The Cuckoo's Child (11 page)

When I asked why she didn't just go to the hairdresser to get it cut, she looked at me as if I were stupid.

“That would be another hour wasted.”

It didn't seem the moment to point out that she looked awful. Instead, I took the scissors from her and finished the job.

The best one, perhaps, is the sight of you through the glass of your isolation ward on the day they first reported you were producing normal cells again. You were sitting up, bald as an egg, a pallid Gandhi against the pillows. When you saw Neil, your face creased in a smile, the first I'd seen for weeks, and you slowly raised an arm and punched a triumphant, defiant fist in the air.

Remission. That was the new word of the moment, whispered at first as a faint hope that might be scared off if confronted too directly, but later said out loud, more confidently. It's a temporary kind of word, one you use with your fingers crossed behind your back, one that shakes its finger at you in a minatory way and says, “Now don't go getting all excited, there's no guarantee I'm going to last, I could leave any time,” as if you need a reminder of the odds with cancer.

It allowed us to think of the next step, though. It was time to search for a bone marrow donor. My moment had come. I no longer had to be satisfied with occasional visits and second-hand reports, or gnash my teeth at my own impotence.

Tests, tests, and more tests. Unearthing of medical history that would have made a forensic anthropologist proud. Information overload. Serious discussion to ensure I knew what I was committing myself to. More tests.

Then, I waited.

We were all set to go up to Mum and Dad's for Thanksgiving. The whole works, it was going to be. You were back home at last, back at work even, part-time at least. You and Holly and the kids would be there for dinner, the whole family round the groaning board sort of thing. But for once there didn't seem to be anything sentimental about it, nothing contrived. Something to give thanks for, Mum said predictably, but then, what are clichés if not absolutely true, absolutely right on the mark? Which all goes to show Fate is a cardsharp, never without an ace up his sleeve.

I don't think I ever told you about the next bit, not in detail. And then there were the other revelations, so much right on top of it all, and suddenly the moment for filling you in was swept away, and there was no going back to it. All you knew was the fallout.

Just before that long weekend I got a call from the doctor's office. The test results were in, the receptionist said, and the doctor would like to discuss them with me. No, she couldn't tell me what they were, she didn't have that information, I would have to talk to the doctor. I couldn't wait, although for the first time there was a tremor of apprehension, a tiny qualm. What if the news was bad? I hadn't allowed that thought before, and it left me queasy. Ironic, looking back.

So there I am. The nurse has plucked me out of the sullen stew of streaming noses, coughs, plaster casts, swollen stomachs, and evasive teenagers chewing their nicotine-stained fingers in the waiting room and ushered me into a cubicle at the far end of the hallway. I sit facing a desk, a warning about
STD
s, a poster depicting a man, flayed to reveal muscles tightly wrapped as a mummy's bandages, and an illustrated letter of thanks from the kindergarten class of Sechelt Elementary. Dr. Wilson breezes in, plucking a file from the holder on the door. He welcomes me cheerfully as if I'm just another minor ailment needing a quick fix, but his face sobers with a glance at the now open folder on his desk.

“Yes, well,” he begins. Abruptly, he gets up. “Hang on a minute.”

He pokes his head into the hallway and hails the receptionist. I hear a mumble and one clear word—“uninterrupted.”

“Just wanted to make sure we weren't disturbed,” he says bracingly, replacing himself behind the bulwark of his desk. Once there, he pauses, gazing at the pages in front of him, pursing his lips. He eyes me consideringly, as if he's contemplating a risky jump from one rooftop to the next.
He's gathering himself
, I think in alarm.
It's something awful. I've got it too. He doesn't know how to say it.
A clammy sweat is beading my upper lip.

“What is it?” I blurt out. “Am I sick too?”

The doctor looks up quickly, surprised.

“No, no, nothing like that. You're in excellent health. But the tests have revealed something a little puzzling. You realize, of course, there are no perfect matches, apart from identical twins, but we can get pretty close with children of the same parents.”

“I know all that,” I say impatiently. “I'm the best chance.”

“Well, yes, you should be.”

