Fern

FERN

Wally knocks at my front door at 6:45 P.M., exactly fifteen minutes earlier than the suggested time of 7:00 P.M. This little detail alone is enough to make me second-guess myself. It’s been a week since I decided to end my relationship with Wally, but this has been the first time I’ve had the opportunity and inclination to do it. Wally always seems to be working late, or traveling, or in meetings. He hasn’t been to the library once. Rose has used this as reinforcement that I am doing the right thing.

“You see? He doesn’t have time to even see you. When would he have time to raise a baby?”

She has a point. As usual.

Wally knocks again, and I open the door.

“Hey,” he says. For the first time in ages, Wally isn’t wearing a suit. He is wearing that lumberjack shirt he had on the first time I saw him at the library, with jeans and sneakers. He is even wearing his stripy hat. He gives me a smile that, somehow, makes me feel sad.

“Hello.” The pitch of my voice is a little higher than usual. I’d had a flutter in my chest all day thinking about what I was going to do tonight, but suddenly the flutter is more of a flapping. I wrap my arms around myself and take a deep slow breath.

“Are you okay?” Wally asks, still in the doorway.

Over the past week as Wally and I have communicated via text message, he has asked me this many times. He has also asked me to forgive him. Each time, I have informed him that there is no need to ask forgiveness; to the contrary, I am the one who should apologize. Still, Wally has obviously sensed something is up, perhaps due to the absence of x’s in our text messages these past few days (a tip from Rose so as not to give him “mixed messages”).

“I’m perfectly okay,” I tell him. “Please, come in.”

Upon entering, Wally turns quickly right and left. I’d forgotten the state of the flat would come as a surprise to him. The last time he was here the place was, of course, furnished. But over the past few days Rose and I have more or less cleared the place out, moving my belongings to Rose’s (the spare room, until the doll’s house is finished). Tomorrow, I will be returning the key to the landlord.

“I’ve moved into Rose’s house,” I explain.

Oddly, this doesn’t appear to be news to Wally, even though I hadn’t mentioned anything about moving out of my flat. He looks at me sadly. “Are you breaking up with me?”

The words catch me off guard. Breaking up. All of a sudden, it sounds like something teenagers do in the hallway at high school, between classes. (Not teenagers like me. I read books in the hallway at high school, between classes.) It also indicated that he had indeed noticed the lack of x’s in our text messages.

“I’d like to end our relationship, yes,” I said.

“Because of dinner last week?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

I look at his too-loose jeans, his black lace-up sneakers, and have a sudden recollection of thinking he was homeless. It’s funny, remembering the time you didn’t know someone once you do know them. The first time I had met Janet, I’d thought she was going to be brash and loud. She wore brightly colored resin jewelry that I had always found went hand in hand with brash, loud people. I’d got that wrong. And I’d got Wally wrong too.

“Is it because of your sister?”

I tell him it’s not, but his jaw tightens anyway.

“Can I say something?” he says. “I know you love your sister, but…” He shakes his head, sighs. “Something isn’t right about her. It’s like she doesn’t know where she ends and you begin. It’s like she thinks … you belong to her or something.”

I frown.

“And you don’t have great boundaries with her either. You blindly believe things that she tells you. You don’t question anything she says.”

I think about that for a moment.

“Was it Rose’s idea that we break up?” he asks.

I cross my arms. Wally raises his eyebrows.

“Why isn’t that a surprise?” he says. “Fern, if you can tell me one reason you want to break up, then I’ll—”

“I’ve met someone else,” I say.

This silences Wally, as it was intended to. For now, I try not to think about the fact that it was Rose’s idea to say this. (“You can’t let him talk you out of it. As soon as he starts arguing with you, you need to say you’ve met someone else. He can’t argue with that. It will make it clean and fast.”)

“When?”

“A few weeks back. You haven’t been around a lot, lately.” I avoid his gaze.

“Wow. So … it’s serious? You really like the guy?”

(“It has to sting,” Rose had said. “But it’s a kindness in disguise.”)

“Yes,” I say.

Wally’s face looks heartbreakingly sad. “I’m sorry. I … was caught up in the business. I didn’t make you a priority.”

(“It will be hard, Fern. You will want to let him talk you out of it. But you can’t. When he gets upset, you need to say nothing at all.”)

