What Alice Forgot - Liane Moriarty [61]
I was embarrassed that it had happened twice in almost exactly the same way. I felt as if I was wasting people’s time, constantly turning up for ultrasounds of dead babies. What? You thought you had a real live baby in there? Don’t be ridiculous. Not you. You’re not a proper woman with these half-hearted, faintly ridiculous attempts to have a baby. There are women out there with proper swollen pregnant stomachs and live kicking babies.
Afterward, I felt it had been wrong not telling the family about the baby, because then I wanted them to know about the miscarriage, so that they knew the baby had existed. But when I told people, they seemed more interested in the fact that I’d kept the pregnancy a secret. They felt they’d been tricked. They said things like “Oh, I did wonder that day when you didn’t drink at the Easter BBQ but you said you just didn’t feel like drinking!” In other words, LIAR.
Ben’s mother was offended. We had to take her out twice for a “buy one, get one free!” meal at the Black Stump before she forgave us. The point of it seemed to be that I’d hidden the pregnancy, not that I’d lost the baby. People weren’t as upset as with the first one, and how could they be, when they’d only just heard it existed in the first place. I felt this ridiculous protective feeling for my January baby, as if nobody loved her, as if she wasn’t as pretty or as smart as the first baby.
I know she was a girl. This time they sent off the “fetal material” for testing and told me it was a chromosomally normal female. They said they were sorry but they couldn’t find any reason why I’d lost the baby. They said there was a lot they didn’t know about miscarriage, but according to the statistics I still had an excellent chance of having a healthy baby next time. Chin up. Try again.
A week after the D&C (such a chipper name for something so horrible; I never feel so desolate as I have after waking up in Recovery from a D&C) I went to visit Alice in hospital and see her new baby girl. Of course, Alice said I didn’t need to go and Ben said he didn’t want me to go, but I went. I don’t know why but I was determined to do everything I normally would.
I went to the greeting card store and chose a card frosted with pink glitter saying “Congratulations on your darling little girl.” I went to Pumpkin Patch and bought a tiny yellow dress with embroidered butterflies all over it. “It just makes you long to have a baby girl, doesn’t it!” cooed the saleslady.
I wrapped up the dress in pink tissue paper and wrote on the card and I drove to the hospital and found a parking spot and walked through the corridors with the present under one arm and some trashy celebrity magazines for Alice under the other. The whole time I floated alongside myself, impressed. “You’re doing fine. Well done. It will all be over soon and you can be home watching television.”
Alice was on her own in the room, breast-feeding Olivia.
My own breasts still ached and burned. It’s so mean-spirited of your body, the way it keeps acting like you’re pregnant, even after the baby has been scraped out of your womb.
“Oh, look at her!” I said to Alice, ready to begin the new-baby patter.
I’m so good at it these days. Just last week I went to visit a friend who had given birth to her third child and, even if I say so myself, my performance was flawless. “Look at his tiny hands!” “Oh, her eyes/nose/mouth is just like yours!” “Of course I’d love a hold!” And, breathe. And, chat. And, smile. Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it. There should be Oscars for that sort of thing.
But Alice didn’t let me get started on my act.
As soon as she saw me, she held out the arm that wasn’t holding the baby and her face crumpled and she said, “I wish it was me visiting you.”
I sat on the bed with her and let her hug me. Alice’s tears dripped straight onto Olivia’s soft, tiny, bald head, but she kept right