Shivers 7 (7 page)

Born Dead

Lisa Tuttle

Florida McAfee was about the last person I would have imagined getting pregnant by accident, or, to be honest, in any other way, for although she was beautiful—even when she was over sixty her tall, willowy figure, large lustrous eyes and high cheekbones attracted admiring looks—there was something
noli me tangere
about her, and while she had dated an impressive variety of men over the years, she hadn’t married or lived with any of them.

I assumed she preferred to live alone, that it had been a positive choice, rather than it being something that had just happened while she’d been so busy with her career. If she’d wanted a family, I reasoned, surely she could have managed that emotional juggling act with the same skill she’d brought to establishing an internationally famous clothing brand.

She was my heroine. Her example declared it was possible for a woman to become rich and powerful entirely by her own efforts, and without compromising her beliefs. I needed to believe she was single and childless by choice, not because her kind of success was incompatible with family life. Not every woman wanted children—I still wasn’t sure myself—and if marriage was really so wonderful, why did so many of them end in divorce?

I’d been working for her for seven years—not directly, but climbing the corporate ladder in a way that had attracted her notice, until I was the head of division, London-based in theory but actually spending most of my life in other parts of the world. It was fun, exciting, rewarding, exhausting, all those good things, and as much as I was enjoying myself, I knew it couldn’t last forever.

Crunch-time was coming, and I was going to have to make decisions that would affect the rest of my life.

By many standards I was successful—I made good money, I liked my job, what I did made a difference—but I was not yet where I wanted to be. If I was to make my youthful dreams come true I had to cut loose and start up my own business. It would be risky, and lots more hard work, but neither of those things scared me. I even had an idea that I knew I could turn into a marketable business plan, and the time seemed right to launch it.

But even as I was aware of the opportunities opening up in the business world, I saw the entrance to another world shrinking. I was well into my thirties, young and fit in terms of work, many productive years ahead of me, but the window to motherhood—maybe even to marriage—was narrowing by the day, and if I didn’t do something about it soon it would close, and I would end up by myself. Maybe that suited Florida, but it gave me a chill to think of growing old alone. And it was looking more likely by the day: I might have been too busy to care, but the simple fact was that I hadn’t had so much as a date in nearly a year. More and more, the men I met through work were married—recently, happily, smugly, sporting their new, gold rings. Not that they were better, smarter, or luckier than me, but they had been quicker off the mark, realizing what they wanted, and going after it. It had taken me so long to notice that life’s dance-floor was almost filled with couples, and I was going to have to put some serious effort into finding a partner, if that’s what I really wanted.

The obvious thing to do, if I was serious about wanting to meet someone, was to go out more, to places where that might happen. Join a club, try something different, spend less time working…

Exactly the opposite, in fact, of what was required for my start-up. For that, I needed to concentrate on wooing investors, a different pool from potential husbands.

The thought of putting my business plans on hold made me even more uneasy. What if somebody else took my idea and ran with it? Things can change awfully fast, and if you drop out for a couple of years, nobody holds your place. You have to start all over again. And if I came back from my sabbatical a bride, people would wonder how soon I’d get pregnant, and how I’d manage to divide my attention between home and business. Of course it wasn’t fair, since a man getting married proved how solid and dependable and
bankable
he was, but there was no sense whining about that.

Florida always took a mentoring interest in her employees, especially the most ambitious, workaholic females. Her latest invitation to lunch arrived in the midst of my soul-searching, and while I didn’t want to let her know I might be leaving her employ, I had hopes that she’d provide the answer.

I’d made some vague remark about the difficulty of balancing outside work with child-care when she suddenly asked me if I’d ever been pregnant.

“No,” I said. “But I’m keeping my options open. I’m on the pill.”

“So was I.” She gave me a long, measuring look before going on. “I thought it was making me bloated. And when I stopped, and didn’t get a period, I thought it was just my body re-adjusting.” She looked down and toyed with her salad. “It never once occurred to me that I might be pregnant.”