This part, at least, is easy, because I can’t speak. All my thoughts and feelings have settled in my throat, forming a seal. I wrap my arms around my middle. He takes a step toward me, but then at the last minute changes his mind. “Well,” he says. “I guess I’d better go then.”

I nod. The seal in my throat tightens.

He heads for the door. The flap in my chest becomes something else, something heavier. More like a heavy, sinking pain. When his hand is on the door, he turns back.

“Can you do something for me?” he says.

I nod.

“Remember what I said about your sister.”

He doesn’t wait for me to respond, just turns and lets himself out.

Living with Rose isn’t so bad. She buys new sheets for my bed (100 percent bamboo) and makes space in the living room for me to do my yoga. And in the evenings, we spend quiet time together watching movies or reading books on the couch. I have heard that pregnancy makes you tired, and as it turns out, it is no joke. Luckily, I find plenty of opportunities to nap—on my yoga mat, in the children’s section of the library on the beanbag, in Gayle’s car when I go out to fetch a lemon. I sneak these little kips as often as I can, and when I do, I have dreams. Unusual dreams in vivid color. Usually about Wally.

I’m unprepared for the relentless way I miss Wally. All day, every day, I miss him. It is a gnawing pain in my chest, a pain that makes me want to crawl out of my skin. It reminds me of the way I missed Mum after her overdose—enough to make me howl. I’d learned somewhere along the way that you were supposed to miss people silently. Missing people aloud upset people. It made them feel like they weren’t enough, that you didn’t care about them. Rose, in particular, felt like this.

You only care about Mum! I’m the one who has looked after you all your damn life!

I don’t want anyone to feel like I don’t care about them. So I grieve silently, invisibly. It’s worked for me so far, in this life. But there’s another loss coming my way, very soon. My baby. And that one, I fear, might be the one that topples me.

---

The morning sickness reaches its peak at around eight weeks. I feel constantly nauseated and the smell of food is often enough to make me weak. When borrowers approach me at the library, I don’t even bother pretending someone is calling me, I simply keep my eyes forward and keep walking. One lunchtime, Trevor reheats some leftover Chinese food in the microwave and the smell is so overpowering I have to remove the food, put it into a plastic bag and take it immediately to the outside rubbish bin, ignoring his cries of protest. When Trevor tries to question me about it, I’m still feeling too sick to talk, so I merely hold up a palm and head for the secret cupboard.

I become acutely aware of every change to my body. The tenderness of my breasts, the patterns of my hunger, the length of time between visits to the bathroom. It’s a nonsensical puzzle for which there are few answers. In fact, the more I read about having babies, the more I realize that the process is primitive and dated. It is astonishing to me that with all the medical advancements of recent times, they haven’t come up with a better way to do it. For goodness’ sake, not only does a woman have to house the fetus in her uterus for nine months and then push it out of an inadequately sized orifice (or, even worse, have it cut out of her if it won’t come by itself), she is then expected to care for the baby on an hourly basis, feeding it fluids from her still-healing body! Lunacy! There has to be a better way. But no matter how much I research it, I have yet to find an alternative.

---

At twelve weeks, Rose and I go to the baby’s first scan. Rose introduces herself to the sonographer as the “mother,” and I find myself with the title “surrogate.” I’m taken aback by the emotion I feel when I see movement on the black-and-white screen. I imagine the hormones are to blame. The sonographer shows us the baby’s head, the baby’s spine, the four chambers of the baby’s heart. She even flicks a button so the picture becomes three-dimensional—turning the baby a reddish pink color and giving it a look of ET. That’s how I know it must be the hormones that are behind my feelings. No one but a mother could love something that strange looking.

But then again, I’m not the mother. I’m the surrogate.

“Is there a dad in the picture?” the sonographer asks, as we are finishing up. “I can print out a photo for him, if so.”

“Dad would love a photo,” Rose says. “He’s out of town on business at the moment.”

According to Rose, Owen will be coming home as soon as he finishes up his work assignment. Last week, he even sent a little Paddington Bear from London in the post along with a printed card saying he’d also bought a Paddington book, which he couldn’t wait to read to him or her. That had made me smile. Owen was going to be a great dad, and my baby—Rose’s baby—would be lucky to have him. Still, as I watch the picture of the baby on the screen—as the surrogate—I feel an ache in my chest that makes me finally understand that feeling people call “a broken heart.”

