swimming for at least an hour after lunch!” She laughed.

  “And watch out for sharks!” Sophia added.

  “It’s not the ocean, stupid,” Nicole said. “We’re at a lake.”

  “How do you know? We could be at the ocean! Are we at the ocean, Mom, or at a lake?”

  Marie was only half listening. The girls laughed so easily with Elizabeth. Her own role too often involved nagging the kids to do the things they were supposed to do, like homework and chores. She tried to have fun with them, to be light, but lately her timing was off. She took small bites of her sandwich and chewed each one until it was pulp in her mouth. She wished she could lie down.

  Elizabeth asked the girls about school and their friends. She seemed to know about the latest videos they’d watched. Marie was thankful that she didn’t mention her impending move. Nicole and Sophia would be envious of her downtown apartment with a view.

  And then suddenly it was two o’clock and Elizabeth needed to leave. She turned down dessert because she was full, so the girls filled a container with cookies for her to take home.

  “Can you take us to a movie soon, Auntie Elizabeth?” Sophia asked as she followed her to the foyer.

  Elizabeth pulled her winter coat on and slipped into her fur-lined boots. “I sure can. You guys let me know which one and when, okay?”

  The two women smiled at each other across the children.

  “Will you call me soon?” Marie asked. “I’d like to help, if I can. Packing, shopping—whatever you need. Just let me know. Okay?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “You bet. Thanks for lunch. Take care of yourself. And say hi to Frances for me.”

  A gust of cold air entered the house when Elizabeth slipped through the door. It swirled around Marie’s bare ankles in tight circles and then spread out low over the tiles before gusting into the four corners.

  The children disappeared downstairs again.

  Marie walked to the front window and watched her friend’s car as it backed down the driveway.

  She had her hand up to wave, but Elizabeth never looked back.

  NINE

  Elizabeth’s vision blurred as she put the car in gear. A block from Marie’s house she pulled to the curb, put her forehead on the steering wheel, and wept. Her life was falling apart, and her friend was having another baby. Marie didn’t even sound like she wanted another baby. And how smug she’d been, waiting for Elizabeth to guess her condition. I’m sorry. It should be you.

  She slammed her hand down on the steering wheel and winced from the pain. Damned right it should be me, she thought.

  And what was all the crap about not walking away from your kids? Did Marie think that made her a better person? What about all those women out there, including herself, who didn’t have kids, by choice or not? Marie made it sound like they were all missing out on ways to become better people, but Elizabeth knew that life threw people all kinds of situations in which they had the opportunity to grow. Marie needed to get out more; she needed to get her head out of her own sense of perfection.

  As her rage slowly decreased, Elizabeth recalled the look on Marie’s face when Elizabeth had told her she was leaving Ron. Marie had crawled inside her shell immediately to nurse her pain. But she didn’t need to clear every decision about her life with Marie. And she certainly wasn’t going to apologize for shocking her. The history of their friendship was that Elizabeth always apologized and made things right in their friendship. She worked far harder at it than Marie did, ever since Ron. But not today. Oh no. Something had come over her when she’d heard the reproach in Marie’s voice, and it was the desire to cause her pain. Why? Because Marie had just pulled a baby from a hat. Well, Elizabeth had some tricks up her sleeve too.

  She reached into her purse for some tissue and blew her nose, checking in the rear-view mirror to see if her makeup had smudged. Something foul had lurched up inside her. She stared into her own eyes and knew she didn’t want to be this way. She couldn’t go on falling apart without warning, or lashing out. Plus, there were more tears ahead. Maybe she should have talked to Ron before signing a lease. Now it looked so premeditated. But it was premeditated. She’d been thinking about it for months. She blew her nose again. Maybe what she needed was to call her mom. Yes. That would help. Elizabeth drew in a deep breath, put the car in gear, and headed home.

  “Hi, sweetie!” Her mother always sounded so happy when Elizabeth called, as if she’d just received good news that she wanted to share.

  “How’s Victoria treating you?” Elizabeth asked. Her parents had moved there when her father retired from teaching.

  “Well, it’s raining, as usual. But the view of the inner harbour is always lovely. And I see you’ve been having some cold weather.”

  “That’s an understatement.” She laughed.

  “What’s up?” Her mother always got quickly to the point.

  “Are you sitting down?”

  “Should I be?”

  “You might want to.”

  She could hear movement on the other end of the line as her mother followed instructions.

  “Okay, I’m ready.”

  “I signed a lease on an apartment this morning. It’s empty right now so I can start moving in right away.”

  “Are you selling your house?”

  “No. I’m moving by myself.”

  “By yourself? What about Ron?”

  “I’m hoping he’ll stay in the house.”

  “Wait a minute now. Slow down. This is going too fast for me. What’s going on, Lizzie? You’re leaving Ron? Why now?”

  That was a good question. She couldn’t say for sure why now, this exact month, after being married for fifteen years. “I don’t really know. I just feel like I’ve been in some kind of holding pattern and I’ve got to get out of it. My life’s not what I wanted it to be, Mom, and I don’t know what to do.” She could feel the tears building inside as she confessed her fears to her mother.