I felt shocked, and a little queasy, wondering why she’d decided to confide in me, but said nothing.

“I was nearly forty,” she went on. “So, the fact that I’d put on a little weight, that I wasn’t having periods, that I felt strange… I put it down to the menopause. I didn’t go to a doctor; why should I? No one else noticed anything odd. Something about the way the baby was lying meant I never looked pregnant.”

“When did you realize?”

“After I gave birth.”

This was so unexpected, I could do nothing but gape.

“I know, it sounds mad,” she said calmly, taking a tiny bite of her salad. “But I never guessed. I had been feeling constipated for several days, and then one evening, just as I got home, I started getting pains, low in my belly. I thought it must have been something I ate. The pain came and went through the night, but it wasn’t until the baby actually came out of me that I realized. And by the time I understood I was pregnant—well, I wasn’t anymore.”

She fell silent, looking weary, and for the first time I saw her as an old woman.

“So what did you do then?”

“Well, I picked him up, I cuddled him… I thought how strange he looked. It still seemed unreal to me, what had happened. I got a knife to cut the cord—I didn’t sterilize it; how could I, on my own, holding a baby, still attached to me…it was a clean knife, from the kitchen, and I just had to hope it was clean enough. I guess it was. I couldn’t think what to do with the cord, or the other stuff—placenta—it seemed wrong to just stuff it all in the bin, but that’s what I did. I cleaned up as best I could, although there was a spot on the carpet I never could get out—I finally had to get new carpet laid—and then I ran a bath…”

Impatient with all this detail, the pointless obsession with carpeting, I interrupted: “But what about the baby?”

“Oh, I took him into the bath with me, of course. I got him all nice and clean, and then I used a hand towel, the softest one I had, to dry him. I wished I had some clothes for him, but of course I didn’t, why would I, when I’d never expected…? I thought I could make a nappy out of a square of cloth, but the tea towels were too rough, and I only had a few silk scarves, and they weren’t the right shape. I thought about cutting up a pashmina, which was certainly soft enough, but one was black and the other pink…” She met my gaze and made an ironic mouth. “Of course, it was absurd, but people do often focus on irrelevant details when they’ve had a shock. I thought about going out to buy something, but I was so tired, and it was so late at night… In the end, I just cleared out a drawer, and lined it with both pashminas, and laid him down in that, just pulling the edge of the pink one up to his chin. He looked so sweet lying there, so peaceful, I could almost believe he was asleep.”

I felt a sickening pang as I understood. “He wasn’t? He died? Or…he was born dead?”

“He never made a sound, never opened his eyes. Never took a breath.”

I wondered, with an odd, internal lurch, half excitement, half fear, if I was hearing the confession of an old crime.

“What did you do?”

She gave the tiniest shrug, as if to say I should have known. “I went to bed. I slept, so deeply that in the morning it all seemed like a dream. I was still tired when the alarm went, too tired to think, really. I got dressed and went to work as usual.”

“But the baby?”

She shot me a look that said I wasn’t paying attention. “ I told you, I put him in a drawer.”

I’d been imagining that drawer pulled out. I shut my mouth and nodded.

The waiter arrived to ask if everything was all right. Florida indicated that he should take away her largely untouched salad, and, having lost my appetite, I did the same.

“Would you like something else?”

“Just coffee, thank you.”

When we were alone again, she continued her story. “Two days later, I flew to New York. We were in the middle of negotiations, hoping to establish the brand in America, and so, for the next few months, I was hardly at home at all, rarely for more than a few nights. It was one of those nights, or early mornings, when I was so jet-lagged I hardly knew what time it was, and so wired on the excitement of building my own company into a global brand that I didn’t care, that I happened to notice that small, dark patch on my bedroom carpet, and suddenly all the details rushed back, and I broke out in a cold sweat.

“I opened the drawer and there was my baby, looking just as sweet and peaceful as the day he was born, and yet…not exactly. Even before I picked him up I could see signs of change.”