“What are you up to over there?” Rose asks me. She’s in her jogging clothing, on the way out the door, and I’m sitting at the kitchen table with my book, and the library’s What’s On catalog, which details upcoming events in the library. I also have my hospital admission paperwork.

I was impressed by the promptness with which the hospital admissions paperwork arrived, following my twelve-week ultrasound. It arrived the very next day. Apart from appreciating the efficiency of their system, I was pleased to find that it had come the old-fashioned way, five high-stock pages of A4 paper, folded in three. Most paperwork is emailed these days—a shame, I think, as I’ve always enjoyed filling out paperwork the traditional way, with pen and paper. I like the precise little boxes—one for each letter. I enjoy the gentle scratch of my ballpoint pen against the page, the pop of blue against the black-and-white page.

“Fern? What are you doing?”

Lately it feels like Rose has an insatiable interest in what I’m doing. It doesn’t matter if she’s rushing out to a meeting or in the middle of watching a gripping television program, her interest in my goings-on is as relentless as it is complete.

I sigh. “I’m reading and doing some paperwork.”

She appears behind me, peering down at the page, which is terrifically irritating. I’ve completed most of it. The only boxes that remain empty are under the “Emergency Contacts” heading.

“Put me down as your emergency,” she says immediately. After a short pause, she adds, “Unless there’s someone else you want to list?”

I might be imagining it, but I hear the faintest hint of a laugh in her voice. I wonder what is so funny.

“There’s no one else,” I say, filling in four little boxes with the letters of her name. Because Rose, once again, is my person. Other people may come and go, but she will always be here. I know I’m lucky for that. It’s just that today it makes me feel sad.

---

When I am four months pregnant, Rose says she wants to talk to me about something important. More and more, it feels like everything is important to Rose. What I eat. How much I sleep. Not sleeping flat on my back. But today her expression is more somber than usual. It piques my interest.

We sit at the kitchen table and she sets a stack of documents on the table before me.

“What is this?” I ask.

“This is an adoption order, which legally transfers all parental rights and responsibilities from you to me.”

I frown at the documentation, pages long and full of legalese. The words “Relinquish parental rights” jump out at me.

“It’s just a formality,” Rose says. “We don’t need to make anything official until after the baby is born. But I did want to talk to you … about Rocco.”

I look at her. “What about him?”

Rose frowns and chews her bottom lip gently. “I’ve been doing some reading about the adoption process, and when the baby is born, I think it would be better if you didn’t name him on the birth certificate.”

“Why?”

“Well,” Rose says carefully, “if you do name him, he will be required to consent to the adoption, which will be a little bit awkward as he doesn’t know the baby exists.”

She makes a good point. One I hadn’t thought of. “So … who would I name as the father? Just make someone up?”

“Well, no, because then you’d be required to have him consent to the adoption.”

“Oh.”

“Therefore, I think it would be easiest to simply say you don’t know who the father is.”

I laugh. “I don’t know? That’s ridiculous. How could a person not know who the father of their baby is?”

Rose doesn’t laugh. “It’s not as ridiculous as you think. If you had more than one sexual partner at the time of conception, or if you had a one-night stand with someone you never saw again, it’s possible that you wouldn’t know who the father is.”

I stop laughing. “And that’s what you want me to say? That I had multiple sexual partners at once, or a one-night stand with a stranger?”

“I know you wouldn’t do that, Fern, of course you wouldn’t. But it doesn’t matter. It’s just about doing what’s right for the baby.”

I stare at the table in front of me. I suspect she’s right. Still, it bothers me. I understand that the baby will be better off with Rose and Owen. But erasing Wally from the document? It’s almost like he never existed. Some days, that’s how it feels, actually. Like he was a character in a book I read, rather than an actual person in my life. If it wasn’t for the baby I was carrying, I’d suspect that was exactly what he was.

“Okay?” Rose asks, and I nod, because my throat chooses that moment to swell up and I can’t reply.

It gets hotter, and I become more pregnant. I’d always found the heat irritating, but pregnancy adds another suffocating layer. The library, at least, is air-conditioned, but each day the walk home becomes harder to enjoy. By the end of the fourth month, my elastic-waist skirts are tight even around my hips, digging in and cutting me in half and driving me crazy. The moment I get home I tear them off and wear one of Rose’s loose nighties instead.

