The Unfinished Child

by Theresa Shea

  Marie’s eyes filled with tears. This was yet another moment of regret to add to her list of bad parenting moments. She should be with her girls now, feeling the tram swaying in the wind, laughing light-heartedly. Instead, she’d allowed her own grief to keep her alone and at ground level. There’d been many such missed moments over the years, when her need to be alone outweighed her desire to be a good mother. A child late at night, excited to tell her one more story while she chastised her and sent her back to bed. Missed moments when her children wanted to be with her, confide in her, make her laugh.

  The tramcar looked tiny on its metal cable. From that height, they must be able to see everything, she thought. For a moment she imagined the tramcar disengaging from the wire and plummeting to the valley below with her family inside. She played the whole tape and felt the anguish of losing her daughters. Barry’s death would be hard too, but her daughters’?

  Stop it, she told herself. Stop.

  She shifted against the hard wood of the Adirondack chair and let her gaze fall once again on the tramcar as it ascended the mountain’s peak. If Elizabeth only knew how much she’d wanted to call her before . . . But what would she have said? Thanks for the offer, Elizabeth, but we’ve decided against it.

  And what would Elizabeth have said? Oh, well, it was worth asking. Thanks anyway.

  She watched as another tramcar swayed precariously on its metal cable. Whistler Mountain looked suddenly forbidding with its dark patches of trees thinning and thinning as they gained altitude, their roots becoming more unstable, clinging desperately to the shallow soil that eventually turned to sheer rock.

  Another train whistle sounded and echoed throughout the valley. Behind her, the door from the lobby opened and a large guided group emptied onto the deck, exclaiming and gesticulating wildly at the sight of the elk, rushing to get pictures. Marie closed her eyes and tried to re-enter her silence without success. Finally, she stood and turned back to the lodge. What now? A swim in the salted pool that spilled out into the open air? A massage? More food? Another cup of tea? There were too many choices.

  Loss brings a certain exhaustion to the body, powerful as the urge for bones to grow, for tides to rise and fall. A grieving body needs sleep. She glanced at her watch. If she hurried, she had just enough time for a nap before her family returned.

  She walked quickly through the lodge trying not to notice a group of well-dressed women in their thirties. How many of the other women she saw also carried dead babies slung around their necks like scarves? She tucked her chin into her chest to hide her tears and hurried toward her cabin.

  FIFTY-THREE

  Elizabeth leaned her full weight into the shovel and turned the moist soil in her small patch of garden. Dark mounds of dirt in perfect rows marked her progress. On the grass beside her back deck sat the boxes that housed her summer’s ambitions: seed packages of peas, carrots, beans, spinach, onions, and beets. Bags of peat moss and fertilizer were stacked neatly alongside the boxes. Beside them, a dozen tomato plants were hardening off.

  The first time she’d heard that phrase was at the farmers’ market. As she paid for her purchase, the farmer told her to be sure to harden off the plants before putting them in the ground. He said it as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  “Harden them off?” Elizabeth tried to visualize the process but couldn’t.

  “Yes, before you plant them leave them outside during the day for a couple of days. Bring them in at night, though. They’ve been in a greenhouse the whole time, so they need hardening off.”

  Don’t we all, she’d thought at the time. That’s what childhood was, a hardening-off period to prepare you for the real world. Something her mother, Carolyn, had never had—exposure to the real world. Yet she’d been hardened off too, hadn’t she? In the worst way possible.

  The dirt turned easily; its dark underside glistened. Elizabeth adjusted her gardening gloves; already she could feel blisters forming on the soft flesh of her palms. Next to her shovel, moist black beetles scuttled for cover.

  The dank smell of things fermenting hung heavily in the air. She surveyed her garden, calculating how much time this manual roto-tilling would take, and then took a deep breath and began again. The shovel lifted and fell in her thin arms. Sweat gathered on her brow, in the hollow between her breasts, in her armpits, in the small of her back. She paused when her shovel hit something hard. A large stone had made a home in her potato bed. She bent down and threw it over by the compost heap.

