Falling From Grace

by Ann Eriksson

“He kidnapped her.”

  “You believe that?”

  “I don’t want to think about it.” He watched Rainbow drag a whip of bull kelp along the beach leaving a long, snaking track behind in the sand. “Poor kid.” Rainbow cried herself to sleep most nights and spoke often of Cedar, but otherwise appeared content. “What’s going to happen to her?”

  “She wants to stay with me.”

  “Can you manage?”

  “Grace helps,” I said. My hand dropped to the bulge beneath the loose jacket I wore. I could wait no longer, my pregnancy nearing five months, my condition difficult to conceal. I had dressed in baggy sweaters and track pants for more than a month. Grace would figure it out soon. I needed Paul to know first. Two nights ago I felt the flitter of winged insects across my abdomen. I steadied myself. “I’ll have to take a leave.”

  “For?”

  “I’ll have two kids to look after.”

  “Two? Did they find Cedar? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “No, not Cedar.”

  “You’re not making any sense.” Paul pressed his fingers into his forehead.

  I took a deep breath. “Paul”—I steeled myself for his reaction—“I’m pregnant.”

  Ridges of flesh appeared between his eyebrows. “What?” The light in his eyes receded like the outgoing waves, retreating from me.

  Rainbow screamed and I turned. She was tumbling head over heels in the surf, bowled over by a cresting wave. I lurched to my feet and sprinted down the beach to fish the soggy, cold girl out of the swirling water. She spit sand from her mouth and swatted water from her face.

  “That was fun.” Water dripped from the hem of her sweatshirt, her bony shoulders quaked with the cold, her lips blue. “You’re soaked too,” she laughed, then wrinkled her forehead and pointed past my shoulder. “What’s wrong with Paul?”

  I turned around to witness Paul splayed out on the ground in the shadow of the root wad, torso jerking, limbs rigid, a strangled grunt issuing from his throat.

  • • •

  A number of activities are not recommended for people with uncontrolled seizures. Driving for one. Scuba diving. Piloting a plane. The operation of heavy equipment. Carrying an infant. Tree climbing. Paul retreated to his room, emerging only for silent meals and appointments with doctors. He lost weight, grew dark shadows below his eyes, developed new wrinkles and a scruffy growth of beard. I cringed at the strain in his face when the specialist talked about brain damage and the possibility of epilepsy, and prescribed anti-seizure medication. I tried to imagine how it must feel to watch your whole life breaking into shards of glass at your feet. Unsure of where to step. He didn’t mention my confession at China Beach and I pushed away the nagging notion that my pronouncement had brought on his seizure. I assumed he didn’t remember. He’d know soon enough.

  Marcel came for dinner during a rare late-November snowfall and, we soon discovered, to say goodbye. We stood outside and watched Rainbow roll a snowman’s head through the shallow white blanket, grass peeping through in the wake.

  “I fly to Montreal tomorrow,” he informed me. “I go to see ma mère until the New Year.” His face lit up. “She does the best Christmas. Then I go north.”

  “Ice fishing?” Rainbow quipped, her arms full of snowman. His raucous laugh made us all laugh too, except Paul, who sat on a bench in the corner of the yard watching rosy finches crack sunflower seeds at the feeder.

  “No more fishing. One of my jail friends, he works for a conservation group who study polar bear around Hudson Bay,” he explained.

  “You’re going to wrestle polar bears?” I joked.

  “No, I will write brochures and grant proposals.” He tapped his temple. “They want big Marcel for his brains, not his muscles.”

  After dinner Paul shook Marcel’s hand and shuffled off to his room.

  “Rainbow, time for bed,” I said.

  Rainbow skipped across the floor to Marcel and hugged him. He drew out a wrapped package from his pocket and handed it to her. “An early Christmas present,” he said. She tore the wrapping free to reveal a copy of The Little Prince. “I make you into a philosopher yet.”

  She threw her arms around his neck, then jumped down and ran to the kitchen, returning with a handful of chocolate. “Here,” she announced, pouring the candy into his hands. “You won’t forget us?”