Should be?

“But the fact is . . .”

Yes?

“The fact is . . .”

He's going to jump!

“Mmm,” the doctor finishes with a rush, “the tests show that biologically—genetically—you are no match at all. There is hardly any point of comparison, certainly not nearly enough to be considered a donor.”

He's just landed right on my lungs. I can't breathe.

I gape at him. The enormity of what he has just said hangs in the silence. Dr. Wilson waits, toying self-consciously with a cutaway model of a hip joint standing on his desk.

“But that's impossible,” I stammer. “He's my
brother
. There has to be
some
similarity. We've got the same parents, for God's sake!”

The doctor pauses delicately. “Are you absolutely sure of that?” he asks.

“Of course I'm sure!”

“No possibility, for example, that you were adopted as an infant?”

“I can show you my birth certificate if you like. How could I have a birth certificate with my name, and my father's and mother's names, and where I was born, if I wasn't their daughter? Are you suggesting it's a forgery?”

“No, no, that would be most unlikely. And let's see, you would remember when Stephen was born?”

“I remember it vividly, going to see Mum in hospital, holding the new baby, Boxing Day, we never did get the turkey cooked. I was eight years old.”

“Yes, well, the tests bear that out. Stephen is unquestionably the son of your parents. So we have a mystery, Livvy. Because those same tests prove conclusively that you cannot possibly be their biological daughter. Quite apart from anything else, the blood groups give us incontrovertible evidence that your mum and dad had nothing to do with your conception. D'you know anything about blood groups?”

“Yes,” I mutter.

“Well,” he continues as if I haven't spoken, “your father is type A. Your mother is AB. They could only produce children with type A, B, or AB. Stephen is A. You, on the other hand, are type O. It just doesn't fit. It's impossible.”

I can't take this in. Who . . . ? And if . . . ?

“Oh my God! What about Stephen? If I can't help him, who will?”

“That is a problem, but you must let us worry about that.”

“But his children are so young, and Mum and Dad are too old, surely?”

“We'll see. There are other family members in England, I understand?”

“Well, yes, I think so. But we've never had anything to do with them. I don't think my parents—” I break off, catching myself up with a humourless bark of laughter. “I don't think my
parents
have ever been in touch with them, not since we came to Canada in 1947.”

The doctor looks at me kindly. “I think you will have to talk to your parents. And don't forget, whatever the story, they're still the only parents you know, despite the biology.”

That was a thought I forced myself to repeat like a mantra in the hours following the detonation of the bomb. I left the clinic in a daze, surprised to find the sun still shining, for it seemed as if hours must have passed, as if everything should be different. Just like coming out of the cinema in the middle of the day, you know the feeling. Mechanically, I unlocked my car and sat behind the wheel, staring blankly through the windscreen at a filthy plastic bag dancing in an eddy of dust trapped in a corner of the building.

I scared myself on the way home. Half a mile from the house a blaring horn shocked me back to the right side of the road. How many other narrow escapes had there been? I had driven right through town, across pedestrian crossings, past school buses and loaded logging trucks, all apparently on autopilot.

Neil was making a pot of tea when I walked into the kitchen. He turned to greet me, still half absent in his studio, and froze, kettle in hand, at the sight of my face. He pushed me into a chair and leaned over me anxiously.

“Liv, what's wrong? What's happened?”

On the way home I'd been rehearsing answers to these questions, simultaneously chiding myself for letting your plight slip to the back of my crowded mind. “I've just discovered I'm Jane Doe,” seemed too melodramatic and oblique; “I'm not who you think I am,” too ambiguous; “My parents aren't my parents,” too bald. Besides, was any of it true? Mentally, I kept tripping over my birth certificate, that worn pink sheet, fragile at the folds, with the careful copperplate writing in each column, unmistakably official, identifying me as Olivia Mary, born April 3, 1940, daughter of William and Mavis Potter. There had to be some rational explanation. Neil was waiting for an answer.

“I can't help Stephen,” I said finally. “I'm not a match.”

