Falling From Grace (27 page)

• • •

“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.”

Patrick pushed himself back from the table and stood. “Let's open gifts. It's Christmas.”

“No,” I stopped him. “Let him answer. What did you mean, Mel?”

Mel stared at his plate, at the brown scrape of gravy and mashed potatoes. “I meant . . . you'll be alone. Dealing with a baby all alone.”

“That's right.”

He lifted his head and met my eyes. “What will you do? There's no father. Your baby won't have a father.”

The rest of the family stood, chairs legs sliding across the wood floor, and moved toward the living room. I stayed rooted to my chair; my chest ached.
No father
.

Mel excused himself, gathered his coat and hat from the closet, and left through the front door.

The family departed at nine for the drive back to Qualicum. I hugged Steve and Patrick at the door. “Call if you need anything,” they said.

“I love you guys,” I replied, my throat tight with emotion.

“And never mind Dad,” Steve said. “He's . . . well, he's Mel.”

“Your kid has two great uncles,” Patrick added. “What more could it need?”

“Two great brothers.” I waved them out the door, squeezing back tears.

I put Rainbow to bed and fixed Paul a tray of food. I tapped on his door. “Paul, you hungry?”

No answer. I eased the door open with my elbow. The room was dark; he didn't stir. He spent most of his time sleeping. I didn't blame him, sleep a state I wished I could retreat to most days. Block out the world. I left the tray on the desk and tiptoed out. I lay on the couch and surveyed the mess of wrappings under the tree; the few gifts left were Paul's. I should tie my confession up in a box with chocolates and a bow. Would he take the news any better than my father?

26

Rainbow brought
Paul out of his depression. She made him snacks, crept into his darkened room, drew up the blinds, and camped on the carpet beside the bed to do her self-imposed homework.

“Paul, if you have five jelly bears and your mom gives you eight more, how many jelly bears do you have?”

“Paul, how do you spell
canopy
?”

“Paul, what colour should I use for this flower, a pink crayon or a purple one?”

When he didn't answer she would answer herself out loud, and then carry on with her task, humming while she worked. She knew to find me if he had a seizure. He responded slowly. Nothing, then muffled grunts from the depths of the pillow. Two-word answers. Rainbow emerged from his room one day and rummaged though the fridge. “Paul wants a carrot,” she explained and returned to his room until dinner. A few days later I witnessed an exchange as I passed the open bedroom door on my way to the bathroom with a stack of towels.

“What do you want Santa to bring you?” Rainbow said to Paul. “I'm writing him a letter for next year.”

“You don't believe in Santa.”

“No,” she paused. “But I don't know everything.”

“You think it's possible he exists?”

“Could be?” She poised her pencil over the paper as if to say,
Do we want to take a chance?
“I'm going to ask for a wagon . . . for Cedar. How do you spell wagon?”

“W-A-G-O-N.”

She formed the letters one by one, the pencil scratching across the paper, tongue between her lips. “Your turn. What do you want Santa to bring you?”

“A new brain,” was his answer.

The day after New Year, Paul laughed at an inane joke I made at dinner. Later, Rainbow found me in the lab downstairs cataloguing specimens. “Paul needs to go for a drive.”

“Paul's not supposed to drive, honey.”

“No, you drive. He needs to go.” She thrust a newspaper into my face. “Here.” I studied the page, the tourism section of the local paper. A family posed in a stand of giant trees. The place, Cathedral Grove, a small park up-island protected for its old-growth, the giant trees bordering the highway and easily accessible. “He needs to go here.”

Rainbow kept him in suspense through the drive. “It's a secret,” she explained from the back seat, and when we reached Cameron Lake a kilometre before the park, she ordered him to “shut your eyes and don't peek.”

We pulled into the empty parking lot, the day too blustery and grey for tourists. Rainbow hopped out, opened Paul's door, and guided him blind to an enormous weathered fir at the edge of the road, the trunk ridged with thick sheets of bark and clothed in green moss and lichen. “Tilt your head back . . .Okay. You can open them.”

I hovered close by; his seizures often followed a shock or surprise. He stared up through the foliage and stroked the trunk, working his fingers between the ridges of bark as if trying to push through the thick skin of the tree into its living interior. “How did you know I missed this, you two?” he said softly.

“Surprise.” Rainbow danced at the end of his arm, his fingers in hers. “Surprise, surprise.” She pointed above Paul's head. “What's that?”

A black scar bruised the heavy bark of the fir. “A lightning strike,” I explained. “Probably from hundreds of years ago.”

“Was there a fire?”

“Without fire, these Douglas-firs can't reproduce,” I said, imagining the scene. The lightning strike, the flame travelling along the ground like a lit fuse, devouring the dry underbrush, the years of accumulated branches igniting in its path. When the temperature of the fire reached flash point, flames exploded into the canopy like bombs. Whole trees splintering with the force of the created wind that flung entire trunks up and out of the fire and into the surrounding forest. Over days, the fire would have run its course, the ground sterilized by the intense heat. The only survivors a few thick-barked Doug-firs. The rodents would move in then from adjacent forest; deer mice and shrews would dig truffles from the ground and scatter the nitrogen-rich fungi across the forest floor, fertilizer for the sun-loving seedlings. Fire was a gift to this forest. A healing catastrophe.