  He blew his nose in a large white handkerchief and gathered her in his arms. “Mais non, I will never forget you, Rainbow. When I see one in the sky I think of you.”

  I tucked Rainbow into bed and poured Marcel a glass of wine, myself juice, then settled onto the couch.

  “You’ve never told me about jail,” I said.

  “Not bad.” He rubbed the evening stubble on his cheek. “Lots of time for reading. I thank you for all the cookies.” He patted his ample stomach. “I need to smoke again.”

  “Bad idea,” I said.

  “And you?”

  “What do you mean, and me?”

  He stroked his belly again. “You think I wouldn’t notice?”

  “Notice?”

  “Ma mère was pregnant most of the time. And who is the papa?”

  I swirled the juice around in my glass. “Parthenogenic.”

  Marcel raised his eyebrows.

  “My pregnancy. It’s parthenogenic A scientific term,” I said. “For asexual reproduction.”

  He swirled the wine around in his glass as he watched my face with skepticism.

  “Some oribatid mites reproduce this way. In fact, the females ignore the males when they’re around.”

  “They should write you up in the journals,” Marcel teased. “I am happy for you.” He lifted his glass in a toast and tilted his head to the side. “Okay, I ask no more questions. And Rainbow? She misses her brother. You let me know about the birth, eh?”

  I changed the subject. “You know the court is going to expunge our sentences?”

  “Oui. A hollow victory.” Marcel tilted his head toward the hall. “Paul, he is not well.”

  “No.”

  “He’ll be better soon. He’s strong and he have you.” Marcel leaned forward and lowered his voice. “They still have no suspects?”

  “No.”

  “I spend time in jail together with Squirrel,” he whispered. I had forgotten the silent, mousey companion of Cougar. “He tell me Cougar, he is elusive.”

  “We know. He’s gone, isn’t he?”

  “Oui, but he disappears, without warning, without notice. In broad daylight, in the middle of the night. Like a wild cat.”

  “What are you getting at Marcel?”

  “From the blockade in the middle of the day, from up in the tree after dark.”

  “What? Where?”

  Marcel held the palms of his sausage hands up, the skin pink and criss-crossed with lines. “We can only guess. The cops, they might be interested.”

  The cops were not interested. Sergeant Lange considered my speculations dubious. “You think this Cougar guy climbed down a tree in the middle of the night, retrieved the stolen crossbow from a hiding place, stalked and found your partner, in the dark, in the top of another tree kilometres away and shot him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hard to imagine.”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “Why would he do that? Weren’t you on the same side?”

  “Jealousy. A woman.”

  “You?”

  “No, not me. The one he’s got with him.”

  “How did he know where to find your partner?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t know either,” he said. “We’re doing the best we can with the flimsy evidence we have. If we ever find this Cougar guy, believe me, we’ll have lots of questions to ask him.”

  “Sure,” I said, “thanks,” and hung up the phone.

  25

  I declined Christmas in Qualicum. “Paul can’t take the travelling,” was my convenient excuse. Grace was undeterred. “We’
ll come to you. I’ll bring the food. We haven’t seen you since October.” I hadn’t yet managed to find the right time to tell my mother the happy news. “Don’t you want to see your brothers?” she asked.

  “Of course I do,” I relented, resigning myself to the prospect of my entire family finding out about my pregnancy all at once. I couldn’t avoid it forever, the way I’d avoided telling Paul again, walled up in his depression. It was a wonder, a testament to the extent of his isolation. My oversized clothes were becoming a farce.

  Grace arrived Christmas Eve bearing a turkey and a tree, the others to follow with Mel the next morning. I was balanced on a chair in the kitchen pulling a stack of plates from the cupboard when she walked through the back door without knocking, arms full of packages. The house smelled of the shortbread and sugar cookies Rainbow and I had baked in preparation, the table covered with stars and moons dusted with red and green sprinkles.

  “We might want to soak the turkey in brine overnight—” Grace stopped in mid-sentence at the sight of my bulging profile. I continued to transfer plates from the cupboard to the countertop, aware of my mother’s intense scrutiny. Rainbow was reading Christmas stories to herself on the couch in the living room and Paul was resting in his bedroom. “Silent Night” wafted in from the stereo.