Neil's face crinkled with concern. “Oh, Liv, I'm so sorry. I know it meant a lot to you. But . . . it's the luck of the draw. There'll be someone else.”

I could not accept the comfort.

“That's not all. I can't do anything for Stephen because I'm not related.” I felt Neil's hands stiffen round mine. “Those tests showed that my parents didn't produce me, no, they
couldn't
have produced me. But I know they produced Stephen. So if what they say is true, Stephen's not my brother, he's
never
been my brother, or half-brother, or even stepbrother. But I have a birth certificate, don't I? You've seen it. How could I possibly have that birth certificate if I'm not my parents' daughter? It doesn't make any sense at all.” Neil stared at me, still holding both my hands.

“That's really weird,” he muttered finally and belatedly set the lid on the teapot. “There's got to be a mistake of some sort. The lab must have switched samples or something.”

“No.” I had already thought of that, but the doctor had shaken his head. There was no possibility of error; they had checked.

“Maybe the mistake is even further back, then.” Neil's voice became more urgent as his idea took shape. “You were born at a pretty chaotic time, after all, war and air raids, all kinds of upheaval. Suppose you were switched with another newborn, by accident? Got sent home with the wrong parents? Who would ever be the wiser if it wasn't noticed right away?”

“Oh right,” I said. “I'm really a princess! Now I can reclaim my throne! Neil, that only happens in fairy stories.”

“No, it doesn't,” he said stoutly. “I was just reading about a case the other day. A judge is having to decide what to do about two babies who were switched at birth because of some snafu with identity bracelets. They've lived for three years with the wrong parents, and nobody the wiser. Now one set of parents wants to change over, and the other won't agree.”

“It's awfully hard to believe in something like that.”

“But it's the only thing I can think of to explain how you come to have that birth certificate. Otherwise there has to be something wrong with the certificate. Do you see your dad as a forger?”

“Give me a break!”

“There you are, then. You'll just have to ask your mum. Well, your dad might be a better bet, at least he's got a grip on the real world. You'll see them this weekend.”

“Yes, but Stephen will be there too and the kids. I've got to get this sorted out before I talk to Stephen. I'll have to phone tonight and hope Dad's there.”

Fat chance. When I called, it was Mum's girlish treble, the flat Cockney vowels still distinct after nearly forty years away from London, that breathed in my ear. I can still hear her.

“Hello, my duck. Now don't you tell me you're not coming for Thanksgiving because I don't want to hear it. I've got a lovely bird all ready—it's a fresh one too, none of your frozen muck—and the giblets and the neck to boil up for a nice drop of stock, there's nothing like a good stock if you want a good gravy, most people over here haven't a clue about gravy, putting that brown gluey stuff all over their chips and all, I don't know how they can face it . . .”

“Mum!”

“What, dear? There's no need to shout, you know, I'm not deaf, well, not really, though . . .”

“Mum! We'll be there on Sunday. But I need a word with Dad. Is he around?”

“No dear, he popped in to Prince George overnight, something to do with his Lions or Kinsmen, I couldn't tell you, anyway he's staying overnight with a mate of his, I'm not sure when he'll be back, daft I call it, he can never sleep in a strange bed, but there you are, he would go, never mind . . .”

“Mum,” I interrupted, “stop talking and just listen, will you?”

“What's the matter, love? You sound so upset. It isn't anything bad, is it? I'm just so fed up with bad news, there's never anything good, I was just saying to Dad, not two days ago, or was it yesterday? Never mind, all we seem to hear about is disasters and crimes and wars, doesn't anything good ever happen? And then there's Stephen on top of all that, but what can you do, we just have to grin and bear it, that's what I say, not that it isn't depressing, but we do seem to have more than our fair share, don't we?”

I gave up. Feeble of me, but there was nothing to be gained by telling Mum or asking her questions. You know what she's like. Any comment, no matter how mundane, prompts the same torrent, the flow instantly deflected by the smallest pebble of memory or association into a thousand smaller streams, straying farther and farther away from the source. Forcing her to concentrate on a specific topic has as much chance of success as nailing jelly to a wall or keeping dropped ball bearings together.