What Alice Forgot

This time Ben was there for the first ultrasound and we both dressed up carefully as if it was for a job interview, as if our clothes would make a difference. The woman doing it was young, Australian, and a little cranky. I was worried, but on the other hand I was faking it for the cameras, if you know what I mean. I was all twitchy nerves on the surface, but deep down part of me was enjoying observing my anguish: Ooh, look at her digging her nails into her hands as she lies down, the poor, traumatized thing, when of COURSE there is going to be a heartbeat THIS time because this sort of thing doesn’t happen twice! I could already feel the huge rush of relief that would be released. I had tears of joy banked up, just waiting for me to push “go.” I was ready to send a poignant message of love to my first baby, something along the lines of “I will never forget you, I will always hold you in my heart,” and then it would be time to focus on this baby: our real baby. Alice’s baby would only be a few months older. We could still call them twins.

The cranky girl said, “I’m sorry . . .”

Ben clenched his jaw hard and took a step back, as if someone had just threatened to hit him in a pub brawl and he was trying not to get involved.

I’ve heard so many professional “I’m sorry”s now, Dr. Hodges. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Yes, your colleagues in the medical profession are all very sorry. I wonder if one day you’ll be the next to say, kindly and sadly, “I’m sorry but I can’t cure you. You’re a nutter. It might be time to look at other options, like transplanting somebody else’s personality.”

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 br**sts 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 on sucking Alice’s nipple, as if her life depended on it. She’s always loved her food, that kid.

I’d forgotten all about that day until now—how much it meant to me that Alice cried so genuinely for me. It was like she was taking on some of my grief. I thought, It’s okay, I can do this, I can get through it, I’ll be fine.

I just didn’t realize that “this” would keep on going and going and going.

Mmmm. I think we may have just had a mini-breakthrough in my journal-writing therapy. Although no need to get too big for your boots, Dr. Hodges. It wasn’t like I’d repressed that memory with Alice. I just hadn’t thought about it for a while, but still, bravo, maybe there is something in this, even though I’ve just missed what was promised to be an “explosive” episode of Grey’s Anatomy.

I’d toughened up by the next “loss.”