  It was not yet noon and already the day was hot. Loud shouts of glee filled the air from the neighbours’ backyard. The children had the sprinkler on. She could see small flashes of nakedness through the boards of the fence. In the alley, a group of young boys in baggy pants swerved their trick bikes around the potholes, their heads dwarfed by large helmets.

  Last year’s giant sunflowers came out easily in her hand, roots and all. Elizabeth was always amazed that their shallow root systems supported such height. When she was a child she’d sat in her mother’s backyard to see if the sunflowers really did follow the sun’s path. She never managed to stay still long enough to find out.

  From seed, to adolescence, to old age, the sunflower did all that in a brief season while always reaching for the sun. It was so life affirming and beautiful.

  A robin sang from a tree branch nearby. She imagined her mother reaching for the song. The sun’s heat intensified. Elizabeth kept turning the soil and with the rhythmic motions her mind’s attention moved to the new family she was beginning to discover—her grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Harrington, and her Aunt Rebecca and Uncle James and their families. Granted, she hadn’t made a full introduction yet, but she soon would. Dr. Maclean had agreed to help her. He said he’d talk to Mr. Harrington and fill in the gaps in his knowledge.

  “I’m only doing this because it’s you, Elizabeth,” Dr. Maclean had said when she called. “You know I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for you.”

  “I know.” She’d laughed. “I’m reading all about it in your notebook.”

  Elizabeth bent down and transferred the pile of weeds into a garbage bag. A person should never want something so much, she thought. Ron had been right about that. When she’d latched on to the idea of raising Marie’s child, she’d lost her bearings. And when Marie had left her in suspense long after her decision had been made, well, it was like discovering someone you loved had been betraying you for years and the entire relationship was a sham and you didn’t really know your lover at all. Betrayed. Yes, that was how she felt. Betrayed and abandoned.

  Except she couldn’t deny that Marie’s baby had been the reason Elizabeth had contacted Dr. Maclean again in the first place. If not for Marie, then Elizabeth wouldn’t have access to her new family. And given that Mrs. Harrington didn’t have long to live, she was grateful to have the opportunity to meet her, even if her mind was clouded. So, in effect, Marie had given her a family, indirectly, but a fresh start nonetheless.

  “You know,” she’d told Mr. Harrington on his most recent visit to the store, “I have a friend who worked at a place called Poplar Grove. He’s a doctor, though he’s retired now. His time there overlapped with your daughter’s.”

  It was a risk speaking to him, she knew, because if he got mad he might leave forever. But it was almost as if his wife, by talking about Carolyn, had given him permission to ask all the questions he’d never asked before.

  “I could ask him about Carolyn and see what he says. Is that okay?”

  Mr. Harrington had nodded wordlessly. Week by week she would feed him information. Dr. Maclean was waiting in the wings until he received his cue.

  A soft breeze blew through her backyard. It combed the blades of grass and flicked through the weeds before swirling around Elizabeth’s compact, bent figure. She caught the scent of creek water and fermenting leaves and mud and freckles and scraped knees and the undercurrent of childhood summers.

  A cloud passed before the sun. The s
weat cooled on Elizabeth’s skin. The neighbour children squealed and laughed.

  I would have loved that baby, she thought. I could have given her all the love my mother never received.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  The three-storey red brick building at the end of the winding drive retained its imposing presence. Elizabeth nervously took in the surroundings as Ron navigated the car up the paved driveway and parked beside a path with a sign that pointed to the gardens. Goosebumps sprang to life on her arms and she experienced a sense of vertigo. Dozens of small windows looked out like eyes onto the world. In the centre of the building a tall brick chimney reached for the sky like the arm of an eager child, desperate to ask a question.

  Elizabeth hadn’t expected the building to be so big. In her mind she’d imagined that her mother’s case was somewhat isolated, but seeing the size of the building made her understand that there were many people like her mother who had also been locked away.