My stomach clenched as I anticipated the gory details to come, and wondered about the smell. But she surprised me again.

“He was bigger, plumper than when I’d last seen him, almost too big for the drawer. When I lifted him out, I could tell that he’d gained weight. I held him close and kissed him, and although his skin was cool to the touch, and he didn’t breathe, he had that wonderful new baby smell. You know what I mean?”

“He was alive? After—how long since you left him there? A month?”

“Closer to three. No, he was still dead.”

“But you said that he’d grown, put on weight—that’s impossible.” She had to be winding me up, but I couldn’t imagine why, and it was totally out of character for the woman I knew.

The waiter arrived with our coffee, and she waited until he’d gone away again to say, quietly, intently, “I know it’s impossible, but it happened. I still can’t explain it except to call it a miracle.”

I thought that was no explanation at all. “So what did you do?”

“There was a twenty-four hour Asda or something not far away, so I went there and bought a cot and some clothes. After the end of the year, when I had more time at home, I redecorated the guest room for him. It was all right for a tiny baby to share my room, but he would need his own space as he was growing up.”

“You mean, he kept growing?”

“Yes. Just like a live baby.”

Maybe one thing was no more or less impossible than the other, but I was shocked. “You mean, he didn’t
stay
a baby? He grew into a little boy?”

“And then a bigger one.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

“Of course not.”

“Why not? If it really happened?”

“You don’t believe me.” She looked amused. “Of course not. What sane person would believe such an outrageous tale? Does that answer your question?”

“You could have taken him to a doctor.”

Her expression hardened. “Take my dead boy to a doctor? Why?”

“To find out the reason—”

She shook her head at me. “There is no reason, or not one that science can accept. If I turned up with a dead body of an unknown man, what do you suppose would happen?”

I shrugged as if I didn’t know, but of course, I knew as well as she did that she’d have fallen under suspicion of murder, whether the body was that of a baby, or a young man.

“At the very least, they’d take him away from me. And if I told the truth, they’d lock me up. And bury David. Even if someone believed me, and decided to
observe
him for a few weeks, and saw he wasn’t an ordinary corpse—what would be gained by that? We’d be a public freak-show. I don’t want that. Not for David, not for me. I thank my lucky stars that I’ve always been able to take care of him, that I have enough money.” She stopped abruptly and took a drink of coffee.

David.
It was a nice name, I thought, Biblical, not exactly unusual, but kind of old-fashioned; I had the idea that it meant ‘beloved.’ It made the subject of Florida’s story much more real to me, and I found myself wondering if other babies, born dead, had the potential to continue to grow, if Florida wasn’t the first this had happened to, only the first to notice…

I caught myself, shocked by how easily I was sliding into belief. Was this some kind of weird test?

“And you’ve never told
anyone?
”

She had a pretty good poker face, did Florida, but that was a game I played, too. I saw something in her expression respond to my question; just the quickest, tiniest flicker, but when she assured me that she’d never told anyone but me, I knew she was lying. And as that occurred to me, I realized that nothing else she’d told me had felt like a lie. At the very least,
she
believed

“So why are you telling me, now?”

She put down her cup and folded her hands together in front of her. “I think you know I’ve always been impressed by your performance. You are a positive asset to the company, and I should be very sorry to lose you, if…well, I can understand if you are considering moving on, striking out on your own.”

I sat very still. I hadn’t said a word to
anyone
about my plans. How could she know what I was thinking?

She grimaced. “Maybe I’m projecting. You see, you rather remind me of myself at your age, and although my situation was quite different, if I were you, I’d be thinking that now was the time to aim higher, and that would have to mean striking out on my own.

“I’m nearly seventy,” she said. “And although I’m not eager to retire, I can’t keep working at the same pace. I know I will have to hand over to someone else.”

She didn’t say “That could be you,” but she paused, and my mouth went dry with excitement and apprehension.