Rose has also added another suffocating layer to my life. She’s around constantly, and not just in the morning and evening—some days she even pops into the library, just to say “hi,” wanting to feel the baby kick. The timing of these visits is invariably poor—when I’ve just finished my break or when I’m about to head into a staff meeting—and, perhaps it’s the pregnancy, but I find myself getting annoyed with her.

As she arrives today—third unannounced visit this week—I think of what Wally said to me. It’s like she doesn’t know whereshe ends and you begin. It’s like she thinks … you belong to her or something.

“What are you doing here again, Rose?” I ask.

She looks surprised, and a little wounded, by the question. “Visiting you, of course.”

“Don’t you have to work?” I ask.

“I was in the area,” Rose says, and I wonder what interior design business would have brought her to this area. She takes my arm and leads me over to the couches in the children’s area. It reminds me of what Wally said about me. You don’t have great boundaries with her either. After Wally had said this, I’d taken the opportunity to google “great boundaries” and I’d come across an article entitled “How to Set Healthy Boundaries,” which suggested three helpful tips when saying no.

Be polite but firm.

Explain why, but do not overexplain.

Stay calm and on message.

I decide it might be a good moment to employ these strategies.

“Thank you for the visit, Rose,” I say, which I think meets the polite tip, “but, I need to work.” Firm without overexplaining.

Rose frowns. “But I’ve come all the way to see you.”

“I thought you were in the area,” I say. “But in any case, perhaps calling ahead next time would be a good idea.”

Rose blinks. “You want me to go?” Her face is blank now but there is a challenge in her voice. Maybe even a dare. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

“Yes,” I say.

I stand and turn away from her, but not before I see her jaw drop. As I walk into the staff room, I force myself not to look back. Setting boundaries isn’t easy. I walk straight to my desk and google “great boundaries” again. Seems like I’m going to need a little more help with this.

---

When we were little, Rose was a pro at giving someone the silent treatment. It was, Mum and I used to say behind her back, her area of expertise. The slightest infraction could result in several days of steely silence. Now that we are adults, it’s improved a lot, but she still occasionally does it. So, when I get home from the library that night, I’m prepared for the worst.

Instead, the minute I walk in the door, I receive a smile and a large flat cardboard box, tied with a bow.

“Sit down!” Rose’s face is clear and shiny, and her eyes are bright. “I bought you a present.”

She pushes me onto the couch and sits on the coffee table, right in front of me. “I’ve been a bit preoccupied with the baby lately, and I think I might have been a bit pushy and overzealous at times.” She smiles. “Guilty as charged! So this”—she touches the box—“is my way of saying that I really do appreciate you.”

I glance nervously at the box.

Rose puts it into my lap. “Open it.”

After I fumble trying to undo the bow, Rose takes over, untying it quickly and pulling out a dress. She stands and lets it unravel against her. It’s a long dress, striped with every color of the rainbow. It has elbow-length sleeves and an empire waistline, with light flowy fabric that runs to the floor. I rub the fabric between my fingers. It’s as soft as butter. “Do you love it?” Rose says.

I open my mouth.

“I know you loved the rainbow dress that Rocco bought you,” Rose explains. “And this is so similar. I bought it from Ripe Maternity then took it to the alterations place to get French seams, so they wouldn’t irritate you.” Her smile becomes wider. “And it’s one hundred percent organic bamboo!”

Before I know it, Rose is pulling my T-shirt over my head and instructing me to stand up and take my skirt off. I do as she says, and then stand there in my bra and underwear. She puts the dress on me and makes me twirl. It’s kind of bizarre, but I go along with it. Rose can be quite convincing when she’s in this kind of mood. It’s something I’d forgotten about her. She has a gift for knowing when she is at risk of getting on my nerves and managing to sneak back into my good graces at the eleventh hour.

Sisterly relationships are so strange in this way. The way I can be mad at Rose but still want to please her. Be terrified of her and also want to run to her. Hate her and love her, both at the same time. Maybe when it comes to sisters, boundaries are always a little bit blurry. Blurred boundaries, I think, are what sisters do best.