  Each red brick represented one word in the sad narrative of her mother’s life: one brick for birth, another for farewell. But those bricks, strong though they were, couldn’t contain her story. Finally someone listened, and wrote the story into a black notebook, and held it for almost forty years before it was, at last, delivered to her, the perfect reader for an imperfect tale.

  “Are you ready?” Ron asked.

  She nodded. They left the car and walked hand in hand down the gravel path to the trailhead where a small commemorative plaque gave a brief history of Poplar Grove. At the trailhead there were two signs: one pointed to the gardens on the left and another pointed to the cemetery on the right.

  Elizabeth squeezed Ron’s hand and scanned the cemetery and the grounds. Sparrow song filled the air. A magpie made its presence known. Elizabeth took it all in. She closed her eyes and imagined a young Mrs. Harrington, her hair freshly done and her nails impeccably filed, sitting on a sunny bench, holding her daughter’s hand, not able to entirely let go of her first-born child. And she imagined the child, Elizabeth’s own mother, gratefully turning her dished face to the sun and drawing the heat into her pale, hungry skin.

  Some stories are just too heavy to carry alone, she thought, and she was grateful for Ron’s solid presence beside her.

  They found her grave marker in a modest patch of spindly prairie grass that somehow stretched to cover similar plots, and they stood motionless before the humble grave of Carolyn J. Harrington. June 15, 1947–March 12, 1967.

  Elizabeth bent down to rest her vase of red roses against the white headstone.

  The sun shone brilliantly in the cloudless sky. Elizabeth tried to picture the woman she’d never met before, but she only managed to envision blunt brown bangs framing a round face with eyes that, she hoped, had at times flashed with laughter.

  She raised her face to the sun and closed her eyes. This was the kind of day that Carolyn would have loved. It contained the three key ingredients that brought her joy: sun, flowers, and birds. Oh, yes, and a fourth ingredient—family, for Elizabeth didn’t doubt that Margaret’s visits had brought Carolyn great joy.

  Elizabeth felt the sun on her face. The wind blew across the open field in the distance that would be beautiful when the canola bloomed. Birds sang in the trees around her. She squeezed Ron’s hand and smiled as she realized that these four ingredients—sun, flowers, birds, and family—were enough to bring anyone happiness.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  It was after nine, but nightfall was still almost an hour away. The long nights of summer were just around the corner. Marie looked forward to eating ice cream cones and walking in the park, to wearing sandals and shorts, and to spending time with her kids once school was out. Especially now. The girls had seemed a little nervous lately, unsure of how to behave at home. They didn’t quite understand what had happened, but they were intuitive, and without knowing why, they wanted to spend more time with their mother. They understood that an urn filled with ashes was all that was left of their younger sibling, and they knew that a family discussion would soon determine the resting place for those ashes.

  Marie’s bare feet padded soundlessly on the thick hall carpet. She closed the door to her room and perched on the edge of her bed. The cordless phone sat on her bedside table. She picked it up; it was a dead weight in her palm.

  Long shadows covered the floor. A slit of white light poured beneath the bedroom door from the hallway. She closed her eyes and listened to her heart beating. It was no longer the drum against which her baby grew.

  When she opened her eyes again, they had become accustomed to the semi-dark. The room was bathed in a soft grey light. She could make out the silhouette of the old mahogany dresser, the cedar hope chest pushed beside the dresser, the shuttered closet doors, the antique chair where Barry threw all of his clothes, the white wicker laundry basket overflowing, the full-length mirror next to the window. Shadows danced along the wall from the branches of the mountain ash outside. It swayed as if a child were swinging up into its branches, or as if a flock of waxwings had descended to strip it of its berries.

  She stared down at her hands, took a deep breath, and closed her eyes again.

  Marie filled her lungs with air and exhaled slowly. Courage. Her heart hammered and her hand shook as she dialled Elizabeth’s number. The familiar tune sang from the touch-tone pad.

  What if Elizabeth refused to talk with her?

  What if she hung up?

  What if she yelled at her or even cried and called her names?

  Marie gripped the phone and bit her lip. Her insides felt all watery. From far off, she heard the phone begin to ring.