  “Faye?” Grace set the turkey on the table. She wore her best coat open over a crisp white blouse and floral skirt, hair up. Each strand in place.

  I opened the next cupboard door, looking for a salad bowl.

  “Faye?” Grace grabbed my upper arms with both hands and forced me to face her. I gripped the edge of the bowl and resisted. Not until she cupped my chin in her hand did I meet her gaze. Grace’s black pearl eyes with the perfect eyebrows misted over. Her lips quivered. Tears spilled over the lower edges of her eyes and streamed down her cheeks.

  Grace never cried.

  Panic rose in my chest. Grace never lost control. Grace the comforter, the purveyor of advice. She unravelled along with the bun in her hair, hairpins dropping like fir needles from a tree. She sobbed into her hands.

  I couldn’t get off the stool; Grace blocked my way. Fingers of anger displaced my panic, reached in and twisted like knives. What was terrible about the news that I . . . her daughter, would be a mother? A mushroom cloud of rage bloomed in me. I screamed, “Grace!”

  She stopped crying and her hands fell to her sides.

  “Damn you,” I yelled. “What is so fucking bad about me having a baby?”

  She raised her head, eyes red and confused. I half-expected her to scold me for swearing. Instead, Grace shook her head back and forth, a fresh cascade of pins and hair tumbling down around her. “Oh, sweetheart.” She opened her arms.

  I didn’t move.

  “Not bad. No. I—” Grace said through a fresh onslaught of weeping. “I never dared hope you would.”

  • • •

  “Have you chosen a name?” Grace asked later as we shared a pot of tea at the kitchen table, her face washed, hair back in place.

  “You’re something else,” I said.

  “I suppose I am.” She giggled like a schoolgirl. The sound caught in her throat, then exploded into hysterical laughter that sent her whole body into motion. I watched her, astonished, then found myself giggling along with her. Before long, we were both howling, red-faced and gasping for breath, cheeks shiny with tears.

  Grace blew her nose in a tissue and reached over the table, between the tea cups and the honey and dirty spoons and grasped my hand. “I don’t care what you name the baby if he’s a boy. But if she’s a girl . . .”

  “What happened to your feminist principles of equality?” I teased through the last few spasms of laughter.

  “Never mind.” She dabbed at the corner of her eye with the tissue. “Your father picked out a name, but I had my heart set on Faye.”

  “Dad?” I stammered “Mel picked out a name for me?”

  “We had a terrible argument,” Grace admitted. “You’re surprised?”

  “I thought he would have preferred I died.”

  “What?” Grace sat back, stunned. “Why ever would you say that?”

  “I . . . he . . . always acted sad or embarrassed or . . . Mel is ashamed of me.”

  Grace spoke with measured deliberation. “Your father loves you. Always has, always will.”

  “But he’s never seen me, never looked right at me.”

  The skin around Grace’s eyes softened. “Your father,” she said. “Your father lives inside his own head. He rarely looks at me. He just never wanted you to get hurt.”

  “Funny way of showing it.”

  “After your birth he tried to fix you. He researched leg lengthening and gene therapy. When I objected, he gave up and let you be.”

  “Let me alone, you mean.”

  “Sweetheart, I know your father better than anyone. He’s the most obtuse man alive. But he’s proud of you, all you’ve accomplished. Your PHD, your work, your independent life. He loves you.”

  “The photo . . .”

  “What photo?”

  “In the newspaper, my arrest. He cut it out to save himself the embarrassment.”

  “No, he cut it out to save you the embarrassment. Enough about your father.” She leaned in closer. “Do you know?”

  “Know what?”

  “If the baby’s a dwarf?”

  I scrutinized her face. “Yes.”

  She sat back and clapped her hands together. “Wonderful,” she said.

  “You’re glad?”

  “You sound surprised. Apart from your stubborn streak, raising you was a pleasure.”