  “Oh, honey, I think it’s called growing up. We don’t often get the lives we imagined we’d have when we were children. I know I didn’t. I’d have had six children if given the chance. That’s what I’d hoped for, but I didn’t quit living because I only had you. Far from it, in fact. You brought lots of excitement into our lives. Didn’t you want to be a dancer and a veterinarian?”

  Elizabeth laughed. “Marie wanted to be a dancer, and a writer too, I think. I wanted to be a veterinarian.”

  “And look at you both. Neither one of you is doing what you dreamed of when you were children.”

  “What I really wanted to be was a mother. A veterinarian and a mother. Marie at least got to be a mother. And more. I just found out today that she’s pregnant again.”

  “Ah, so that’s it. You’re feeling sorry for yourself again, are you? Lizzie, Ron is one of the best things to ever happen to you. Don’t throw him away because you didn’t get something else you wanted. He certainly helped you try to have kids, didn’t he? If I remember correctly he did a lot of things he wasn’t so sure about because you wanted him to. And I still don’t understand why you’ve never tried the adoption route. It certainly made me happy. I got you.”

  “Yeah, you got a child nobody else wanted. I don’t want a baby who is abandoned by its mother.”

  “Elizabeth! What’s come over you?”

  Eli
zabeth had never spoken those words before, let alone to her mother, but she’d thought them a million times. Everybody was different, after all. Just because she couldn’t get over her mother giving her away at birth didn’t mean that she didn’t appreciate her adoptive parents. Maybe she’d even had a better life because she was adopted, but that didn’t erase the fact that her real mother hadn’t wanted her in the first place. Elizabeth knew it was a lovely gesture to raise a child as if it was your own, but she wanted to raise her own child, not one that some agency had finally approved them for after analyzing her and Ron’s lives with a magnifying glass to ferret out anomalies.

  But now she could see where her single-minded determination might possibly have let her down. She’d thought persistence was the solution. Never quitting. The old If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. And again. And again. And then let the years go by until you really don’t feel like you’re young enough anymore to deal with a baby. That’s where being strong-willed had gotten her. “I’m glad you got me, Mom,” she finally said, “’cause I got you.”

  “Darn rights you did!” Her mother laughed. “And you’re not getting rid of me.”

  No, this mother wasn’t going to leave her. Not like the mother she’d never known, the one she couldn’t help but think about from time to time, especially on her birthday. Was she still alive? Possibly living on the next block? Had her mother been one of those young girls who’d quietly disappeared for a few months, like so many girls in the sixties who’d been sent to a fictitious aunt in the east?

  “Why don’t you come for a visit, Lizzie, before you make up your mind? Your dad and I would be happy to have you. Actually”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“your dad could use a break. He’s been working too hard on his next book.”

  “That’s because he’s not marking papers anymore.” Elizabeth laughed. “He’s finally got time to do his own work.” All throughout her childhood her father had had ink-stained hands from correcting his students’ ideas about Victorian literature.

  “And don’t worry,” she added, “we’d be sure to give you some time on your own to think things through.”

  “That’s a nice offer, Mom, but I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to talk with Ron tonight and we’ll sort out the details. I’ll call you later, okay?”

  “I won’t say anything to your father until I hear more. Okay? I love you, honey.”

  “I love you too, Mom. And Mom?”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t worry. I’m going to be okay.”

  Elizabeth waited until Ron finished eating dinner before pouring a fresh cup of coffee for them both and sitting back down at the table. Ron looked at her expectantly. Normally she cleared the table and did the dishes right away.

  “Can we talk?” she asked.

  “Uh-oh. You look serious. Is something wrong?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “Well, don’t keep me in suspense. Shoot.”

  Elizabeth took a deep breath for courage. “I signed a lease on an apartment this morning. It’s empty right now so I can take possession anytime.” That didn’t come out right. She’d jumped right to the conclusion without setting it up properly.

  She saw the hurt and confusion in his eyes. He stared at her until she dropped her gaze. Maybe that wasn’t the best way to start, coming out of the blue like that.

  “I wanted to tell you earlier,” she rushed on, “but I didn’t know how.”

  “I don’t understand what’s going. You want to move out ? By yourself?”

  She nodded.

  He raised both hands in the air in a sign of helplessness. “Why?”

  “Please don’t get angry, Ron. It’s not like I’ve been thinking about it for years. I’m not even sure I can explain except to say I’m not living the life I thought I’d be living at this stage of my life. I need a change.” She reached across the table and took his hand. It felt warm and soft in her own, comfortable as a worn glove. “There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s me.”

  “Oh, that’s convenient,” Ron said. “Blame it on yourself so I don’t have to feel bad. That’s good. Look, we’ve been through some stressful times. I know that, and they haven’t exactly been easy for me either. But I thought we’d done okay. I don’t see why—”

  She put her finger to her lips to silence him. “All I ever wanted was to be a mother, and last year, when we finally decided to stop the treatments, I had to let go of that dream. So here I am,” she laughed weakly, “thirty-nine and I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.”