  Elizabeth unpacked the grocery bags that lined the floor in front of the sink. To gain access to a cupboard, she shifted one of the bags with her foot, and cursed as oranges spilled out and rolled under the table. It had been a long day and she was tired. She’d sat with Mrs. Harrington for an hour and hadn’t wanted to come right home afterwards, so she’d grabbed a quick bite to eat and decided to get some groceries too. What she really wanted now was to curl up beside Ron on the couch and watch a movie. She bent quickly to reach for the oranges, tucked three under her arm, and dumped the rest of the bag into the glass fruit bowl on the counter.

  Somehow, the days were passing. She could move forward now. She had read the entire notebook more than once. Nothing was shocking anymore. She had thrown away the last baby sleeper that she’d kept hidden in a hatbox on her closet shelf. She’d hardened off, and she’d planted her garden. Now she would tend it and watch it grow, weeding around the small green shoots that would soon press their way through the dark soil. In the coming months she would focus more on work. Business was good. In fact, spring sales had been the best yet. And she would spend more time with Ron. Maybe they’d go to the mountains, do some more hiking.

  Marie’s face surfaced unbidden in her mind and she pushed the image away. It disappeared immediately. There, she thought. That wasn’t so bad. She could train her mind to erase Marie’s face whenever it infiltrated her brain. All good things came to an end, she reminded herself. Friendships too. She had to accept that. She’d try harder to meet new people. Maybe she’d join a club or something. Start playing squash again. Join a league. She turned back to the sink and began to wash some grapes. The kettle announced its boil on the countertop. She reached to unplug it. The phone rang.

  Marie held her breath. One ring. Two rings. Her hand shook. She could hang up. It wasn’t too late.

  No. There had to be a way to get through this. She nestled the phone against her shoulder to steady her hand. Maybe she should have sent flowers first, or a letter. Something to prepare her. Maybe it wasn’t right to surprise her with a call.

  Three rings. One for each decade of friendship.

  Come on, Elizabeth. Please pick up the phone.

  Elizabeth answered the phone.

  “Hello?”

  Oh, God. Marie’s stomach heaved at the sound of her friend’s voice. She tilted her head back and closed her eyes. H
er mouth opened silently. No words came out. She fought the impulse to hang up.

  “Hello?” Elizabeth’s voice again, irritated now. She didn’t have all night. “Hello?”

  “Elizabeth?” Marie said softly, her voice a small cry.

  Silence.

  Marie squeezed her eyes to slow the tears that were falling. What if Elizabeth had the strength to go on without her?

  “Elizabeth?” she repeated, her voice gaining strength. “It’s me.”

  Silence.

  Marie licked her lips and stood up, needing to move. She walked instinctively toward the light spilling from beneath her bedroom door. Her hand rested on the doorknob. She turned it and the door swung open. She winced with a momentary blindness.

  “I’m sorry, Elizabeth,” she whispered and walked into the empty hallway.

  She saw herself as if from above, one arm folded protectively over her tender breasts, her still-puffy figure standing alone in a bare hallway that looked like a road stretching out forever and ever before her.

  Elizabeth heard the whisper come through the phone line, soft as a breeze.

  Marie.

  She sat down abruptly at the kitchen table. The water continued to run in the sink, trickling softly down the drain. She had imagined this moment many times and thought that, by so doing, she’d be prepared, but now that she was in it, she didn’t know what to do. Marie’s apology echoed in her ears. Elizabeth didn’t know if she could forgive or if she even wanted to. Was she supposed to say, It’s okay, and give Marie the freedom to carry on?

  “Elizabeth?” Marie closed her eyes as if in prayer. Please, please. “Are you there?”

  A hundred years passed. Marie’s stomach hovered, ready to drop as she waited.

  She leaned her back against the wall and slid slowly to the floor.

  The phone pressed hotly against her ear. She cradled it with her shoulder to hold it in place. Please, please. Then she wrapped her arms around her bent knees and rocked herself from side to side.