  I pushed back tears. “Wasn’t it difficult, though? You said my birth nearly killed you.”

  “Figuratively yes, I worked hard to push that large head of yours out. You popped my rectal muscle, which required five stitches and a couple of uncomfortable weeks. But I was afraid I might lose you. You had trouble breathing. Your air passages were too tiny. A minor virus could have been fatal. You were three before it got sorted out.”

  I was taken aback that the few details she shared mirrored my invented story from my youth. The large head. The stitches. Did Grace tell me more about my birth than I recalled? “You weren’t sorry I was a dwarf?”

  “Of course it took time to get used to, but we loved you from the second we saw you.” She paused and caught the doubt in my expression. “Both of us. Mel and I.”

  “Mel attended my birth?”

  “Yes, and not many fathers did in those days.”

  “How did he manage?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “His low pain threshold . . . ?”

  “The poor man passed out.” Grace chuckled. “He spent the rest of the labour in a chair.” She handed me another cookie. “Eat. You have to keep your strength up.” She brushed crumbs from the table and said, “There were no tests back then.”

  “Would you”—I needed to know—“would you have terminated the pregnancy?”

  She shook her head emphatically. “Making that decision once was enough.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She sighed. “I’d known your father for two weeks when I got pregnant with Patrick.”

  I was stunned by the confession, the puzzle pieces falling into place.

  She reached over and touched my hand. “You haven’t told Paul, have you?”

  “You know about Paul?” I gasped, struggling to keep up with the revelations of the past minute.

  “You’ve been so dedicated to him.

  I twirled a spoon in a circle on the table, the metal scraping across the wood as it spun. “He’s withdrawn. I tried . . . but . . .”

  “Tell him, dear,” she whispered. “He needs to know.”

  Rainbow stood in the doorway, hands in the pockets of her overalls. “Needs to know what?”

  “Faye’s having a baby,” Grace announced.

  Rainbow’s face lit up. “I know,” she said, then looked around. “When’s
dinner?” Grace and I glanced at one another and burst into fresh peals of laughter.

  • • •

  Paul stayed in his room Christmas Day, appearing only to greet my brothers, their families, and Mel upon their arrival. He missed dinner, the gift opening, the lighting of the tree. He missed the awkward moment when I announced my obvious pregnancy to the crowded table.

  “Great news, Faye.” Patrick broke the uncomfortable silence. “I thought you were getting chubby.”

  “Well, do we get to know the lucky man?” Steve quipped. I smoothed my napkin, feeling Grace’s gaze from the end of the table. “Not now,” I said quietly.

  “Pretty big secret,” Steve’s fifteen-year-old, Tim, whispered to his mother, Amanda.

  “Never you mind.” Steve swatted him affectionately. “I’m sure Aunt Faye has her reasons.”

  “Well, I propose a toast.” Grace raised her glass. “To motherhood.”

  “Hear, hear,” seconded Jean, a sociologist who’d been married to Patrick for two years. “Maybe we’ll be next.” She nudged her husband with her elbow and he blushed crimson.

  “To motherhood.”

  Mel raised his glass with the others but didn’t drink, watching me the whole time. He sat quietly through the questions about the due date, the speculation about sex and names. When Grace left with the children to fetch dessert he folded his napkin on his plate and cleared his throat. “Do you think this is the right decision, Faye?” he said. Everyone’s heads turned at the unexpected sound of his voice.

  I’m sure my face flushed the colour of the cranberry sauce on my plate. I opened my mouth but words failed me.

  “What if the baby has problems?” he went on.

  “All pregnancies have risks, Dad,” Amanda said.

  “But Faye—”

  “Has a chance of making another dwarf?” I wanted to yell, to throw the turkey bone on my plate across the table at him. “Is that what you mean, Mel?” I wanted to ask him whether he knew achondroplasia could be inherited from one or both parents, most often the father. Had Mel carried the gene responsible for me? Did he ever try to find out? Not likely he’d have let the significant statistic go by unchecked.

  “No—”

  “Shut up, Mel,” Steve ordered, cheek muscles twitching. “Fucking shut up.”