  “Be whoever you want to be,” he said. “Grab hold of something else. God, you’re free to do that now. Aren’t you even a tiny bit relieved that we’re not in a holding pattern anymore? For a long time it felt like all we did was sit around and wait for some doctor to tell us good news. It was hard.”

  “Really? You never told me that.”

  “I didn’t come right out and say it, but I certainly let you know that I was okay with the life we already had.” Then his voice softened. “And I still am.”

  Elizabeth smiled and gave his hand a squeeze. “You truly are one of the nicest men on the planet.”

  He grinned. “I try, but I’m not sure that helps me sometimes.”

  “Don’t get mad at what I’m going to say. Okay? There are days when I can’t help thinking if you’d been with someone else you’d have a brood of kids by now. And I love the picture of you with a child on your shoulders.”

  “That’s your picture of how you think I should live. What about mine? I don’t feel sorry for myself that I’m not hanging out at playgrounds. Would I have done it if we’d had a child? Sure, but do I pine for it? No, I don’t because it’s not as if we didn’t try. That would have been worse, to have wondered if maybe we could have had a baby. But we gave it our best shot, no pun intended.” He held his hand up and mimed squirting juice out of a syringe.

  “It’s not funny,” she said sulkily.

  “Okay, okay. Look, maybe it’s time to talk about adopting again; we never explored that avenue like we could have.”

  “I knew you were going to say that. You sound just like my mom.”

  Even before their first trip to the clinic Ron had proposed adoption. But Elizabeth didn’t want to raise a child who might one day search for its real parents. Plus, medical advancements in the fertility field had done wonders to help women like her. She was convinced the experts would help her too.

  “I wanted to be a mother ten years ago,” she whispered. “Who knows how long we’d have to wait before we’d get a baby.”

  “Maybe late is better than never.”

  “I just need some time on my own,” she repeated. Even to her the words sounded like an excuse, but she was tired of being consoled. Tired of how understanding Ron always was. It doesn’t matter, he’d said after one failed attempt to conceive. We still have each other. She’d grown to hate his attempts to comfort her because it did matter. It mattered a lot! She knew he was trying to be helpful, but the nicer he tried to be, the more she resented his understanding.

  “What can I say?” Ron finally said, pushing his chair back from the table. “I don’t want you to go. I think we’ve made a good life for ourselves. And we’ve certainly done everything to bring a baby into our lives. Everything except adoption. You were adopted, and things worked out. I don’t understand why you’re so resistant to at least giving it a try.”

  “It doesn’t make sense, does it? All I can say is it’s strange not knowing if I have brothers or sisters or aunts and uncles. I often find myself walking down a busy sidewalk and seeing someone who reminds me of me. Then I start to wonder if maybe we’re related. Then I realize that there could be this whole big family out there that might be waiting to welcome me into it. Ever since I was twelve and my mom told me I was adopted, from that moment on I felt like there was someplace I was supposed to be, but no one had given me a map.”

  “You could have tried to find out more.”
>
  “I know. But I was afraid of hurting my parents. Every time I mentioned wanting to find my mother, they’d cook up some excuse to delay my going to the registry. It finally dawned on me that they didn’t want me to go, so I just sort of left it alone.”

  Her head hurt. She’d never tried so fully to explain herself, and she realized that even now the explanation didn’t come close to describing her sense of dislocation. Ron rubbed her hand gently.

  “Maybe you’re not meant to find out,” he said. “Maybe it’s okay not to know.”

  She smiled sadly and nodded. A list of rebuttals found their way to the tip of her tongue, but she stopped herself from speaking.

  The conversation felt finished. Everything had been said. “Oh, by the way,” she added, “I had lunch with Marie today. And guess what?”

  “What?” Ron tried to look interested. Did he ever think about Marie and remember their romantic times together? His lips had kissed hers. Their hands had undressed each other. He’d taken her to his bed. At times like this it annoyed Elizabeth that Ron had once been intimate with her best friend.

  “She’s pregnant.”

  The news sucked the air out of the room. Elizabeth watched him closely.

  “Good for her,” he said, taking his cold coffee to the sink. “But I don’t wish it was me.”

  “Ron?”

  He turned and looked at her, hopeful and sad.

  “I’m still leaving.”

  “What can I say?” he asked, his arms spread wide, taking in the room and the house and the years they’d spent together. “What can I say? I don’t want you to go.”

  A few minutes later Ron disappeared downstairs to mark student assignments. Elizabeth stood at the sink and rinsed the dinner dishes. Then she took a warm cloth and wiped the counters and the kitchen table. She was surprised to not feel a greater relief now that the conversation was over. Instead, she felt annoyed. Why hadn’t Ron put up more of a fight? She had steeled herself to have a lengthy conversation, but it had ended in less than fifteen minutes. Fifteen years of marriage disintegrating in a short conversation on a frigid winter evening. Maybe that’s what she’d remember in the years to come, the wind howling, the ice crystals shimmering, the furnace kicking on again and again. Being housebound. What can I say? he had asked. But in the end he had said nothing but the obvious, I don’t want you to go, and disappeared into the basement.